Thank you very much to everyone from around the world who entered our 23rd Award, this time judged by Sudha Balagopal from the US. We received 1129 entries from the following 31 countries.

AAustralia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

Huge congratulations to our winners! Louie Fooks from the UK, with her story ‘Market Forces’, Nikki Crutchley from New Zealand with her story, ‘Walking to Woolongong’, Kevin Burns from the US with ‘Lakota Widow’, Rachel O’Cleary from Ireland for ‘The Astronauts Meet for a Picnic on the First Thursday of Every Month’ and Richard Hooton from the UK for ‘Fissure.’ The stories are posted on this site and are linked to the titles and your can read Sudha’s report here. A further big thanks to her for her very careful consideration of the 50 longlisted stories, and her generous and insightful comments.

With over a thousand entries, it is always a demanding job for our readers to reach a final selection of 50 favourites for the longlist and having entered many contests myself and not made lists, I know how disappointing it can be not to be selected. We always look for a balance within the entries of different styles and themes and if a certain theme has been focussed on many times,it makes it doubly hard to choose from among so many excellent pieces. It’s good to know that stories not selected by us frequently go on to be successfully published elsewhere. We appreciate those who have persisted in entering the Award many times. From social media we saw that a few people had made the final cut for the first time after several attempts over the years. It’s wonderful to have such support from writers. We also appreciate everyone for their support. Writers who enter once or many times, those who enter with plenty of time to spare and those who enter at the last minute and receive our fun virtual badge.

The Last Minute Club badge for those who entered on the final day of the Award is pictured here. We hold a contest on the previous day on Twitter for people to guess the colour. This time, nobody guessed the green and blue combo. So we sent a book from Ad Hoc Fiction to the first person who went for green, and the first person who guessed blue.

The 24th Bath Flash Fiction Award opens on March 1st and closes in early June. Our judge for this time is prize winning author, Tim Craig. We look forward to reading your entries.
Thanks again
Jude Higgins
February 28th, 2023