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Interview with Karen Jones, 20th Award Judge

Karen Jones is a flash and short story writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Micro Fiction and The Pushcart Prize, and her story 'Small Mercies' was included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and BIFFY50 2019. In 2021 she won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize, Flash 500, Reflex Fiction and Retreat West Monthly Micro and was short listed for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Bath Short Story Award and longlisted for Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her novella-in-flash, When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She is Special Features Editor at New Flash Fiction Review.

We’re delighted that Karen Jones has agreed to be our 20th Award Judge. In this intervoew we learn what makes a stand-out flash fiction for her, more about her own writing journey, and at the end she’s given a great prompt to get you writing a new story. Read in Full

19th Award Round Up

Thank you again to all who entered our 19th Award and sent in stories from around the world. We appreciate your support very much and greatly enjoyed reading the huge variety of stories we received. This time, 1212 flash fictions from 44 countries, listed below. It’s wonderful to know there are flash fiction writers in all these different places.

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia

Read in Full

Judge’s report, October 2021

When Jude asked me to judge the 19th round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, it got me thinking about why I like writing for competitions. How it helps my creative process, that is, setting aside any distant prospect of prizes and glory (welcome as those are, should they ever come). For me, it’s the disciplines of wordcount and deadline coupled with the challenge that safe won’t cut it. If your story is going to stand out from so very many other excellent, unseen pieces, you need to step out onto the high wire.

On the longlist I found stories that all took that risk. There were dreamscapes and dystopias, unheard perspectives and hidden inner dialogues, reworked fairy-tales and school play rebellions, the unexpected significance of custard, an earthquake on the page.

I read and reread these stories. I scribbled notes and added exclamation marks. I shuffled the order and read them in different rooms and in my local park. All the stories on the longlist would find applauded homes in magazines. There were some that it was so hard not to move across to the shortlist pile; there were ones on the shortlist that it felt so harsh not to give some kind of rosette. I considered making some Honourable Mentions here but, in all honesty, there would be too many. Read in Full

October 2021 Shortlist

Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award short list.

Read in Full

October 2021 Longlist

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

Read in Full

Happy Book Birthday! – The first year of Going Short, by Nancy Stohlman

We’re very happy at Ad Hoc Fiction and Bath Flash Fiction to be celebrating the first birthday of the publication of Going Short – an Invitation to Flash Fiction, which was published by Ad Hoc Fiction on October 15th, 2020 and launched on Zoom with readings from different writers who have attended Nancy’s courses and retreats over the years. Going Short is available from Amazon worldwide in paperback and ebook formats and directly from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop (all links to Amazon in different countries are on the shop page). Read in Full

The Last Minute Club – open Sunday 10th Oct!

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 22nd Award, this time judged by Emily Devane who is also running a editing workshop for our online flash fiction day tomorrow, Saturday 8th October. It’s going to get even busier for our initial readers tomorrow and Sunday.

To remind everyone, The Last Minute Club, for intrepid flash fictioneers is open only on the final day of this Award, Sunday 10th October. Anyone entering on Sunday will receive a (virtual) Last Minute Club badge. Collectible and in a new colour! 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.

And if you enter on Sunday and receive your badge, do share on Twitter. 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 fourteenth badge.I wonder if anyone has received and saved the whole series? Here they all are on the gallery:

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Best wishes for all your entries. It’s always wonderful to receive stories from around the world.

Results out on 31st October.

5 Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthologies – the history

We’ve summarised some information about the five anthologies published since the first Bath Flash Fiction Award opened early in 2015.For those who remember, we had a different way of running the competition back then. We didn’t close the inaugural Award until we reached 1000 entries. Ambitous! This took a long time. The inaugural Award announcement was in October, 2015. We hadn’t thought of producing an anthology at that early stage.

We switched to a three times a year Award in 2016 and the first anthology produced by Ad Hoc Fiction, To Carry Her Home containing 145 fictions from the three rounds of the 2016 awards and some stories from 2015, came out in early 2017. Ad Hoc Fiction, published The Lobsters Run Free, an anthology from the three rounds of the 2017 Award at the end of that same year. In 2018, the third anthology. Things Left And Found at the Side of the Road was published, in 2019 The fourth anthology, With One Eye on the Cows and in 2020, Restore to Factory Settings. The title isn’t decided until after the last award but is always chosen from a title among the longlisted stories. And you still have a chance to enter before our last award for 2021 closes on October 10th. As usual,the anthology will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction at the end of the year.

We’ve published around 650 very short fictions in print, so far in these books. The anthologies are such good reads.
The fifty people who are longlisted in each award are offered publication and receive a free copy of the book, posted world wide. We’ve asked people to post pictures of the book in their locations when they arrive and have been sent amazing shots of the books posed with and without their authors. Here’s some starring With One Eye On The Cows.

Before the pandemic, each of the anthologies was launched in Bath and authors travelled a long way to join us with fun nights of readings, cake and celebrations. We often managed a joint launch with authors reading who were published in Flash Fiction Festival Anthologies Last year we had a very successful online launch. The added advantage being that writers from different countries were able to read.

John at Ad Hoc Fiction designs all the covers of the bookd and he works with a story title that inspires him from around 135 in the book. The title stories are usually the ones found at the end of the anthology, when it is published, although in 2018 Things Left and Found At the Side of the Road was the title of a first prize winner story by Jo Gatford from the UK and is the first story in the book. It sparked off ideas for a cover with an image based on the UK Highway Code. The design for the first anthology, To Carry Her Home was inspired by a very moving story by Christopher Allen. The plait design is a reference to the sister’s hair referred to in the story. The Lobsters Run Free was inspired by the story by writer Anna Geary Meyer from Germany. With One Eye on The Cows was inspired by the story of the same name by Annette Edwards Hill from Australia. Q & A with Annette Edwards-Hill, author of ‘With One Eye On The Cows’. Last year’s anthology Restore to Factory Settings was inspired by UK writer, J A Keogh’s story.

The anthologies are available from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop and from Amazon. We really looking forward to seeing all the stories from 2021 in print soon.

Jude Higgins
October 2021

Flash Fiction Festival: New Series beginning Oct 30th

One of our goals at Bath Flash Fiction is to promote the reading and writing of flash fiction. In past years, we’ve sponsored, along with Ad Hoc Fiction, the face-to-face flash fiction festivals in Bath and Bristol. This year, our founder, Jude Higgins, organised The Great festival Flash Off, a fun series of festival days running from March 2021 to August 2021. This was a very popular series, with great workshops, talks, readings and contests and because it was online, it was accessible to a world wide audience. The final prize from this first series – The Winner of Winners cash prizes from the festival writing challenges has been announced today. And a festival anthology from the series will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction early next year.

To take us through the winter beginning with a day on October 30th, we’re sponsoring, The Great Festival Throw Down another series of five festival days again with workshops, talks and readings and another contest. It costs only £30 from 11.00 am – 6.30 pm GMT for access to everything and there are several free places for those for whom cost is a barrier on each of the days. The ‘Throw Down’ title refers to the theme of the monthly cash prize flash fiction contest for flashes of emotional resonance, inspired by the judge of the Great British Throw Down a TV pottery contest show where the judge is often moved to tears by people’s efforts. It’s definitely worth looking at the video clips of him here. Each month, the winner receives £30 cash prize and one of the mugs pictured.

On the first day, October 30th as well as the contest, there is a one and half hour workshop on writing the 100 word story with Tommy Dean; Crimnally Short, half an hour on writing flash crime fiction with Tania Hershman; a Hermit Crab Hangout with Jude Higgins focussing on spells and superstitions (for Halloween), Between The Woods and the Water, a nature inspired workshop with Electra Rhodes, yoga stretches for writers with Sudha Balagopal,a talk on compiling their flash fiction collectionsfrom Sara Hills and Alison Woodhouse; themed reading slots from invited festival participants, and chats with friends. Check out all details at the Festival website and hope to see you there!

Double book launch for novellas-in-flash by Tracy Fells and Jupiter Jones

Come to this joint launch on Zoom, hosted by Jude Higgins on Wednesday 15th September 7.30 pm – 9.00 pm BST of two excellent and innovative novellas in flash, Hairy on The Inside by Tracy Fells and TThe Death And Life Of Mrs Parker by Jupiter Jones. At the launch they’ll talk more about their novellas and how they went about writing them and read several stories. There’ll be break out groups, a Q & A and a book giveaway of each of the novellas,
Email Jude at jude{at}adhocfiction{dot}com for a Zoom link.

Both these novellas were short-listed in the 2021 Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash Award by judge Michelle Elvy. Read in Full