Thank you so much to Ingrid Jendzrejewski for judging this Award. Ingrid stepped in at a late stage when John Brantingham was not able to judge for this round. We appreciate the care Ingrid has taken in writing the report below and for her very interesting and insightful comments
Report
It has been an enormous privilege to spend time with the entire Bath Flash Fiction longlist. Judges often note how difficult the process is—how, on another day, the results might be quite different. I always say it, and I always mean it, but this time, I mean it in spades. The process of whittling the longlist to a shortlist, and then finally to the winners, felt like a literary Game of Thrones.
First off, I found it so hard to narrow down the shortlist that I requested an extra slot. Eventually, I found myself with a list of about ten (ten!) pieces that I truly agonized over—half the shortlist! I carried the flash around with me for two weeks, constantly shuffling the order, looking for the ones that lingered in my mind most vividly. In the end, I had to go with my gut, honouring those pieces that took risks, rendered unusual relationships, landed with resonance and punch, and/or subverted expectations with tightness and grace.
Would someone else have made a different selection? Absolutely. Would I have made a different selection on a different day, or at a different moment in time? Almost undoubtedly. It is a beautiful dilemma to have, and it speaks to the quality of the entries and the range of themes, styles and forms represented here. And, although I was sad to lose a few early favourites from the mix, it gave me the opportunity to spend more time with the remaining shortlist—time to let each piece marinate and unfurl.
As much as I admire so much about the shortlisted pieces—and would love to celebrate them all—my task was to choose the prize-winners. In the end, I found myself drawn to work that took risks: stories that played with form or expectation, and stories that held characters and relationships with unusual clarity, generosity, and complexity. Here is my selection….
1st Place: They announce a two-minute silence for the fallen in Morrisons
This piece is an extraordinary feat of attention, consisting of a single sentence that behaves like thought itself, moving between the public script of remembrance and a private flood of parenting, worry, pride, disapproval, tenderness, estrangement, grief…all of it and more in a single breathless paragraph. The everyday setting of the supermarket during a moment of silence juxtaposed with the focus on snack eggs at the deli counter provides a brilliant, slightly absurd anchor. I love how the piece keeps snagging on odd, comic, deeply human details that bring the reader in super close so that when details about the son gently drop, they land all the more of a punch. I so admire how this piece uses the mundane to illustrate the profound, and how it is both culturally specific yet universally heartbreaking.
2nd Place: More
This deceptively simple piece takes on a relationship dynamic that we rarely see in stories about illness, care, love, romance, friendship, etc., and it leans into the ambiguity and complication with wonderfully effective, perfectly understated pathos and humanity. The prose is laden with sensory details that provide intimacy and immediacy. At its core, ‘More’ is a meditation on grief, love, care, and the human desire—or perhaps need—for support, acknowledgment, and human contact from multiple angles. The writing is simple, straightforward, and quietly luminous: everything that matters thrums just under the surface like a heartbeat.
3rd Place: the rabbit hole i fall down at 3.07am
This brave exploration of the what ifs haunting a relationship navigates the complex history between the two main characters with great tenderness. I love how it juxtaposes the raw with the imagined and how the idea of Charlotte grows and evolves throughout the piece. (By the end, it is no surprise that she is the only character given a name!) The piece deftly mixes big issues with precise, specific, micro-observation and I love its final shift into magical realism-adjacent territory.
Highly Commended
Hestia / Dionysus
This quiet piece grew on me more and more every time I read it. The framing and that gorgeous last line lifts it out of well-trodden domestic-disharmony territory and into something mythic and archetypal. There is a weary, unavoidable truth in the italicised lines which perfectly capture the particular stasis of this couple’s relationship with luscious economy.
Low altitude
This is a superb portrait of grief and anxiety dressed in everyday logistics—car parks, snack requests, a not-so-trained puppy, etc. The central moment of misidentification is captured with accuracy and aplomb. I love the way the extended metaphor keeps deepening as ordinary parenting turns into a kind of turbulence management. The voice is wry and frank, but the ache is unmistakable, resulting in a flash that is darkly funny, painfully recognisable, and profoundly moving.
Other shortlisted pieces
I would also like to spend a moment celebrating a few of the pieces that were whisker-close to making the final list.
Ten Things they Never Told you About Possum
This is a dazzling example of the list-form doing emotional heavy lifting: each item widens the world whilst tightening our understanding of it. It is funny, shocking, warm, and finally fiercely intimate—a story that makes the reader work to keep up and rewards the effort tenfold. I love how this flash allows the possum to become many things at once—an animal, a catalyst, a symbol, a jagged little hinge between the ordinary and the unbearable. The images have stayed with me and the tenderness of the ending is deeply, deeply affirming.
When we expect nothing
There is a haunting, claustrophobic quality to this piece that I found completely immersive. The first-person plural creates an immediate intimacy and unease, and the repeated ‘We’re okay’ heartbeat becomes a spell, a shield, a crack in the door. I love how what seems on the surface like it should be a comforting repetition becomes a sounding of a metaphorical alarm bell. The rhythm and shape of the piece add to the atmosphere, contributing to the quiet, harrowing conclusion, and the ending image is devastating in its restraint: rich, suffocating, and perfectly placed.
I also loved the propulsive, electric energy in ‘Club Rats/Club Birds’ (and those last three paragraphs which take the piece into new territory oh-so-effectively), the landings and portraits of sisterhood in ‘My Sister’s Bunker’ and ‘A Hollow Place’, the lyricism of ‘The Unreturning’, and the well-rendered extended metaphor in ‘My Mother is a Kintsugi Vase at the end of the year parent-teacher night’.
Thank you to all the writers who submitted. It was an honour to read your work, and I am sure many of these stories will stay with me for a long time. Finally, huge congratulations again to all the shortlisted authors. I look forward to revisiting all these pieces in the next Bath Flash Fiction anthology soon.
Ingrid Jendrzejewski, February 2026
Today, April 12th, is the final day for early bird entries for our 33rd Award. Thank you to everyone who has already entered or bought an entry ready for the deadline. 
On Easter Monday I was shaken and very sad to hear that John Brantingham had suddenly died.
Writer, Karen Jones, one of our team members at the festival reminded us that John also helped out with festival tasks, like putting books in tote bags. Here’s a picture of him relaxing at the festival bar with Karen and writer Robert Barratt.
In subsequent years, John returned to run workshops about nature writing in flash. 
John’s many other published works are listed on his website. His novella Inland Empire Afternoon was a runner up in our 2019 Bath Novella in Flash Award, selected by judge Michael Loveday and published by Ad Hoc Fiction in early 2020. The novella tells what is happening to over 40 different people on the afternoon when an earthquake struck in an area of California called The Inland Empire. This book, like all John’s writing, shows his great humanity. You can read what Michael says it about it on the 
In 2023 and 2024 John was the judge of the Bath Novella in Flash Award. The photo here shows him in the bookshop with UK writer, Anna Wang, a runner up in 2023 for her novella Prodigal. After awarding first prize to Sarah Freligh’s novella, Hereafter, there was a special moment when John introduced her at its 2024 festival launch. 
As I said 
Rachel Curzon is based in North Yorkshire. Her poetry pamphlet is published under the Faber New Poets scheme, and work has appeared in The London Magazine, Poetry Review, The Rialto, and elsewhere. She was a New Northern Poet for 2025.
Fiona Lynch is an Australian writer who lives by the bay. Fiona won the Fractured Lit Winter Flash Challenge (2023) and her flash has been published in The Waxed Lemon, Reflex Press, and shortlisted in the Bridport Prize and Bath Flash Fiction Prize (2024). Her poetry has appeared in Australian Book Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Heroines Vol 3, Aesthetica Award and Fish Prize anthologies. Fiona was a prize winner in the ACU and Grieve Poetry Awards. She has written television comedy and performed as a stand-up comic at iconically seedy venues in Melbourne. Fiona is working on her first hybrid collection.