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 work at this stage.
Originally from Manchester, Tim Craig lives in London. A previous winner of the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction, his short-short fiction has placed or been commended four times in the Bath Flash Fiction Award and has also appeared in the Best Microfiction 2019 and 2022 anthologies. His debut collection Now You See Him was published in 2022 by AdHoc Fiction.
A big thank you to Tim for being our judge. Our small press, Ad Hoc Fiction was honoured to publish Tim’s fantastic debut collection, Now You See Him last June. You can read more about the book here in an interview we did with Tim prior to publication. Christopher Allen, of SmokeLong Quarterly wrote on the back cover:
‘Tim Craig is a master of microfiction. With enviable confidence, Craig spins the most varied, playful and poignant tales. The stories in this collection, most a single tight page of killer prose, all deserve revisiting again and again and again.’
Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award long list and huge thanks to all who entered.
It’s Valentine’s day next week and what better way is there to celebrate your love for flash fiction than buying the new Fuel Anthology a selection of first prize winning flash fiction, compiled, edited and published by Tania Hershman. Read Tania’s really interesting answers to Jude’s questions about the anthology below. If you buy the book now, you may have it in your hands ready to attend the launch on Wednesday, February 15th, hosted by Writers HQ. Buy your ticket to hear readings from the book and more!
Since Tania sent Jude the answers to these questions she has already raised over £1000 for Fuel Poverty charities from sales of the book. At the flash fiction festival weekend in Bristol, UK we’re sponsoring July 14th to July 16th there will be a further live launch of the book with contributors reading from it and Tania is also running a workshop based on the book. The festival always has a raffle and we’ve been inspired to donate the proceeds this year to Fuel Poverty charities. It’s all very exciting. It’s a brilliant iniative of Tania’s all round. It gives winning flash fiction writers a further boost for their stories and adds a great resource for all writers, as well as raising money for charity.
Follow twitter.com/fuelFlash and Instagram instagram.com/fuelflashfictionanthology/ for updates. Read in Full
Thanks so much flash fiction writers, for your fantastic support for our Bath Flash Fiction Awards. Our readers are very busy reading your entries for the 23rd Award, this time judged by award winning writer from the US, Sudha Balagopal. Have a final read of my interview with her to get you fired up to write or edit some last minute flash
To remind everyone, The Last Minute Club, for intrepid flash fictioneers is open only on the final day of this Award, Sunday 5th February. Anyone entering on Sunday will receive a (virtual) Last Minute Club badge. Everyone loves badgges don’t they? My first badge which I am sad to have recently lost was for entering a competition at Butlins holiday camp, when I was about nine. Our Bath Flash Badges are equally collectible. We’ve a mini competition beginning now over on Twitter where the first person to guess the colour of the new badge will receive a Bath Flash Fiction anthology.You won’t know the colour until first thing on Sunday morning.
We know posts on Twitter are disappearing into the shadows these days, but if you enter on Sunday and receive your badge, do share it there. We love that. It makes it such a fun day!
The first badge was introduced in June 2018. And the one you can collect on Sunday will be the fifteenth badge.Here they all are in the gallery. Many different colour combinations.
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Best wishes for all your entries. It’s always wonderful to receive stories from around the world.
Results out by the end of February.
Our 23rd Award ends this coming Sunday, 5th February. Results out by the end of February, when the snow drops will certainly be out, if they are not already. And we’re heading again for the Last Minute Club. Those submitting on the final day, get a (virtual) badge. There’s still six days to finish a flash but many of us flash fiction fans frequently ignore the best ways of getting a story ready for submissions. I certainly do. It’s not as if I say a stubborn ‘no’ to a great idea. It’s just that good advice seems hard to remember. Read in Full
First up in our lovely 2023 news is that along with Ad Hoc Fiction, we are sponsoring the fifth in-person Flash Fiction Festival weekend, again taking place in Bristol UK, at Trinity College, 14th to 16th July For seasoned and beginner Flash Fiction enthusiasts from around the world. We have 28 flash fiction workshops/talks to choose from, led by well-known flash fiction writers and teachers from the UK, the US, Ireland and Germany, plus flash fiction readings, book launches, bookshop, a Friday daytime flashy fringe fete where there will be fun activites plus authentic paella to order in advance, and a Friday afternoon pre-festival three-hour workshop led by acclaimed writer and teacher Kathy Fish. We also have a bar where Smokelong Quarterly editors Helen Rye and Christopher Allen will be hosting evening karaoke (not to be missed!). The Pokrass Prize for stories of up to 300 words is judged by Meg Pokrass and is open to all those booked.
Booking opened six days ago and places with accommodation included are going fast. We do also have camping options on site. Hope you can come to meet flash fiction friends and make new ones It is very friendly and fun. All details and booking on the website flashfictionfesival.com Read in Full
Thank you to everyone from around the world who entered our Awards this year. We greatly appreciate your support for the competitions and for our other projects. Our seventh year-end anthology has been a little delayed. The printing process has been slower than usual and we also didn’t want to dispatch copies to get caught up in, or lost, in the backlog of post due to postal strikes in the UK. For now, to mark the end of a year of fabulous flash fiction, here is a picture of the cover of the anthology. Dandelion Years is also the title of a story by Jonaki Ray, a writer based in New Dehli, India. The story is very moving and for the anthology, we also like the notion of dandelion seeds spreading far and wide, like the reach of flash fictions. Stories in the anthology are written by writers from all over the world.
Jude took the photograph of dandelion clocks in the lane near her house and we like the way John at Ad Hoc Fiction has somehow made the seedheads stand out and used the font colour to great effect. The anthology contains around 135 fictions from winning,shortlisted and longlisted authors in the three rounds of the Bath Flash Fiction Awards in 2022. It will be ready soon and posted out to contributors.
We’re hoping it will arrive with authors at some point in January.
It’s been another busy year for Bath Flash Fiction. Ad Hoc Fiction, our small indie press, which focuses on flash fiction, published fourteen books this year: nine novellas in flash, (seven from the Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash Award, 2022 and two others) – three more published shortly; two flash fiction collections; The Flash Fiction Festival anthology, Vol 4, (Vol 5 forthcoming); Bath Short Story Award Anthology and a guide book on writing the novella-in-flash. Thanks as always to John our Ad Hoc Fiction one-man production team, who produces such amazing looking books. This year, he also managed to squeeze in production of The National Flash Fiction Day Anthology as a freebie for them. We were also delighted, for the seocnd year running, that Ad Hoc Fiction was shortlisted in the South West regional category of the Bookseller’s Small Publisher Award.
Our other project, the Flash Fiction Festivals UK has had an exciting year. Jude’s hosted five online flash fiction festival days in 2022 and with Diane Simmons, organised the first face to face flash fiction festival since the pandemic in Bristol, UK. Another face to face festival is coming, July 14th-16th, 2023, in the same venue, Trinity College, Bristol UK. Booking open in January.
Our 23rd Award, the first one in 2023, judged by Sudha Balagopal, ends on Sunday February 5th.
We’re delighted to publish a Q & A with Kathy Hoyle who won our 22nd Award, judged by Emily Devane The picture here shows the coastal town where Kathy was born and brought up, with rainbow. And her stories always offer such a range of colour, tone and depth. She’s had a great year writing-wise and summarises her successes below. We’re looking forward to seeing her first prize winning story in print in the seventh Bath Flash Fiction Award paperback Anthology, which is a little delayed, but out soon from adhocfiction and Amazon and to seeing her at the flash fiction festival weekend, 14th – 16th July 2023 where she will be offering another of her high-energy, inspiring workshops. Another photograph in this interview, shows her in full flow at the 2022 festival weekend.