fingers comma toes is an online journal for children and young adults founded in 2015.
Editors:
Lola Elvy (founding editor) writes music, poetry, and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to writing, she is passionate about language and the environment and studies music and mathematics. She is now based in Dunedin, where she tutors and teaches online youth courses in poetry, creative writing, and essay writing. Her work has been featured at events and in online and print anthologies, including Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (anthology, 2018).
Thomas Charles Cairncross (contributing editor) is a tinkerer of words and stories, following a wandering path of working with friends, peers, and strangers in the pursuit of shenanigans and teaching. He enjoys stumbling up rocks and the occasional pleasant chat with the physiotherapist. With science and speculative fiction stored deeply in the memory banks, Thomas is on the lookout for investments.
Joy Tong (童诗佳) (contributing editor) is a writer, musician and professional cat-petter from Tāmaki Makaurau, currently pursuing a Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry double major at Duke University. Balancing her passion for STEM is her tendency to explore inexplicable thoughts with poetry and short stories. On campus, she serves as Associate Editor for the university literary journal, The Archive. Her works are published in Landfall, Mayhem, Starling, and Signals, as well as A Clear Dawn, an anthology of New Zealand-Asian voices.
Hannah Scovell-Lightfoot (arts editor) takes great delight in climbing trees, the barefoot existence, asking questions, rollerskating, and bearing herself to the rollercoaster ride of being alive. She most commonly finds herself floor-sitting doodling, organic shop perusing, improving her already rather extensive morning routine, having passionate conversations, journalling, hitchhiking, and engaging in satiric banter.
Guest Editors and Judges:
March 2022 Issue: Unthemed | Charlotte Boyle:
Charlotte Boyle is a poet and short fiction writer based in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her previous work has been published by journals, magazines, and bathroom stall walls, including ReDraft, The NZ Poetry Anthology, Write On, and the Turnbull Library Bulletin. Her favourite pieces are ones that leave audiences a little bit baffled. When not writing, she can be found under several blankets reading or thinking about reading.
NFFD Youth Competition 2022 | Jack Remiel Cottrell:
Jack Remiel Cottrell is an itinerant flash fiction and short story writer with a sideline as a volunteer rugby referee. He was runner-up in the Bath Flash Fiction’s 2018 Novella-in-Flash competition, and was shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2020. Jack’s collection Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson and other very short stories was published by Canterbury University Press in August 2021.
NFFD Youth Competition 2021 | Kerry Lane:
Youth competition judge Kerry Lane is a poet and playwright living by the sea in Ōtepoti, Aotearoa. Current projects include a puppet theatre piece about Minnie Dean, a long-form podcast about the end of the world, and an experimental poetry-ish project about memory.
NFFD Youth Competition 2020 | Hannah Daniell:
Hannah Daniell is the winner of the 2019 National Flash Fiction Day Youth Competition, and an active member of the Christchurch writing community.
January 2020 Issue / Artwork: Red | Margaret Li:
Margaret is in her final year at Saint Kentigern College in Auckland, New Zealand, and is interested in pursuing a Language and Literature degree in the UK. She reads widely in her spare time and enjoys the creative writing process, particularly with short stories and script writing. She approached fingers comma toes’ August 2019 theme Space by describing the senses evoked by The Clinic, exploring the often overwhelming pressures faced by young adults.
January 2019 Issue Forest | Russell Boey:
Russell is a student in his final year of studies at St. Andrew’s College, Christcionhurch, New Zealand. He has an avid love for science and math, but despite this maintains that he will fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a struggling author. He has been published in fingers comma toes in the August 2016 issue Rust, as well as New Zealand’s national newspaper The Sunday Star Times for winning their short story competition. He likes stars, quasars, black holes, and all the places in-between. Unlike Lola and Tristan, if he ever leaves dry land again, it will have been far too soon.
Past Editors:
Tristan Deeley (editor 2015-2020) is an aspiring historian currently on a travel hiatus in Gold Coast, Australia. By day a biomedical science student, by night a writer of short stories, he has a sleep schedule worth crying about. His work has been published by Flash Frontier, Scottish Book Trust, and Highland Park Poetry. He spends his spare time wading through old bookstores and libraries, searching for anything about Rome.
fingers comma toes 
Pingback: fingers comma toes | Submissions Notice – 2016, January – Inaugural Issue | Penumbra