Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award long list and huge thanks to all who entered.
June 2020 Long List
News
Pre-order ‘This Alone Could Save Us’ by Santino Prinzi
We’re thrilled that Ad Hoc Fiction, our small press is publishing Santino Prinzi’s wonderful new collection. This Alone Could Save Us. The collection was due to be launched at our cancelled 2020 Flash Fiction Festival UK.
Read what writers say about it here:
With This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi has fashioned a collection of small, smart fictions that read large. Here is work undergirded by innovation, incisive wit, and a keen ability to navigate terrain that is personal, and at once universal to us all.’
–– Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing
‘Santino Prinzi is a word-wizard of the heart—a writer who fearlessly excavates uncomfortable secrets. In This Alone Could Save Us, Prinzi’s first full collection of flash fiction, human nature is the subject, gentle surrealism the medium. Bizarre yet real, funny and crazily sad—it’s mesmerizing to watch Prinzi’s vulnerable characters work to free themselves from life’s stickiest webs. Subversive, haunting, beautiful—a must-have collection!’
–– Meg Pokrass, author of Alligators At Night and Series Co-Editor, Best Microfiction 2020
‘This Alone Could Save Us is a richly varied collection of flash fiction. In these compact gems, Santino Prinzi makes exquisite use of magic and the surreal, but also the quiet, evocative gestures of ordinary life. You will find the deliciously unexpected within these pages, along with moments of breath-taking stillness. Highly recommended.’
–– Kathy Fish, Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018
‘Tender, poetic, and wonderfully surreal, Prinzi understands that stories can save us. Powerful flash fiction that lights up the page, this is the book we all need right now. It is one for the ages. This stunning collection will stay with you for years.’
–– Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing and Don’t Try This At Home
‘In This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi demonstrates his enormous talent for drawing readers into his stories, often surprising them with surrealistic touches that appear totally believable and natural. The flash fictions in this impressive collection are widely varied, but each story is unmistakably Prinzi.’
–– Diane Simmons, author of Finding a Way
‘Exceptionally engaging, closely observed and thought-provoking, this collection shows us a flash master at work as he explores the fault lines that crack open under our feet at moments of unplanned change. Seen through his eyes, the familiar becomes strange, solid becomes unsteady, and even the moon loses its faith in humanity, so moves on. Sometimes sad, sometimes playful, always memorable.’
–– Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Cowards Tale and five short fiction collections.
BIFFY50 2019-2020, Nominations
Thanks very much to TSS and this year’s editors for again compiling the list of fifty Best British and Irish Flash Fictions (BIFFY50) published online between August 2019 and May 2020. We are very happy at Bath Flash to nominate ‘Eight Spare Bullets’ by Sharon Telfer which won first prize in the February 2020 round of our Award and Valentine’ by Claire Powell, which was highly commended by judge Santino Prinzi. Read his comments on the stories in his judge’s report.
Our final story of the three nominations allowed is ‘The Wild West’ by Francis McCrickard which won second prize in the October 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Award judged by Nancy Stohlman and you can read her comments here.
The authors live in the UK and we think their stories are wonderful examples of flash fiction.
Very best wishes to them all.
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- Sharon Telfer
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- Claire Powell
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- Francis McCrickard
Interview with Sharon Telfer, first prize winner, February 2020
It’s good to catch up with Sharon Telfer to find out more about ‘Eight spare bullets’, her second first prize win for Bath Flash Fiction Award, and about her writing in general. The first time Sharon won with another marvellous story, ‘Terra Incognita‘ back in June, 2016, we learned she had been walking in the Welsh mountains and only found out about her success when she got home. This second time, she wasn’t checking emails and social media because she was completing a big work project and discovered all the excitement at the end of the day!
The 15th Bath Flash Fiction Award judged by Mary Jane Holmes ends in three and a half weeks on June 7th. Mary Jane gave some great writing tips in her interview with us and there’s more tips from Sharon at the end of this interview and in the quote below, near the beginning. It is a wonderful piece of advice for the current situation we are in, and has a particular reference to Sharon’s winning story.
“…If you’re not writing for whatever reason, don’t force it and don’t despair. Those seeds are lying dormant, just like in the Svalbard vault. Give yourself time and what light and warmth and good soil you can. Germination always happens first unseen and underground.
Good luck to everyone entering our 15th Award. Results will be out at the end of the June.”
Interview with Mary Jane Holmes, First Prize Winner, 2020 Novella in Flash Award
Mary Jane Holmes won our 2020 Novella in Flash Award, judged by Michael Loveday last month with her stunning novella in flash Don’t Tell the Bees. Read Michael’s comments about it in his judge’s report. And you can also read more about Mary Jane, who currently also happens to be the judge of our 15th single flash fiction Award, on our winners’ page. Mary Jane, who is a poet, prose writer and for many years a teacher of flash fiction and other forms, has had an extraordinary few years where both her flash fiction and poetry has achieved much recognition. Ad Hoc Fiction is delighted to be able to publish Don’t Tell The Bees, which is her first novella. It’s really interesting to read about what inspired the story, to see inside Tom, Mary Jane’s writing caravan and to have her insight into the pitfalls and pleasures of writing in this form. We expect the novella to be out later this year.
- Can you give us a brief synopsis of Don’t Tell the Bees, your winning novella-in-flash?
A stonemason climbs the steeple of the village church to mend the weathervane his father had made many years before and falls to his death, leaving a family to survive in a 20th century but feudal run rural backwater of western France. The story’s main focus is the youngest child, a girl with a love of maths, who has to negotiate poverty, sexism and the arrival of a new road into the village where she lives.
Saboteur Award Shortlistings!
It’s amazing that we are shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards in five categories this year! Ad Hoc Fiction in The Most Innovative Publisher category, the Flash Fiction Festival in the Best Literary Festival category and the four books described below in the Best Anthology, Best Novella and Best Short Story Collection categories. Thank you so much to everyone who voted for us. We are very excited by all this emphasis on flash fiction in the Saboteur Awards. And if you love flash, the festival and these books, we’d be delighted if you could vote again for them to win.
It is a first for us to have a Bath Flash Fiction Anthology in the shortlist for the Best Anthologuy. In previous years we have made the longlist. We love the title With One Eye On The Cows and the cover of this our fourth Bath Flash anthology. And the stories within are stunning. 135 micros from world wide authors. You can see the gallery of where the author copies were posted to here. And here’s a review of it by writer Judy Darley. Read in Full
Ad Hoc Fiction Innovation
We’re thrilled that Ad Hoc Fiction, our small independent press, is shortlisted for the Best Innovative Publisher category in the Saboteur Awards, 2020. As a fun innovation to divert herself during lockdown, Ad Hoc Fiction Director, Jude Higgins has been ‘dressing-up-to-go-nowhere’ in outfits that colour co-ordinate with all our books.
The gallery of 16 days of photos below showcase the books. And Jude added a ‘bonus’ picture with colours showing the Ad Hoc Logo when we learned we’d been shortlisted.
Ad Hoc Fiction plans to publish eight more novellas in flash this year, a Bath Flash Fiction Vol 4, a further single author collection by UK author Santino Prinzi and another one in the pipe line. And a first, a craft book, by Nancy Stholman. The Corona Virus has slowed down the publishing date for these. But everything else is operating normally. It is still possible to buy books directly from our bookshop
This Saboteur Award shortlisting is a wonderful recognition of our work. We concentrate on publishing high quality short fiction available to buy directly in paper back copies from our online bookshop. And many books are also for sale as ebooks via Kindle or Kobo. All twenty books we have published are pictured here. In 2019 Ad Hoc Fiction published six Flash Fiction Novellas,’one small novel in small forms’ by writers from the UK, USA and New Zealand, two single author flash fiction collections from UK writers and two anthologies, one containing micros from over 130 authors successful in the 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Awards and one containing over 80 micros from participants at the Flash Fiction Festival, UK. Last year, Ad Hoc Fiction won Best Publisher in the Creative Bath Awards, but this shortlisting is a wider recognition. And we are very excited. So thank you to all who voted for us to get to this stage and I hope you will vote for us again.
2020 Novella-in-Flash winners
Many congratulations and more details below about our 2020 winner, Mary-Jane Holmes from the UK (who is also the judge for our June 2020 single-flash Award!) and the two runners-up, Tracey Slaughter from New Zealand and Erica Plouffe-Lazure from the USA.
Read judge Michael Loveday’s report on their brilliantly written novellas-in-flash to find out a brief synopsis of each of them, and his comments.They are all very different and it is wonderful to have such variety among the winners and the special commended novellas. We hope that all three of these winning novellas will be published later this year and we are so looking forward to seeing them in print.
First Prize Don’t Tell The Bees by Mary-Jane Holmes
Mary-Jane Holmes is a writer, teacher and editor based in the Durham Dales, UK. She has been published in such places as the Best Small Fictions Anthology 2016 and 2018, and the Best Microfictions Anthology 2020 Her work can also be found in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Spelk, Cabinet of Heed, Flashback Fiction, Mslexia, Fictive Dream, The Lonely Crowd, and Prole amongst others. She is winner of the Mslexia Prize (2018), the Reflex Fiction prize (Autumn 2019) and the Dromineer Fiction Prize (2014). In 2017, she won the Bridport Poetry Prize and her poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass was published by Pindrop Press in 2018. She is currently studying for a creative writing PhD at Newcastle University and she has an unpublished flash collection knocking about that was recently short-listed for the International Beverly Prize for Literature. Her flash fiction ‘Flock’ was recently selected for Best Small Fictions, 2020.
@emjayinthedale
Runner Up: If There is No Shelter by Tracey Slaughter
Tracey Slaughter is a poet and fiction writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her latest works are the volume of short stories deleted scenes for lovers (Victoria University Press, 2016) and the poetry collection Conventional Weapons (Victoria University Press, 2019). Her work has received numerous awards including the 2020 Fish Short Story Prize, second place in The Moth Short Story Prize 2018, the Bridport Prize 2014, and two Katherine Mansfield Awards. She lives in Hamilton, and teaches Creative Writing at Waikato University, where she edits the literary journals Mayhem and Poetry New Zealand.
Runner-Up: Sugar Mountain by Erica Plouffe Lazure
Erica Plouffe Lazure is the author of a flash fiction chapbook, Heard Around Town, and a fiction chapbook, Dry Dock. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Carve, Greensboro Review, Meridian, American Short Fiction, The Journal of Micro Literature, The Common’s “Dispatches” series, The Southeast Review, Fiction Southeast, Flash: the International Short-Short Story Magazine (UK), Vestal Review, Wigleaf, Monkeybicycle, National Flash Fiction Day Anthology (UK), Litro (UK), and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA.
2020 Special Commendation Novellas-in-flash
The standard was very high in the 2020 Novella in Flash Award judged by Michael Loveday and he chose five novellas as special commendations, which as well as the three winners, will also be published by Ad Hoc Fiction later this year.You can read comments on all the five novellas in Michaels’ report. They, like the winners provide an amazing range and interpretation of the form. We are very happy that we are going to see them in print to add to our growing collections of novellas-in-flash available from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop. Many congratulations to all.
Elvis In The Backyard by Nicholas Cook (from the USA)
Nicholas Cook’s fiction has appeared in Lost Balloon, Jellyfish Review, Midway Journal, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for Best Small Fictions 2018. He lives in Texas.
When It’s Not Called Making Love by Karen Jones (from the UK)
Karen Jones is a prose writer from Glasgow with a preference for flash and short fiction. She is addicted to writing competitions and is a perennial long/short-lister – Commonwealth Short Story Competition, Bath Flash Fiction, Bath Short Story, To Hull and Back, TSS 400, HISSAC– though she has reached the prize-winning stage with Mslexia, Flash 500, Words With Jam, Ink Tears and Ad Hoc Fiction. Her work is published in numerous ezines, magazines and anthologies. Her story ‘Small Mercies’ was nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize and is included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and the BIFFY50 2019. She is an editor for the BIFFY50 2020.
Stormbred by Eleanor Walsh (from the UK)
Eleanor Walsh has BA from the University of Chichester / Thompson Rivers University (CA), an MA from Bath Spa University, and a PhD from the University of Plymouth, where she researched feminist literature in Nepal. Ellie has had short fiction, poetry, and travel writing published in journals in Canada, the UK and South Asia. She also wrote a play called A Patient Drug which was produced at Royal Holloway University. Her novella-in-flash Birds with Horse Hearts won the 2019 Bath Flash Fiction award. Ellie was also an Associate Editor for the journal Coldnoon Travel Poetics, where she wrote a column on South Asian literature.
Something Lost by Louise Watts (from the UK)
Louise Watts lives in Oxfordshire and works in education. She has published fiction in Ambit Magazine, Flash: An International Journal of Short Short Fiction, Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology and has been shortlisted in the Fish Memoir competition. Her poetry has been published in Raceme, highly commended in the Mslexia Pamphlet competition, shortlisted for The Plough short poem prize, and long-listed in the Poetry Society National Competition. Louise studied English at Cambridge University and has a Diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford University.
The House On The Corner by Alison Woodhouse (from the UK)
Alison Woodhouse is a writer, teacher and a member of the Bath Short Story Award team. She completed an MA with distinction from Bath Spa University in 2019. During the same year she won both the HISSAC short story and flash fiction competition, Hastings Flash, Farnham Flash and NFFD micro. She has also won Biffy50, Limnisa Short Story, Mattermagazine Flash and Ad Hoc Fiction twice and was highly commended in Vernal Equinox Flash, Furious Fiction and Ilkley short story competitions. She has been short and long listed in Scottish Arts Club, Bare Fiction, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Reflex Fiction, TSS, The London Magazine, Retreat West, Mslexia and Words in Jam. Her stories are published in Leicester Writes, Cambridge Short Story Anthology, Reflex Fiction, Ellipsis Vols 3 and 5, NFFD Anthology, Earlyworks and Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, Vol 4.. Many other stories are available online.
Novella-in-Flash 2020 Award Short List
Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award short list and huge thanks to all who entered.