Flash Master Frankie McMillan
A "must read" author for those serious about flash fiction
You will find New Zealand’s Frankie McMillan’s flash fiction collections living in the hearts and houses of devoted flash writers around the world. McMillan is a true writers’ writer— a master of the form and equally prolific as a poet. Her flash collections live as permanent residents on the top of my writing desk (see photo below). They act as a daily reminder of why I fell in love with the form.
She has the rare gift for funny/sad writing and one marvels at how effortlessly her stories walk the line between reality and surrealism. Her poetic, beautiful and wildly unpredictable characters make the impossible possible every time.
I found out about Frankie McMillan’s writing in a special way. Her story “Truthful Lies”, now considered a flash fiction classic, was published in the Norton Anthology Flash Fiction International (W. W. Norton & Co., 2015), edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard, alongside my own story, “Like a Family”. Not only did my inclusion in the Norton anthology change my life as a writer, it introduced me to the work of the best flash writers around the world, including Frankie.
Below is an excerpt that will give you a feeling for her writing:
from The Fish My Father Gave Me (originally published in Atticus Review)
I drowned the fish even though I knew I was too old to be drowning a fish. It was as big as a real fish and I let it float for a while. My father stared into the bathtub. “Sweet Jaysus,” he cried, “did your mother teach you that?”
My father was a drunk, a dream, a chaser of women, a storyteller, he came from the Irish bog, his hat was riddled with bullet holes, he cried on Easter Sunday, got down on his hands and knees to look at a hedgehog, danced with my mother, smashed the shop window then stumbled home with a chocolate fish. “You shall have a fishy on a little dishy,” he sang, opening his mouth so wide you could see the gleam of his gold tooth.
I cannot write about my father or if I do the story meanders, twists away from me in a slither. How can you nail a father down?
McMillan’s full collections include The Father of Octopus Wrestling (Canterbury University Press, 2019), My Mother and the Hungarians, (Canterbury University Press, 2016) and The Wandering Nature of us Girls (Canterbury University Press, 2022). A new poetry collection, There are no horses in heaven, came out in 2015. All of them live in my writing space, and I return to them again and again.
A SELECTION OF ONLINE STORIES BY FRANKIE MCMILLAN:
Past Jack Koo’s shop: A faux pantoum (Centaur Lit)
The Elephant in the Room (New Flash Fiction Review)
The day before you find blackberries shoved under the cabin door (Flash Frog)
Stories Told on Swings: Three Flash Fictions (Atticus Review)
We, the Dental School Nurses, 1960 (FlashBack Fiction)
Two Micros (Wigleaf)
The Ringmaster’s Boys and Johnny Owl (Atticus Review)
The Elephant in the Room (New Flash Fiction Review)
The Winter Swimming of my Grandmother (New Flash Fiction Review)
Frankie McMillan is a poet and short fiction writer from Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her book The Father of Octopus Wrestling and Other Small Fictions was listed by Spinoff as one of the ten best New Zealand fiction books of 2019 and shortlisted for the NZSA Heritage Literary awards. Recent work appears in Best Microfictions 2022 (Pelekinesis) Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press), the New Zealand Year Book of Poetry ( Massey University) New World Writing, Cleaver, Atticus Review and Landfall. She has won numerous awards and writing residencies including the Ursula Bethel at Canterbury University and the Michael King, University of Auckland. Her latest book of flash fiction, The Wandering Nature of Us Girls (Canterbury University Press) was published in August 2022.
I love Frankie! And hearing her read a story is real delight. Thanks for the bibliography, very helpful!
Meg! Thanks for introducing me to this writer. If I do not find her work in the archives of The Sitting Room -- an archival library of women writers and artists that spans centuries of works and tracks the success of contemporary women writers, I will make sure she can be found there. (See www.sittingroom.org and come visit us if you're ever in Penngrove, California, USA>