Fruit Flies by Jessica Zhen - LSBI winner 2026 (Years 10-12)
Express Media is excited to publish the Years 10-12 winner of Little Stories, Big Ideas in the theme of ‘Shimmer’: ‘Fruit Flies’ by Jessica Zhen (NSW)
Little Stories, Big Ideas is a nation-wide flash fiction literary competition for Australian secondary school students. This round of the competition, we received an incredible calibre of flash writing entries from secondary school-aged writers across Australia. The winners and runners-up – chosen in collaboration with Prize Ambassador Amelia Mellor – impressed us deeply with their unique voices and perspectives. Working within a 100-word limit, these brilliant young writers created clever, moving and evocative windows into imaginative other worlds and rich inner lives.
Entries for Little Stories, Big Ideas Round 2 will open on August 3 2026.
Fruit Flies
By summer, the girls in my year began turning into fruit. Not all at once. First their cheeks glossed like nectarines. Then their elbows softened, and peach fuzz shone beneath their chins. Teachers called it blossoming. When the flies came in, they opened the windows. They gathered at the sticky hollows of throats, beneath the peel of sleeves, at the sugared corners of mouths. I stayed sour, all pit and rind, until Mum bought me a tube of lip gloss called Pomegranate. That night, my reflection shimmered. Six seeds glistened behind my teeth. By morning, the flies knew my name.
Jessica Zhen is a student from Sydney who finds as much satisfaction in a well argued proof as she does in a well written page. Outside of that, she's usually somewhere between a book and a new idea.