Suzanne Vincent is the editor-in-chief of Flash Fiction Online. That’s what people think anyway. Actually, she’s really a pretty ordinary middle-aged woman packing a few extra pounds and a few more gray hairs than she’s comfortable with. As a writer, she leans toward the fantasy spectrum, though much of what she writes is difficult to classify. Slipstream? Isn’t that where we stick stories when we just can’t figure out where else they go? Suzanne’s first professional publication was right here at FFO, published before she joined the staff: “I Speak the Master’s Will,” — a story she’s still very proud of. While she doesn’t actually have time to blog anymore, she once did. You can still read her ancient posts on writing at The Slushpile Avalanche. Suzanne keeps a house full of kids (3), a husband (1), and pets (too many to number) in Utah, USA. Yes, she’s a Mormon. No, there isn’t another wife. Mormons haven’t actually practiced polygamy since the 1890s. Too bad. She’d love to have another woman around to wash dishes and do laundry.

Bruce Holland Rogers has a home base in Eugene, Oregon, the tie-dye capital of the world. He writes all types of fiction: SF, fantasy, literary, mysteries, experimental, and work that’s hard to label.

For six years, Bruce wrote a column about the spiritual and psychological challenges of full-time fiction writing for Speculations magazine. Many of those columns have been collected in a book, Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer (an alternate selection of the Writers Digest Book Club). He is a motivational speaker and trains workers and managers in creativity and practical problem solving.

He has taught creative writing at the University of Colorado and the University of Illinois. Bruce has also taught non-credit courses for the University of Colorado, Carroll College, the University of Wisconsin, and the private Flatiron Fiction Workshop. He is a member of the permanent faculty at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program, a low-residency program that stands alone and is not affiliated with a college or university. It is the first and so far only program of its kind. Currently he is teaching creative writing and literature at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, on a Fulbright grant.

Chazley Dotson lives in Texas with her magnificent husband. She is represented by Rachelle Gardner of WordServe Literary. You can read her blatherings on writing, publishing, foster-parenting, and more at chazleydotson.blogspot.com.

Vanessa Blakeslee received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been recognized by grants and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Yaddo, and the United Arts of Central Florida, and has appeared in The Southern Review, Harpur Palate, The Bellingham Review, The New York Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review, among other journals. She is completing a novel set in Colombia. Find Vanessa online at vanessablakeslee.com.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860-15 July 1904) was a great Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: “Medicine is my lawful wife,” he once said, “and literature is my mistress.”

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

This story marks the first professional sale for Steven Mathes, although he now has another story pending publication in Daily Science Fiction. Before this, his work appeared in several semi-pro publications, including On the Premises, A Fly in Amber, and OG’s Speculative Fiction. He has also published articles in computer magazines such as Linux Journal, but he finds that thinking about computers makes him feel unsettled while writing fiction has the opposite effect.

Flash Fiction Online’s Founding Editor Jake Freivald lives in New Jersey in a house teeming with life: a wife, nine kids (yes, all from said wife, no twins), two dogs, two cats, and twenty fish.
Lack of qualifications never stopped Jake from taking a job, so when he saw the need for a professional flash-only ‘zine he created Flash Fiction Online. He was astounded when a team of volunteers rallied around the project, and he would like to shut up now so you can read about them.