The 704 Prize for Flash Fiction 2026
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September 8, 2026
West Trade Review is happy to announce the results of the first annual 704 Prize for Flash Fiction.
Congratulations to both writers!
GRAND PRIZE ($704 & publication in the spring 2027 print edition): "Spotter" by Daniel Abiva Hunt
"This tiny, powerful story about weightlifters gobsmacked by each other and tongue-tied by sudden intimacy showcases the merits of flash as a form. The story’s power accrues from concision, every word exquisitely freighted with all that can’t be said. The excruciation of being unable to speak one’s mind and heart comes through every line. I loved it..” -Diane Josefowicz, Contest Judge
Look for Daniel's flash story in the Spring 2027 print edition of West Trade Review.
Daniel Abiva Hunt is a writer and teacher from South Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Story, Salt Hill, The Masters Review, CRAFT, Portland Review, and elsewhere, and has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Quinnipiac University, where he teaches fiction writing. He is currently completing his first novel.
Honorable Mention: "Practice" by Sushanth Shyamsundar
“A haunting story of a mother and daughter working through the aftermath of a terrible car accident that’s also a horrific family trauma. I admired the author’s recruitment of details to propel the story, so that even the car, with its familiar sequence of noises, becomes a character in its own right.” -Diane Josefowicz, Contest Judge
Sushanth Shyamsundar is a Chennai-based poet, fiction writer, and spoken-word performer drawn to places where grief gets strange, tenderness becomes awkward, and ordinary life develops personality. His work moves between poetry, flash fiction, horror, humour, and speculative writing, using dark comedy, surreal images, family memory, queerness, asexuality, and emotional aftermath as raw material. His writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including The Write Launch, Amsterdam Quarterly, Roe River Review, Moonstone Arts Center, and Art on the Trails. In 2026, “WHAT THE FIELD KEPT” won the Art on the Trails Poetry Prize, while his fiction received honorable mentions from Roe River Review. He is the author of The Opposite of You, The Beginning of Me and performs as Rakshasan, a masked persona exploring the distance between the private self and the one willing to be seen.
Look for "Practice" in the forthcoming Fall 2026 edition.
Diane Josefowicz is a writer, editor, translator, and historian. Her second novel, The Great Houses of Pill Hill, was published in May 2026 by Soho. She's also the author of Guardians & Saints: Stories (Cornerstone Press, 2025), L'Air du Temps (Regal House, 2024), and Ready, Set, Oh (Flexible Press, 2022); and co-author, with Jed Z. Buchwald, of two histories of French Egyptology, The Riddle of the Rosetta and The Zodiac of Paris, both published by Princeton University Press. She serves as Senior Editor for Translation at The Adroit Journal, Book Reviews Editor at Necessary Fiction, and Managing Editor of The Victorian Web, the internet's oldest and largest website devoted to Victoriana. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Contest Judge: Diane Josefowicz
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