We had over eighty entries since July when the ninth yearly novella in flash award opened. Thank you to everyone who trusted their work to the competition.
Many congratulations to the three winners and three highly commended writers of the novellas listed below, with my comments. They are 1st prize Victoria Melekian from the USA, runners-up Beth Sherman from the USA and Joanna Campbell from the UK and highly commended, Fiona J Mackintosh from the USA, Fiona McKay from Ireland and Bill Merklee from the USA. There’ll be a page with their bios and pictures shortly.
General Comments
As the sole judge/selector and representative of Ad Hoc Fiction,I read the novellas blind as they came in. It’s been enjoyable and moving Many of the novellas I read involved some sort of loss — either the loss of a loved one through death or other circumstances, or the loss of a way of being, or a dream. I found the angles on this subject, very interesting. There was some excellent story telling. I love being pulled into a story so that I can root for the characters and become immersed in their worlds. This happened frequently. I liked the experimental flash fictions some authors included— for example, lists, letters and very short fragmentary micros, used in a way that enhanced the story. I also enjoyed the way some authors structured their novellas in ways that brought out new insights and gave me a different understanding. I always like reading about subjects or situations I know little or nothing about and learning from them.
I narrowed down the list when some chapters were longer than our stipulated limit (1000 words per chapter) or it seemed that the chapters flowed too closely together and did not in my view fit the spirit of the novella-in-flash, where I believe there needs to be a felt gap between the chapters. This is subjective as definitions of this form are fluid and, I think, ever evolving.
At Ad Hoc Fiction, we only have the resources to publish three of the novellas — the winner and two runners-up. But I do hope that others from all the entries are published elsewhere, which has happened several times in previous rounds of this award.
It took me a long time to come to my top six (the winner, two runners-up and three highly commended) out of sixteen very strong shortlisted novellas. Thank you everyone for their patience in waiting for the results since the shortlist was announced at the New Year.
Winners
The 2026 winner is Victoria Melekian from the USA, with her novella-in-flash, Unhoused. The novella, in the voice of teen-aged Abby, the carer for her mother who is terminally ill with cancer. Is a very moving story of how Abby survives these difficult circumstances. Abby’s father left when the cancer was diagnosed. He has a new family and is no help to his daughter. But Abby is offered a job in a cafe run by no-nonsense and compassionate, Bobbie, who believes in her and her future. As well as coping with a dying mother, Abby also needs to know, before her mother dies, what caused the death of Fiona, her twin-sister, who died as a baby. Nobody tells her the truth of how it happened — not her mother or her father or Fran, the godmother, she’s close to. This mystery, which is resolved at the end, helps everything slot into place and the story ends with a sense of hope.
There were many things I loved about this novella. Abby and her voice, Bobbie’s character and her way of offering just the right amount of support and opportunities to Abby and many others down on their luck, the sub-plot about Fiona, threading through the novella, the titles of the individual stories, which added another level to them, and the way the stories were composed in many interesting ways.
Victoria was also one of three winners in our second award in 2018, judged by Meg Pokrass, with her novella. A Slow Boat to Finland which is one of three novellas in the anthology In the Debris Field. When I interviewed
Victoria afterwards, she said she would love the challenge of writing another novella-in-Flash, if she had an idea. I’m glad that she did.
Beth Sherman from the USA is runner-up with her novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here which tells the story of middle-aged Lauren, whose mother, Sylvia has dementia, and who, at the outset of the story, has gone missing. It is split into three different sections. In the first section, from Lauren’s point of view, we learn about the progress of her mother’s dementia as she frantically tries to find her. Sylvia lives with Lauren, who is recently divorced and is coping with that loss as well as struggling financially through looking after her mother. The second section is from Sylvia’s point of view. This shows her perspective of the same events of decline that Lauren has reported In this section, the language of the individual flashes shows Sylvia’s fractured state of mind very well. The third section reverts to Lauren’s point of view, when her mother can’t live with her any more. All the stories are exquisitely written in different styles of flash fiction and show how the compressed nature of very short fiction can enhance the subject.
The second runner-up with her novella, The Hilltop Hour is Joanna Campbell from the UK. The novella-in-flash tells the story of Cassie and Susan, both of whom contracted polio (probably in one of the last outbreaks in the UK in the 1970s), Joanna shows how Cassie, a young girl of eleven at the time, and Susan, a newly qualified teacher, manage the experience being in an iron-lung and learn to breathe again. After they leave hospital, we follow their different journeys as they slowly manage without the ventilator and each make a new life. This engrossing novella is striking in many ways not least in how vividly it portrays life inside an iron lung and how frightening and painful it is to breathe unaided. I like that this novella is particularly pertinent at the moment, when, often due to people not being vaccinated, this incurable disease is to be found again in countries where it was eradicated decades ago.
Joanna is another author, along with Victoria Melekian, who has been a runner-up in a previous Award. Her novella-in-flash, A Safer Way to Fall, was a runner up in our inaugural award in 2017 and is published in the anthology, How to Make a Window Snake.
Highly Commended novellas
The highly commended novella-in-flash, Beautiful for You, by Fiona J Mackintosh, tells the story of Diana, Princess of Wales in the second person, from Diana’s point of view. The second person here has the powerful effect of slightly distancing the reader from events as well as, conversely, coming very close up to Diana’s experience. It indicates how Diana might had to remove herself psychologically, to cope with her bulimia and the traumatic events in her life. This effect also works very well by the de-personalisation of major characters. For example, Charles is The Husband, Queen Elizabeth is The Top Lady. Camilla is The Other.
An excellent novella, also beautifully written and absorbing.
Fiona McKay’s highly commended novella Her Permanent Collection is the story of Grace, whose mother is deeply critical of her, (particularly about her physical appearance) from an early age and whose husband becomes critical during their marriage. It shows how a woman, with an early background such as this can put up with and not clearly see, sadistic and abusive behaviour from others before eventually putting a stop to it. The novella has a interesting structure. Fiona has heightened events by interspersing between the stories flashes which are descriptions of different scenes written as comments on pictures hung in a gallery. These pictures are said to be in the collections of various characters in the novella. This is such an imaginative way of showing character and adding a further level to the story. Fiona was a runner up last year with Lives of The Dead. Her Permanent Collection is equally as inventive and insightful about women’s lives.
Bill Merklee’s highly commended novella, If Blue Bird’s Fly tells the story of Henry, who is dying from Aids. He visits his old school friend to ask him if will record and write up stories from his past, says — “I want people to wish they’d known me”The stories tell how Henry grew up in a born-again Christian family and how he tries, in his boyhood, to conform to church expectations about his sexuality, before breaking free, which also results in estrangement from his parents. They, although steeped in their faith, have an unhappy marriage and it is clear how oppressed Henry’s mother is too. This novella is cleverly structured with fragmentary pieces headed by an icon of a cassette tape (which suggests this is written in the 1980s) showing where the recordings are taking place as Henry gets progressively more unwell. It is a very poignant novella with brilliant story telling.
Jude Higgins, February 2026
