Tim’s General Comments
Damn, but this was hard. And inspiring. And fun. But hard.
I don’t think there were many stories in my long list of 50 which didn’t at some point occupy a seat, however briefly, in my short list of 20. Such was the standard.
You will doubtless disagree with some of my choices. I disagreed with some of my choices. But, in the end, the stories which made my final list of five were those which battled for my attention, won it, and held it for a long time after I’d finished reading them.
There were many stories on the long- and short lists which were beautifully structured and beautifully written; some which evoked powerful and/or tragic historical events; several which found new and clever ways to harbour time-worn human truths; which experimented with form and language in ingenious, original ways. To the writers of these wonderful tours de force of flash, I can only apologise there weren’t more places in the winners’ enclosure.
Ultimately, I was drawn to those stories which felt perhaps less formulaic, less heavily structured; stories where character and mood were granted at least the same weight as plot and theme, and which didn’t necessarily give up all their secrets on first, or even fifth, reading.
Thanks to everyone who entered this amazing competition for giving me such difficult decisions to make, to the readers who did such a great job of whittling the original entries down to the long list, and, of course, to Jude and the team at Ad Hoc Fiction for the honour of being its judge. Read in Full
Thank you everyone for entering out 24th Award. Those who entered early, those who submitted in the middle months and those who entered on the final day and received our sophisticated purple and orange Last Minute Club badge, pictured here. A couple of people won prizes for guessing one colour each, the day before the badge went live. It was another exciting round with 1089 entries steadily arriving (almost the same number as in June, last year) from the following countries:
Last year we were thrilled that 
It’s always interesting to see what inspired our first prize winning writers. Here our winner from February 2023, Louie Fooks, from Oxford, describes how a menacingly hot day followed by a storm inspired her winning story about a street seller in Milan. A great example of how a number of things co-incide to create a story with many levels. Read judge 
Absolutely! As part of my MA in Writing, I spent a term in Milan in summer 2016, working with author Tim Parks. The UEFA Champions League final was being played in the city, which was full of tourists and football fans, and it was a really hot, humid day. It felt like something was about to happen… a terror attack or some kind of incident.
Not really. I had imagined a longer story but found it worked really well as a flash. It only took me about an hour but there was a lot of knowledge and life experience that I drew on in writing it. I’d like to develop it into a longer story or perhaps a memoir piece someday. I worked in Milan as an au pair when I was 18 so it also sparked a lot of reflections on how the world, and my life, has changed in that time.