“When WriteFluence approached me for this contest, I was told about the theme of the contest being ‘A Photograph’. I wondered how diverse could a writer really think and write on such a theme. Wouldn’t most stories be around a past or memories? I tried to dissuade the team from pursuing the topic as a theme and think of other options. The Editorial Team at WriteFluence persisted in their belief that the participants will surprise me with their plots. And I indeed am! It was a tough choice to make when they asked us to score the stories from out of all the screened winning stories. At one point in time, Palash, Arvind, and I then decided to include fractions in the score to come to a conclusion and select the stories on basis of which ones were the best. We loved reading these, and we hope readers will enjoy them too.”

Aditi is a doctor from India with a penchant for all things English. This is one of her first attempts as an adult to dabble in the art of storytelling. She discovered her love for books through Enid Blyton and reading soon became her favorite pastime, so much that her first tattoo is inspired by Harry Potter. She also enjoys volunteering and drinking too much coffee in her free time.

Aleksandra Markovic is a 22-year-old Serbian native, born in Belgrade. She has finished high school in Belgrade, although she had spent her Junior year in California as an exchange student. There she was first met with actual writing tasks when writing for the school newspaper. She has been writing since she was 12, influenced by Sex in the City that was playing on the TV one night, more specifically, by Carrie Bradshaw writing on her laptop. Aleksandra is currently doing her ERASMUS semester in Spain, studying humanities which she has studied as cultural studies in Germany for the past almost 2 years. Aleksandra likes learning about languages and cultures, as well as reading different book genres and has a passion for making movies in the future.

Aneesha Shewani (she/her) works as a full-time technical writer and editor in India. She is an avid reader and frequently blogs at http://www.bluepenstrokes.com. Her poetry and short stories are published in various anthologies. She is also a book reviewer for Reedsy Discovery. She loves to crochet and watch Netflix.

Anwesha Panda, is a nineteen years old introverted undergraduate student, a budding wordsmith and a voracious reader. She loves to capture the world in a frame and grooves to zesty beats. She finds bliss in sketching and painting, and is still waiting for her letter from Hogwarts. An animal lover and a strong karma believer, Anwesha is prioritizes her family, friends and ambition the most. She has lately won a few contests and has co-authored a number of anthologies.

Bhavna Jagnani is a second-year student from India. She loves to read and write and aspires to become a writer. She is of the opinion that reading and writing daily, enhances the creativity of a person. Her story ‘The Holy Grail’ has won in the LGBTQ Romance/Betrayal short story contest organized by WriteFluence in July-August 2021 and has been published in the book A Lie On Her Lips.

Brenna Anne is an aspiring young author from Dover, New Hampshire. She thrives on the strange and unusual, often staying up well into the night reading scary stories. Her best friend, a tailless cat named Soup, can often be found sitting on her feet while she writes.

When Carinna is not building characters in her dream world, she can be found reading romance novels or watching K-dramas. Those are the only times she experiences true happiness. Other than that, she could be found at the computer drawing building plans and completing assignments which are tedious ways to spend her time in her opinion. They may feel satisfactory in the end but it is always about the journey, not the destination. She cannot choose a favorite book because that is a betrayal to the rest but anything with an animated cover is a go. Her lifelong dream is to retire early and spend the rest of her life in a cottage in the woods churning words for the folk out there and watching more K-dramas as well as meeting all the characters in everything she has ever read and loved. Aside from their family cat and dog the only other people who truly get her are fictional characters but that is enough for her.

Chase lives in Milwaukee, WI with his wife Sarah and their two angels (i.e. their cats). He works at a psychiatric hospital as a medical coder. In his spare time, he likes cooking, listening to punk rock, and catching every baking show he can. Occasionally, he will find time to pursue his dreams and will write stories. He has been published a handful of times in The Far West Popular Culture Review, The Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, League of Poets, Tread Bikely, Stillpoint Literary Review, and Foliate Oak.

Seventeen-years-old Diya Desai, was born in the city of diamonds, Surat in Gujarat. Though born in Surat, she spent her entire childhood in Valsad, a small and lush green town in the westernmost part of Gujarat. She completed her schooling at St. Joseph E.T. High School, Valsad this year and is now pursuing BA Hons. at PDEU, Gandhinagar. Diya has been academically great throughout her entire school life. She also participated in various events like Olympiads, quizzes, elocution, debate, poetry writing, essay, letter writing, etc. She loves being in the lap of nature, listening and humming to melodious music. Moon and music are food for her soul. She likes every medium which provides her space and freedom to express herself. She has a very special corner for language and arts. Books are her best friends and pen-paper are her go-to people. Exploring people and places amaze her. Capturing and living the little moments of life is what she believes life is about. She understands the subtlety of human relationships. She has always been a voice for gender equality and supporting strong women. Women empowerment isn’t a term she believes in because she strongly believes that every women has infinite strength, the task is to make them realize it. Diya is a person ever-ready and ever-striving for serving humanity and art. She is young, determined, and ready to set her good mark in the minds and hearts of readers.

Kikic Edina was born in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina on September 16, 1981. In 2006, she graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Tuzla, Department of Bosnian Language and Literature. She is currently working as a Bosnian Language Teacher for the BH Community, First Bosnian School in Central London (online). She has worked as an administrator, editor, freelancer, translator, nanny, and lavender seller on the island of Hvar. She writes stories and poems. She lives on the route between Tuzla and Sarajevo in BiH, and Hvar in Croatia. She persistently writes lyrics and music for her songs, mostly in English. She has always been interested in human relations, psychology, alternative approaches to health and life such as tantra, embodiment, and women’s expressions through art. You may reach out to her on her Instagram account @edina_sea

Eithne Cullen was born in Dublin and moved to London when she was six. A member of Forest Poets, she writes stories and poems. She lives with her husband in London. Her first poetry pamphlet The Smell of Dust was published this summer. Eithne has written two novels: The Ogress of Reading and Never Not in my Thoughts and a short story collection, Pencils and other stories

Fazila likes to write as a hobby and wants to take it as far as a passion! She mostly likes to write non-fiction narratives while challenging herself to try out other genres from time to time. She likes to focus more on philosophical aspects when writing creative and/or fiction. Writing has helped her to overcome difficult times mentally as it provides a platform to express her thoughts through written words that she couldn’t say and believes the same for anyone trying this.

Feyikemi Olajide is an enthusiastic writer. She is driven and creative.

Gautham S is an aspiring writer from Bangalore, Karnataka. His work includes small tales, stories, poems, and essays. Currently working as a Software Engineer, his ambition is to materialize his long pending dream of becoming a full-time writer and a novelist. He used to search for a way to express his creativity and found writing suits him the best. The writer does not have any particular genre and likes to experiment with different themes in his works. You can follow him on Instagram @gauthamjoy to check out his work and/or to have a chat with him if you like. The writer welcomes any feedback on his works.

Linda Hibbin is retired, living near the Essex coast, England. She began writing flash fiction and short stories in 2020 while attending online creative writing courses. Her flash and short stories have appeared on sites including Reedsy, Seabourne, Bourne Green Lockdown Lit, and in three WriteFluence paperback anthologies. Linda enjoys tugging the reader’s heartstrings but comical observations of herself and people she knows often creep into her tales. Her domineering dog, Poppy, claims all credit for Linda’s work.

Peter is a former marketing manager who has had over a dozen short stories published in hard copy and many more published online. In 2021 he was awarded the HG Wells Fiction Prize for his story, ‘The Domino Effect’. In his career in marketing communications, he has written and edited hundreds of brochures, leaflets, and other publications for the web and for print. His freelance business writing has featured in a range of publications included ‘Marketing Week’ and ‘Direct Response’. He lives in Leeds, England, and is married with two grown-up children.

Philip Stenström (born 1987) is a short story writer and has published various short stories in many anthologies. His writing is usually characterized by nature, city, and countryside in the light of his upbringing on a farm on Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea.

Ramya V is an IT professional who delves into the world of books. A voracious reader who believes the pen is mightier to bring about a change. She dedicates her time to writing stories and poems in English and Tamil. She picks her pen to write when she stumbles upon any social incident that she feels needs attention. Writing fiction inspired by real-life incidents tops her list. In 2018, she also won the event “Which quote of Mahatma Gandhi changed your heart” hosted by Gandhi World Foundation. She has contributed and won as a co-author to more than twenty-five anthologies in prose and poetry. Her works are regularly published on online sites such as Women’s Web and Women’s Web Tamil. She is also a recipient of the Literoma Author Achiever Award 2021. Her stories bagged a place in the top ten list of the Annual Micro-Fiction 2021 contest hosted by Half Baked Beans under categories Horror and Erotica. She received a certification of appreciation for her poem in the Annual Wordsmith Award 2021 hosted by the Asian Literary Society. She is also the editor of the poetry anthology Anklets in my Hands from LetsMakeStoriesDino, a story writing community.

Raised and residing in Bengaluru, Rashmi Navada has a Master’s in Computer Applications. After spending most of her young years traversing the Bengaluru traffic and attending late-night client calls, she quit the IT industry to pursue her interest in travel. Being a voracious reader, writing came naturally to her. Not wishing to get back to the corporate grind, she now works as a freelance writer, writing articles on health and relationships. The theme being ‘A photograph’, the first thing that came to her mind was to write about her experience of clicking the snow photos in the picturesque Switzerland. As the story progressed, the plot deviated to a disappearing act from the intended Swiss nature photography experience. ‘Captured’ tells us how sometimes a photograph can show the true soul of a character. Rashmi is the co-author of the anthologies Tryst, Existing Loudly, Out of My Box, The Other Side, Mrs Rosewood, Rubble House, and Cloud 9. When not trying to manage her young twin girls, she writes short fiction.

Indian-born writer Rohan Swamy, who lives in Dublin, Ireland, began writing in 2002. A former journalist, he has tried to combine the art of storytelling with journalistic trends and enjoys writing stories based on current socio-political trends across the world. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Rohan has worked as a journalist in India with the Indian Express Newspapers and with NDTV before moving on to writing fiction full-time. He has been a contributing writer during his university days with the oldest student newspaper publications in Ireland – The University Times and Trinity News, writing on student life, and issues connected to Irish and American politics. As a short story writer, his first published stories appeared in the Urban Shots anthologies Crossroads and The Love Collection, in 2012 respectively. In Europe, he has been published in ‘College Green’ and ‘The Attic’ – magazines published by the Trinity College Dublin Press. On days when he is not writing, he prefers to go hiking, photographing, and exploring the Irish countryside. He also divides time between running, playing the harmonica, and cooking – activities that help him find sanity in a fast-changing world.

A teacher by profession, Sayani Bhattacharya, is passionate about writing. Born and brought up in Kolkata, she now resides in Gurugram. The nature lover and the keen observer in her love to weave dreams with words. Besides dwelling in a world dominated by equations, she believes that books have the power to change. She is a self-published author of her debut novelette The Unexpected Rendezvous. She is the author of the books The End Is Where It Begins (Srishti Publishers and Distributors) and The One Woman Army (an e-single published by Writefluence). Her short stories have appeared in Beetle magazine by Delhi Poetry Slam and other literary magazines and anthologies.

Sharda loves to pen down her thoughts and ideas. She has three passions: cooking, coding, and understanding human emotions. Sharda is highly influenced by her mother’s strong personality and kindness in every aspect of her life, which is reflected in her writing. Exploring human feelings has always intrigued Sharda’s empathy towards societal and family matters. In her free time, Sharda loves to hike and do Madhubani painting.

Shilpa was born and brought up in Mumbai, India. She is a gold medalist in MSc (Chemistry). After quitting her lucrative job in Pharmaceutical R&D, she is now a full-time mother, homemaker, and a passionate writer. She loves reading and writing thrillers. Two of her short thriller stories have been published in an anthology. When she’s not writing or reading, she spends time listening to music. She lives in Dubai, U.A.E with her husband and two adorable children, who are her biggest critics and ardent fans.

Smita Das Jain is the author of A Slice Of Life : Every Person Has A Story and The Lost Identity. She is a writer by passion and writes every day. Samples of her writing are visible in the surroundings around her- her home office, her sunny terrace garden, her husband’s car, and the kitchen napkins. Her works have been published on StoryMirror, Penmancy, Women’s Web, and the Auroras and Blossoms 2021 Anthology. In another world, when she is not writing, Smita is a Personal Empowerment and Executive Life Coach enabling professionals to create a career they love & live the life they choose, and a Strategy professional with more than fourteen years of experience working in leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies. She is an IIM Indore and SRCC alumna and holds a diploma from Columbia Business School. Smita lives with her rockstar husband and her adorable eleven-year-old daughter at their home in Gurugram, India.

Sohini Roy, a twenty years old, college student, from Kolkata, West Bengal, India, was born into a middle class, Bengali family. She graduated from South Point High School in 2019 and now aspires to be a successful artist and author. Roy has had the opportunity of working with WriteFluence before in their books ‘Wafting Earthy’, ‘Rubble House’ and ‘Mrs. Rosewood’. She hopes that someone, in some unnoticed corner of this huge world, will find a friend, a solace, a string to connect, through her not-so-perfect works.

Sushma R. Doshi completed her graduation in History from Loreto College, Kolkata. She acquired a Master’s degree and completed her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in International Studies from the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. She is a homemaker today and is a mother of two teenage children. She currently resides in Patna.

Uma Fenton is a native of Andhra Pradesh. She is a published author and poet in different anthologies. She grew up in Durgapur, a well-planned city in West Bengal. It is from this place that her interest in art and literature began and developed. She has always been able to express herself better through writing. She is a graduate in engineering and has a Master’s degree in Theological studies. Uma has received formal training in martial arts and believes in fitness. She’s also the founder of Hearts and Hands Foundation: A Social Welfare Trust working towards the welfare of the underprivileged. She currently resides in the city of Hyderabad, with her husband and two children and works as a freelance writer. Besides writing, she enjoys reading and watching football. You can drop her a mail at uma.fenton@gmail.com or follow her on Instagram @umafenton

Uma is a postgraduate in Agricultural Entomology. She is passionate about reading and writing. Uma has written numerous short stories and series for Story Mirror, Pratilipi, etc, some of which have received appreciation too. Many of her works are published on online platforms and a few are published in offline media too.

His mother named him Utkarsh because she wanted him to not be too far ahead in the roll number list. While his name meant exactly opposite to be at the top. Dangling between this ironic dilemma, Utkarsh holds onto poems, and stories to fulfill the meaning of his otherwise bland life. He believes words have the power to bring together people, eliminate distances, start a revolution, and carry it through. He daydreams about Hosseini’s Afghanistan, Murakami’s Japan, and Bond’s India.

An optimist to the core, Vaishali Chandorkar Chitale always sees the glass half full. She firmly believes in the saying, Hope is the most exciting thing there is in life. An alumna of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (Journalism), New Delhi, she is a freelance journalist, a poet, and a writer. Her poems and stories have been published on various online platforms and she has won many certificates for the same. Her Story Bittersweet Chocolate was ranked third in the FemmeFluenza contest, held by Writefluence in 2020, and was published in their book Out of my BOX, available on Amazon, in paperback and ebook editions. She has also won in the contests High Five and Sonnetto held by Writefluence for poets. Her winning poems have been published in their books of poems, Tickled Pink and Standstill. She has also won in story writing contests and has been featured in their books, Mrs. Rosewood, Rubble House and A Lie on Her Lips. Her co-authored coffee table book on poems, Poets and Poems-Echoes has been published recently to rave reviews. Her stories, Menage-A-Trois and Raison D’Etre have won a medal and a certificate each in the third prize category in the Asian Literary Society’s Annual Wordsmith Award, 2021, Short Story contest.

Born and raised in Bangalore, 20-year-old Varsha Murthy is currently pursuing her degree in Psychology, English, and Communication Studies. She is just beginning her writing journey but considers herself a lifelong reader. She spends time where she should be studying either with her two dogs or reading too much fiction. She channels energy that would otherwise be spent fidgeting into knitting or crochet and likes to make plushies she can give her friends. Reading for her has always been an escape from day-to-day life and writing started off as just another facet of the same. She writes so she can turn off everything happening in her own life and focus on her characters instead and hopes that through her writing, she can provide an escape to her readers as well.

Yvonne has worked in the publishing industry and as a teacher of Academic English (EAP). She has been writing flash fiction and short stories since 2019 and was a finalist in the 2019 London Independent Story Prize. She won the Glittery Literary long short story prize Autumn 2021, and her works have been widely published in a number of anthologies and websites, including Oxford Flash Fiction, Strands, Glitterary Literary, Reflex Fiction and Reedsy. Her resolutions for 2022 are trying to overcome imposter syndrome and procrastination.