It’s just under five weeks until this round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award ends on June 12th. Writer, editor, manuscript assessor and director of National Flash Fiction Day, New Zealand, Michelle Elvy, who is based in New Zealand but has been sailing the coast of East Africa this year, will judge a fifty-strong long list. A feature of our contest is the quick turnaround and we expect results to be out by the end of June.
We are delighted to welcome renowned flash fiction writers and tutors, Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish who are based in the United States, as our judges for the next two rounds of the Award. Robert will judge the round that begins at the end of June
and ends in mid October, this year. Kathy will judge the following award that is likely to begin at the end of October and finish in February, 2017.
Kathy and Robert’s collaborative book of flash fictions. Rift is reviewed here by Al Kratz who won second prize in the last round of the competition judged by UK based flash fiction writer and poet Tania Hershman.
Do buy their book. It’s wonderful and very instructive. More exciting news about our judges for the final two contests in 2017 coming soon.
In Rift, stories by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, published in 2015 by Unknown Press, lovers of flash fiction have a new Must Read, a new entry to the list of flash fiction classics that show the power and depth possible in stories compressed into a page or two.
Even the one-word, four-letter title conveys more than the sum of its parts. As a noun, rift means a break in something. A crack. A split. A flaw. A breach. A fracture. A cavity. An opening. A serious division in friendly relations.
The book Rift contains four escalating sections: Fault, Tremor, Breach, and Cataclysm. Each section has around eighteen stories that alternate between writers.
The table of contents is the only place Read in Full
Thank you to every one who voted for Ad Hoc Fiction, our free weekly micro challenge in the Saboteur Awards 2016.
We are very happy to announce that we made the longlist, and with over 1700 nominations we think that’s a brilliant result. Particularly since Ad Hoc has only been going for just over a year.
More Ad Hoc Fiction developments are in the pipeline. This week’s news gives us further impetus to keep creating new opportunities for writers.
In case you don’t know Ad Hoc Fiction – it’s our free and easy-to-enter weekly micro competition for pieces of up to 150 words. Longlisted stories are published on the website in an ebook and the winners are chosen by public vote. We’re also open to submissions of illustrations for the winning stories.
Nick Black from the UK who has since won the competition again, was our first Ad Hoc Fiction winner on 22nd April, 2015 with his micro, Positive and Negative. This Wednesday, 20th April, 2016, we’ve published the fifty second winner Telegraph by Sharon Telfer.
Read in Full
We’re delighted that writer, editor and manuscript assessor, Michelle Elvy who we interviewed in January, has agreed to be our judge for this round of Bath Flash Fiction. Michelle reads and selects flash fiction on a daily basis for the online journals Blue Five Notebook and Flash Frontier and has judged many flash fiction competitions in recent years. She also organises New Zealand’s National Flash Fiction Day competition which is now open for entries to New Zealand writers.
Read in Full
The second round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award closed on February 14th, 2016, just over a year after the inaugural contest was launched. Six hundred and fifty entries arrived from all over the world – traditional stories, experimental pieces, all the different forms of flash fiction.
A big thank you to everyone who entered and spread the word on social media and elsewhere. And thank you to our judge, Tania Hershman for creating the shortlist and selecting winners within two weeks.
Our next award is now open, and we’re delighted to have writer and editor Michelle Elvy as our new judge. The closing date is in four months time, June 12th midnight GMT.
Do enter again, whatever style of flash you write. We love reading your stories. As well as the chance of winning a big prize, all entries will be considered for our anthology, due out the end of 2016.
Jude Higgins
Founder Bath Flash Fiction Award
First, to say: choosing the winners was difficult! Going from longlist to shortlist was a matter of what grabbed me on first read, whether it was the story, the freshness of the language, the structure, or something unique and surprising that I’d never seen before. But the next stage is when I got tough, because I was actively looking for reasons not to pick stories. I had to get to my top 5 from 20. This is when a judge gets ruthless. A story has to give something back on a second read – and a third read! Any even slight laziness in language – an overused phrase bordering on cliche, a typo – and that made it far more likely that I would discard that story. Also, if the premise was great, an intriguing idea, but the follow-through and the ending just didn’t do it for me, that landed the story in my No pile.
Read in Full
by Ingrid Jendrzejewski
It’s a small town, so when a call comes through from Amber Groves for Mrs. Philips, you know it can mean only one thing: either her husband or her sister has passed.
“She’s under the dryer,” you say and pop your gum. You think you’ve made your point but end up having to add, “Well, you can come on down and talk to her yourself, or you can wait until I’m finished with her wash and set. We’re in the middle of things here.”
You put the phone down and look over at Mrs. Philips. She’s under the hood dryer reading a magazine, lost in her plastic gown. She’s shaking a little and at first you think she’s crying, but then you see she’s laughing. She has some lipstick on her front teeth.
When her timer dings, you remove the hood and check her hair. The gel has set, so you wheel her to your station and take out the rollers. You run your pick through what’s left of her hair, teasing enough to make some volume, then combing the rest over the top to create the shape she likes. You form her bangs into curls by hand.
Then, you get out the hairspray. Mrs. Philips smiles, squeezes her eyes shut and lifts her chin. “This part always feels like spring rain,” she says as you begin to spray.
You carry on for nearly three minutes; you carry on until you’ve used up the whole bottle. You spray until her hair is as hard as a combat helmet, until that smile is fixed on her face like a shield. Then you give her some tissues. You tell her they’re for her teeth.
Ingrid Jendrzejewski studied creative writing and English literature at the University of Evansville before going on to study physics at the University of Cambridge. Her fiction has appeared in The Conium Review, Inktears, Wyvern Lit, Vine Leaves, Flash Frontier, The Liars’ League NYC, and Williwaw: An Anthology of the Marvellous among others. Last year, she won Gigantic Sequins’ Flash Non-fiction Contest, Rochdale’s Literaure & Ideas Festival Bite-sized Enlightenment Flash Fiction Contest and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Links to her work can be found at www.ingridj.com and she occasionally tweets @LunchOnTuesday.
by Al Kratz
When you encounter a bear in the woods, lock arms with a friend. Make yourselves appear stronger. Transform into a collective self. When they ask how little girls like you survived the bear, shrug your unlocked shoulders and agree: isn’t it a wonder?
Just in case, hang out with stronger people. Maybe that guy from your co-ed softball team with the tattoo on his neck. It might feel counter-intuitive, but don’t confuse the number of fights you will witness with the number of fights you will be in. Just don’t fall in love with the tattoo man.
When you fall in love with the tattoo man, and your mother whispers to everyone that her son-in-law is in jail over a little fireworks thing, tell her, Mom, it wasn’t firecrackers—he’s in prison for making bombs. You’re neither fighting your mother nor fleeing the truth—you’re standing your ground.
When you encounter a carpenter bee in the woods, be still. The male has no stinger. It’s safe to call his bluff. The female only stings when provoked. As she flies around your head, repeat to yourself: she’s not really a bee, she’s not really a bee, she’s not really a bee.
When you lose your wedding ring in the woods, let it be. This is the universe singing for you. Listen to all she has to say. You don’t have to fight or run from the universe. You have so many more choices than that.
When you divorce the tattoo man, testify how so many things aren’t even worth fighting for. It’s not fight or flight if you don’t care who you’re getting away from or where you’re going to. You’ve seen birds. Sometimes flying is just for the sake of flying.
Al Kratz lives with his girlfriend in Indianola, Iowa where he is working on a short story collection. He is a reader for Wyvern Lit and writes fiction reviews for Alternating Current. He won the 2013 British Fantasy Society Flash Fiction contest and has had work in Literary Orphans, Third Point Press, Spelk, Red Savina Review, and others.
Blogs at alkratz.blogspot.com and tweets @silverbackedG.