We’ve summarised some information about the five anthologies published since the first Bath Flash Fiction Award opened early in 2015.For those who remember, we had a different way of running the competition back then. We didn’t close the inaugural Award until we reached 1000 entries. Ambitous! This took a long time. The inaugural Award announcement was in October, 2015. We hadn’t thought of producing an anthology at that early stage.
We switched to a three times a year Award in 2016 and the first anthology produced by Ad Hoc Fiction, To Carry Her Home containing 145 fictions from the three rounds of the 2016 awards and some stories from 2015, came out in early 2017. Ad Hoc Fiction, published The Lobsters Run Free, an anthology from the three rounds of the 2017 Award at the end of that same year. In 2018, the third anthology. Things Left And Found at the Side of the Road was published, in 2019 The fourth anthology, With One Eye on the Cows and in 2020, Restore to Factory Settings. The title isn’t decided until after the last award but is always chosen from a title among the longlisted stories. And you still have a chance to enter before our last award for 2021 closes on October 10th. As usual,the anthology will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction at the end of the year.
We’ve published around 650 very short fictions in print, so far in these books. The anthologies are such good reads.
The fifty people who are longlisted in each award are offered publication and receive a free copy of the book, posted world wide. We’ve asked people to post pictures of the book in their locations when they arrive and have been sent amazing shots of the books posed with and without their authors. Here’s some starring With One Eye On The Cows.
Before the pandemic, each of the anthologies was launched in Bath and authors travelled a long way to join us with fun nights of readings, cake and celebrations. We often managed a joint launch with authors reading who were published in Flash Fiction Festival Anthologies Last year we had a very successful online launch. The added advantage being that writers from different countries were able to read.
John at Ad Hoc Fiction designs all the covers of the bookd and he works with a story title that inspires him from around 135 in the book. The title stories are usually the ones found at the end of the anthology, when it is published, although in 2018 Things Left and Found At the Side of the Road was the title of a first prize winner story by Jo Gatford from the UK and is the first story in the book. It sparked off ideas for a cover with an image based on the UK Highway Code. The design for the first anthology, To Carry Her Home was inspired by a very moving story by Christopher Allen. The plait design is a reference to the sister’s hair referred to in the story. The Lobsters Run Free was inspired by the story by writer Anna Geary Meyer from Germany. With One Eye on The Cows was inspired by the story of the same name by Annette Edwards Hill from Australia. Q & A with Annette Edwards-Hill, author of ‘With One Eye On The Cows’. Last year’s anthology Restore to Factory Settings was inspired by UK writer, J A Keogh’s story.
The anthologies are available from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop and from Amazon. We really looking forward to seeing all the stories from 2021 in print soon.
Jude Higgins
October 2021
