Author Archives: Jude

Novella-in-Flash 2017 Winners

I was honoured to be asked to judge Bath Flash Fiction Award’s inaugural novella-in-flash contest. There were many strong novella entries making the competition fierce. It was fascinating to see the different way each writer approached this challenge!

One of the most important traits of the flash novella is in creating a sense of urgency that pulls the reader in quickly. This is achieved through pacing, stand-alone story strength, and the creation of unforeseeable dramatic tension. Ultimately, success relies on the crafting of an inventive, non-traditional narrative arc. The short nature of the novella-in-flash does not allow for much context or rumination. Instead, it relies on tragic urgency.
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Interview with Emma Zetterström
February 2017 Flash Fiction Third Prize

Emma lives on the edge of a Swedish forest and tells us that when she is writing, she often compares the landscapes of Sweden and Scotland, where she is from. In Sweden the seasons are definite, unlike Glasgow, and the skies are very dark with many visible stars. Working as a translator and a teacher of Swedish to refugees, she thinks about words very carefully, and draws inspiration from her knowledge of different languages, the similarities, the differences and the gaps in between. She refers us to a poem to illustrate this. Emma moved from song writing, to writing lyrics which felt like a natural shift and she loves the enormity of what flash can express in a small amount of words. Like many of our other prize winners, her tip for writers who want to enter the Bath Flash Fiction Award is to keep re-reading your work and to get other people to read it too and edit a great deal. Then take the plunge and send. That final action is always worthwhile.
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Novella in Flash 2017 Short List

Congratulations to those who have made it through to our short list.
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Novella in Flash 2017 Long List

A big thank you to everyone who entered, and congratulations to those who have made it through to our long list.
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Flash Fiction Festival
Sat 24^th & Sun 25^th June 2017

In association with the Arts Council England, Bath Flash Fiction Award is sponsoring the first ever UK literary festival entirely devoted to flash fiction. Taking place on the weekend of National Flash Fiction Day UK, Saturday 24^th and Sunday 25^th June, the inaugural Flash Fiction Festival will be held in Bath.

Visit the Flash Fiction Festival site here

Check out our action-packed programme; we’ve organised a great line up of workshop leaders, speakers, writers and teachers of the short and short-short form – Vanessa Gebbie, Paul McVeigh, Tania Hershman, David Gaffney, David Swann, Ashley Chantler, Peter Blair, K M Elkes, Kit de Waal, Michael Loveday, Christopher Feilden, Calum Kerr, Jude Higgins and Meg Pokrass.
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Interview with Nicholas Cook
February 2017 Flash Fiction Second Prize

There’s much to learn about writing flash fiction in this interview with Nicholas Cook who won second prize in the February 2017 round of Bath Flash with his wonderfully titled and moving story, The Peculiar Trajectory of Space Objects. Nicholas tells us more about the structure of this piece, white space and about the title and the use of titles in general in short short fiction. We learn about his journey to flash fiction via screen writing and the parallels between writing and coding. He also mentions Jane, his most beautiful greyhound/part Saluki dog, who I think, from the photograph, would be most writers’ favourite muse. I love his writing tip that you can even write about a ‘toaster pastry’ as long as the emotion is there and the language interesting.
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To Carry Her Home
Bath Flash Fiction Volume One

You can now buy To Carry Her Home, Bath Flash Fiction Volume One, designed and published by Ad Hoc Fiction, from this site. It’s a beautifully laid out book, with a striking cover, printed on quality paper and containing 145 fictions of 300 words or less from the first four rounds of the Bath Flash Fiction Award. These contests were judged by authors Annemarie Neary, Tania Hershman, Michelle Elvy and Robert Vaughan and the first twenty-one flash fictions are all the winning and commended pieces. The other 124 stories are a selection of the short listed and long listed pieces from the four rounds arranged in an order we thought worked well. There are 125 authors represented, from eleven different countries – some have more than one flash fiction in the book – a wonderful range of styles and themes. Something for everyone, and a book to read and come back to.
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Interview with Emily Devane
February 2017 Flash Fiction First Prize

Emily tells us about jotting down ideas for fictions in her notebook, wherever she is. Her habit has resulted in two flash fiction stories shortlisted in previous rounds of the Award and now published in To Carry Her Home: Bath Flash Fiction Volume One and her first-prize winning story from the February 2017 Award. It’s fascinating to read about what inspired all three stories. In her winning story, seeing an angling magazine took Emily back to past memories of fishing. She tells us how she shaped the story to include the child’s shift of perception, the central idea of the piece. Emily also describes how her former career as a history teacher helped her write stories that have subtext and certain inferences. We learn about her time as a Word Factory Apprentice and how it has taken her writing to different places. And she has some great tips for flash fiction writing at the end of the interview.
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Award Round Up
February 2017

Thank you to everyone who entered the February 2017 round of Bath Flash Fiction, those who’ve entered before and those new to the contest. This time we received seven hundred and thirty-two entries from thirty different countries:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States

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Interview with Meg Pokrass
Flash Fiction Award Judge
March – June 2017

Meg Pokrass is a flash fiction writer, poet, writing tutor and Flash Fiction Editor and Curator at Great Jones Street. Her books include flash fiction collections, Bird Envy (2014), Damn Sure Right (Press 53 2011) and The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down (Etruscan Press 2016) and an award-winning book of prose poetry Cellulose Pajamas (Blue Light Book Award Winner 2015). Among her many other publications, she has a flash-fiction novella and essay on the form in My Very End of the Universe, Five novellas in flash and a Study of the Form published by Rose Metal Press. Meg has recently moved from the United States to England.
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