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28th Award Judge, Matt Kendrick

Matt Kendrick is a writer, editor and teacher based in the East Midlands, UK. His work has been featured in various journals and anthologies including Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Cheap Pop, Craft Literary, Fractured Lit, Ghost Parachute, and the Wigleaf Top 50. He writes a monthly craft essay called “Prattlefog & Gravelrap”, and facilitates the “Mondettes” newsletter where he invites different writers to pick their favourite pieces of flash fiction and analyse what makes them tick. He also runs the Welkin Writing Prize. Find out more about him on his website: www.mattkendrick.co.uk

We are delighted that writer, editor and writing tutor and awesome all-round supporter of writers in general, Matt Kendrick, has agreed to judge our 28th Award. Read my Q and A with him. Such interesting answers!

You will have read hundreds of flash fictions through your editorial and teaching work as well as those from previous competition judging. What do you think are the components of the most successful pieces?

Can you give us a brief rundown of the many services you offer to writers? What do you enjoy about creating courses and teaching?

I teach a series of two-week courses under the umbrella term “Write Beyond the Lightbulb” which currently includes “Colourful Characters”, “Glorious Words”, “Go With The Flow”, and “Lyrical Writing.” These are all online, asynchronous courses, and are a chance to play around with sentences and words in a safe-space environment. As an editor, I work with writers on everything from microfiction to novels, and I also mentor writers on a one-to-one basis. In all these different roles, I feel very privileged to be entrusted with a writer’s work. A lot of writing involves bearing your soul on the page, so asking someone to read that work in a critical fashion can be a scary thing to do. Hopefully, my feedback style makes a writer feel encouraged and excited, but it is still a privilege to be trusted in this way. Another thing I love about my work is seeing writers travel along their writing journeys. Some of the writers I started working with three or four years ago are now getting publishing deals or finding their flash fiction on the Wigleaf Top 50, but it’s also wonderful to see the less talked-about successes—writers who gain a confidence they didn’t have before, writers who achieve their first ever publication, writers who manage to complete the first draft of their novel.

Further details on my courses: https://www.mattkendrick.co.uk/courses-workshops
Further details on my editing services: hhttps://www.mattkendrick.co.uk/editing-feedback

When did you become interested in writing very short fiction? What do you like about writing in the short-short form? Can you link us to one of your favourite pieces of writing?

“Things Left And Found By The Side Of The Road

How is your novel going? We’d love to know what it’s about… unless that’s a secret

My novel? Eek! It’s currently at the stage of a relationship where it has survived several tempestuous arguments, a break-up, a couple of restraining orders and a half dozen counselling sessions, but mostly it’s going well. A couple of years ago, I firmly switched my writing motivation from writing for publication to writing for joy, so the only person I’m really trying to please is myself, and so far, I’m managing that. As far as the plot goes, it’s slightly (very?) off-the-wall. It’s about a man who sets up a museum for old sayings which he illustrates using flash fiction, and since I’m method writing as the character and writing all the stories that he references, I’m keeping my hand in with writing flash at the same time. My hope is that I’ll end up with a mirrored collection of flash and prose poetry that chimes against the novel. And if I’m very ambitious this might become something much more interdisciplinary with artwork and music (possibly my own), and dance, spoken word and mime performances (definitely not my own) to interpret the various stories and sayings. So, you know, a small project! It will probably keep me occupied for the next ten years.

Do you like a musical soundtrack when you are writing?

Music was my first artistic love. When I was younger, I attended Trinity music college and I used to play the piano to a pretty high standard (past me was a lot more talented than current me!) So, I guess people would expect me to answer yes to this question, but instead, it’s a definite NO! This is because my method for writing involves listening to the rhythm and sound of the sentences. If there were music in the background, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. However, I often listen to music for inspiration, and some of my published flash could definitely be described as musically ekphrastic. And with my current project, I’m attempting to do the opposite—to create pieces of music that interpret a story or saying. For example, I recently published a story called “Maybe there is” that features a dripping bucket of milk and I’ve written a piece of music where the drip is represented by an increasingly repeated note.

Finally, would you give readers an editing tip for flash of 300 words or less?

Sara Hills June 2024 First Prize

A Cock Among the Bathers

by Sara Hills

Tomorrow at the Tate Modern, while she’s studying Cézanne’s bathers, Jake will take off his pants. Jake, who’s old enough to know that public indecency’s a crime, old enough, sure — but still young enough to be stupid, reckless because he thinks he’s in love, thinks he can win her over if he makes a scene. And before she can grab his arm and say Jake, stop! he’ll have already left his smalls on the wooden floor, and he’ll stand full buck with arms outstretched, trying to achieve, well… bathing, she’ll guess, like one of Cézanne’s malformed women, oyster-white with willowed backs and tree-trunked hips, except Jake’s not a woman — he’s told her as much, said she can’t keep crying her heartbreaks, oppressing him with her problems unless she’s willing to see him as more. And of course she knows he’s a man, it’s his performance schtick she can’t take — his spotlighting, pushing, trying too hard — like tomorrow, at the Tate, when he’ll slip from his smalls before gobble-eyed children and gasping mothers with eye-covering hands, before men muttering Mate, you can’t! and What in God’s name! and Jake’s grin, his pearlescent grin! and his outstretched arms and his fur-tufted ass, cleft as a Cézannesque peach, and the Sir! Sir! from the gallery attendants and the neon security-ites with their walkie-talkies and Jake’s eyes pleading, pleading for her to see it as more than a scene, as a shared story, an anecdote for later, when they can say Remember the time at the Tate? like it’s enough of a something, and though he’ll be singing as they drag him away, tufted cleft in retreat, something falsetto or operatic about love, about water, second chances and firsts, the heat of her hand still echoing on his arm, despite herself, goddammit, she’ll laugh.

About the Author

Sara Hills is the author of TThe Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won or placed in the Smokelong Mikey, 2023, QuietManDave Prize for flash nonfiction, the Retreat West quarterly prize, National Flash Fiction Day’s micro competition, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and The Welkin Prize. Sara’s work has been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, The Best Small Fictions, and the BIFFY 50, as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfictions, and Best of the Net.

Emily Rinkema June 2024 Second Prize

Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab

by Emily Rinkema

It’s his turn, and from the back seat he tosses out an easy one. “Would you rather eat a mile of garbage or a mile of worms?” I make eye contact through the mirror, ask some follow-ups: how fat are the worms? Fat. Are they alive? Yes. Would I have to eat everything in the garbage, or just the food-ish things? Everything, he says.

“Easy,” I say. “Worms.”

It’s a game we’ve been playing together since he could talk, since he started spending nights at my apartment, since he learned about worst case scenarios that didn’t involve choice.

I give him one I’ve been saving: “Would you rather drink a cup of your own pee, or half a cup of a stranger’s pee?”

He squeals. “My pee,” he says, and then, “Gross!”

We are a few minutes away now. I slow the car and turn onto an unmarked road. The first few times here we drove right past. When we get there, I’ll wait outside while he sits on a couch across from my sister, supervised, and she’ll cry and ask him questions that all end with the word me. He’ll spend the two-hour drive home silent and I will hate her for it, then hate myself for hating her, unsure which is worse.

“My turn,” he says, his voice low. “Would you rather have me live with you forever or have your arm chopped off with an axe?”

“Another easy one,” I say. I wink at him in the mirror, but he’s looking out the window. He looks just like her. I wonder which would hurt more, the blade severing the limb, or the moment just after, when you realize what’s been done.

About the Author

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont. Her stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Phoebe Journal, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Bath Flash and Oxford Flash anthologies. You can read her work on her website (https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site) or follow her on X or IG (@emilyrinkema).

Catherine Ogston, June 2024 Third Prize

On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend

by Catherine Ogston

The faerie man is sitting next to me, just like last Friday and the one before that, while forest insects buzz and flit and the evening sunlight touches the nodding bluebell heads. So many dogs he mutters, as yet another runs past the signs telling their owners to keep them on a leash. A man walks on the path, a tripod and Cyclops-eyed camera tucked under one arm, followed by another. How about one of them, the faerie asks and I wrinkle my nose. The faerie hands me a bluebell and tells me that turning it inside out will win me the heart of my true love and so I try peeling the soft trumpet-headed petals but they tear like damp paper and fall groundward. Better keep practising, he tells me although we both know the heavy-scented flowers are about to sink down into the forest floor for another year. Last week the man versus bear debate came up and before I had completed my explanation the faerie man told me, with unsettling adamance, to always choose the bear. In his nimble fingers the delicate petals bend and fold obediently. Your sweetheart’s name starts with M he says and I sigh, ask him to do another one because I’ve had it with Marks and Mikes and Martins. No do-overs he tells me and we go back to sitting in silence, only the whisper of the leaves and ferns in our ears. One of the photographers strides past and the faerie says, maybe he is M and I reply that maybe he is a worse option than the bear. How can you tell asks the faerie and I agree, how can you ever, ever tell?

About the Author

Catherine Ogston lives in Scotland. Flash pieces have appeared in anthologies by Bath Flash Fiction Award, National Flash Fiction Day, Reflex Press plus others. She placed first in TD;LR Press 2022, Flash 500 in Nov 2023 and won the Scottish Association of Writers Flash Fiction trophy in March 2024. Catherine has been shortlisted twice at the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She also writes short stories and longer YA fiction. On X @CatherineOgston

Ronald Jones, June 2024 Highly Commended

The Bee

by Ronald Jones

The bee that will kill John Smith rises from a flower. To this flower and the next, the bee is an angel, a miracle.

Had today been a Friday, John Smith would have stayed in, poured a small sherry, listened to Radio Four. He might have thought about various chores, admin, accounts…

But today is magnificent, and so will be John’s death. But John does not know this or understand. He does not hear angels or that distant buzz, for he is but a man, and when angels speak, man is deaf and blind.

Once, when John was barely twenty-one he dreamed of Alice, the girl then who is now the woman of the house. Alice sits inside, vaguely hearing the radio, the hum of the sun.

Through their engagement, they pretended they would never tire of each other, and that almost came to pass, even if both strayed the once, each pausing on a petal that seemed so lovely. In hindsight, two mistakes.

Hindsight says, “I told you so”, but hindsight lies. It is not hindsight that John lacked or Alice lacks, but vision, understanding a larger picture.

John’s son languishes in Maidstone Prison and this tiny prick will release him. And John and Alice have a daughter, Jennifer, a thin girl with certain difficulties who thinks of naked clowns and weeps constantly, but this insect kiss, the bee’s soft touch, will change every thing, the clowns will leave her and Jennifer will come home.

To the flower the bee is impossible, a droning 747, carrying a kiss of love. Now comes its greatest happy, auspicious moment.

Alice drifts; light glints on the Harveys. John opens the shed, the lawnmower gleams, the bee enters the garden.

About the Author

Born Wales, Irish-Welsh, RV Jones wrote full time from 1992 to 2015, edited judged and ran an on-line writing group. He published six books and “far too many” creative writing articles and stories – then spent eight years caring for asylum-seeing refugees, fighting Long Covid and burning out. He recently returned to writing. He lives in southern England, ten minutes from Salisbury Cathedral and twenty-five miles from Stonehenge.

RJ Dwyer, June 2024 Highly Commended

Prognosis

by R J Dwyer

You start by saying sorry.

“A tumour?” he asks, and you agree. He studies his palms. The collar of his shirt is stained, while the woman next-door sports a perfect white cardigan. He brings her laundry, and they all say – what a catch. When she goes he won’t be long after. A hammering sound travels in through the half-open window and you raise your voice over it. When he meets your eye, he’s on the edge of tears and you feel satisfied. It doesn’t matter as much what’s said now, he won’t remember the details. He leans towards you, too close, and you correct the distance. When he asks if she’s dying, you pause. Your heart beats too fast. It’s almost exciting when you don’t know which way they’ll go. He might fall to his knees. Or hit you. He could even shrug and say, no worries.

He tells you that she loved to swim – how from the shore he would watch her head rise and fall among the black rocks. Once, a cut on the sole of her foot, and patches of blood left on the sand.

He tells you of the loss of their baby.

He tells you how he always felt, deep down, that she never really loved him quite as much.

How some days now she calls him by another name and looks at him differently.

How he usually goes along with this, all the same.

Later you stop outside her room. The woman is sleeping, and he’s hunched over the bed. For a moment, you think you see him holding a pillow to her face. He has one hand on her chest and with the other he runs a small comb over her fringe. You stand back from the glass, trying to make yourself small.

About the Author

RJ Dwyer is a writer and doctor, currently pursuing an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. His stories have featured in the wurd Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, the Fish Anthology 2024, and the 2024 Anthology of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), among others. Dwyer was a winner in the 2024 Fish Flash Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2024 Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. He is fiction editor of Our Father, a Glasgow-based literary project, and has worked on the editorial team for three books released by indie publisher thi wurd. Contact: rjdwyer.writes@gmail.com

Judge’s report on 27th Award by Michelle Elvy

Thanks very much to Michelle Elvy for all her work and great comments!

Winners and comments \
This was a rich set of flash fictions, and they required reading several times before the ones that stuck started to emerge – because so many were memorable. I kept thinking of the nurse on the ward, the boy in the car, the killing frost and the geraniums. I wondered about the coffee cup on the train, the gossiping crabs in the rock pool nursery.

The short list was made up of stories that sometimes circled and sometimes skewered the realities they examined. I was captivated by family drama, both loud and hushed; I was confronted by addiction and politics and cancer; I was swept away by imaginative dialogue, colourful, painted hearts and surprisingly observant seagulls. Some daring decisions were made, and I appreciated both the in-your-face approach to writing flash and the stories that required a gentle hand. Some reached, cleverly, to ideas and people familiar to us – faeries and rent hikes, Marlon Brando and Orson Welles – bringing them to the page with originality and flair. Some engaged parables and mystical imaginings. All of these decisions seemed deliberate, and the works on the short list delivered vivid imagery, sharp observation and carefully considered language. Some had beautifully memorable future-looking titles (‘The story we will one day never tire of telling you’) and some had wonderful images at the very end (‘her coat billowing behind her, like a galleon setting sail’).
And even as these flash fictions took on some heavy themes, there was also, sometimes, well placed – and much appreciated – humour. Perhaps just a hint, between breaths, but steady and sure.
A treasure of stories! I have so enjoyed considering the many virtues of all of them.

Highly Commended: The Bee
A story that delivers a whole lifetime in this small space, and brings remarkable detail – from the buzzing glory of angels to the everyday gleaming lawn mower. Here we have John and his entire family, and we see how life’s end may not result in a finality but is rather a moment in a series of intertwined moments. With such a simple title and point of focus at the start, the reader is tuned to nature’s precarious balance. This is a story that zooms in and out, with dynamic effect.

Highly Commended: Prognosis
A steady hand guides this story, and the second-person view connects the reader to a difficult moment, followed by the potential responses of anger, bafflement or denial. The reader sees this from the medical practitioner’s view, and we feel the push and pull between compassion and distance. All of this is delivered with care and close observation. There is tremendous feeling for the disorientation that occurs in the face of death, the tensions and intimacies, and some surprising moments. This is one of the gentlest stories I’ve read this season.

Third: On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend

Reality delivered with a wry tone and a bit of magic. From the beginning, this is imaginative and expansive, looking beyond the park’s flitting insects and bounding dogs. The clever dialogue between narrator and faerie brings an original take to the internal sense of want and desire, and the bluebells as the central image, with their symbolic constancy, gratitude and love, sustains this sense of longing. There is a moment of wonderful humour as the flowers crumple in the narrator’s hands, and the faerie says, ‘Better keep trying’ – not a syrupy platitude about love but a matter of fact. Nature makes a soft backdrop – ‘the whisper of the leaves and ferns’ – but don’t be fooled: this is a marvellously delivered cautionary tale. And the last line is so effective, with its perfectly balanced phrasing and lingering question.

Second: Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab
A story so delicately told, if you blink you might miss it. With deceptively simple language, this story brings us into the world of a young person and his reality, and how the narrator is coping, or not. As the banter between the young nephew and the narrator continues, the layers of their story unfold. This dialogue gives the story forward momentum, but also keeps us grounded in the world that matters most: the future of this young person. This story is a memorable contemplation of frailty and resilience, and the tenderness that may exist between us, despite unwanted circumstances and burdens. The voice holds a strong narrative style, bringing into focus the tragic reality of human fragility, and the paths that lead to places where we might have to consider our own lurking truths. Powerful and unforgettable.

First: A Cock Among the BathersSo much to admire about this story! First, the forward-imagining sense of what will happen ‘tomorrow’. Second, the pacing – breathless and perfectly managed, maintaining a jaunty tone that uses repetition, imagery and play to keep us in the gallery, on the edge of our seats. Third, it’s a personal story with familiarity that pulls us into the space between the characters. This story is flash fiction fun, but it’s much, much more. Here we see a play on art – the very idea of an exhibition and what one might expect, or gain, from it. Here we are invited to frivolity and spectacle – the surface ‘look at me!’ moment that captivates and surprises (and maybe brings a flush to the cheeks). But this is also a summons to look again: there may be more here than meets the eye. The interplay between veneer and substance is built moment by moment. Besides all that, rich language and memorable phrasings add rhythm and pulse. I’ll not soon forget that ‘fur-tufted ass, cleft as a Cézannesque peach’. And I can still picture the retreat, with the operatic falsetto singing of love, or water. The title opens the scene among the bathers, and the last line is wonderfully surprising and satisfying.

Michelle Elvy, June, 2024.

June 2024 Round Up

We love the results of the June Award coming a couple of weeks before the Flash Fiction Festival where so many flash fiction fans gather to celebrate the short-short form. For this round we received 984 entries from the following 35 countries:

Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.

Thank you again to everyone for entering. It is such a thrill to read so many diverse stories. Again, we supplied our fun virtual Last Minute Club badge for the final day entrants. But of course we appreciate everyone who enters at anytime during the four months of the competition.

Thank you too for the reading team who read throughout the four months and live and breathe flash fictions in the last busy few weeks of the competition, for taking on the hard job of filtering through so many great pieces in a short time span to reach a varied and wonderful longlist of stories to send to our judge Michelle Elvy. Mostly everyone listed has written back to say they would like to be published and we are looking forward to seeing them all together in print along with stories from the other two rounds.

Michelle has written a great report and comments on all the winning stories and our big thanks to her too for completing the task of short listing and choosing the five winners in a short time span. Just three weeks from the end of the Award to the results announcements today. This time round we have writers from the UK and the US.

Sara Hills an American writer based in the UK, who won also second prize with her story Failure to Thrive in June 2023 and was highly commended in Feburary 2021 with Always Down a Dirt Road I am Walking and in October 2022 with A Beachcombers Guide to Desert Grief, now wins first prize with another brilliant story, A Cock Among the Bathers Emily Rinkema from the US wins second prize with ‘Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab’, Catherine Ogston from the UK wins third prize with ‘On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend’, Ronald Jones from the UK is highly commended with ‘The Bee’, and RJ Dwyer from the UK is highly commended with ‘Prognois’. All marvellously inventive stories with so much conveyed in 300 words or under.

Our next Award, the 28th one, begins on July 1st and ends, Sunday October 6th. The judge this time round is Matt Kendrick, UK based writer, editor and writing tutor.

Short List June 2024

Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award short list and huge thanks to all who entered.

Author names are yet to be announced, so while it is fine to share that you are on the short list, we do ask that you do not identify yourself with your particular fiction at this stage.

Read in Full

June 2024 Long List

Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award long list and huge thanks to all who entered.

Author names are yet to be announced, so while it is fine to share that you are on the long list, we do ask that you do not identify yourself with your particular fiction at this stage.

Important
We receive many many entries, and occasionally some entries have the same title. We have sent an offer of publication email to all authors on the long list. Please do not assume you are on the long list unless you have received that publication offer. If in doubt, contact us.

Read in Full