Congratulations to all the authors who made the short list.
October 2018 Long List
Congratulations to all the authors who made the long list, and huge thanks to all who entered and continue to support our Award.
Draft your flash novella during FlashNano
In 2012, writer and writing tutor Nancy Stohlman conceived the idea to run a series of daily prompts during November for those who wanted write a flash fiction a day instead of writing a novel during November for NaNoWriMo. Six years on, and a huge number of writers throughout the world take up her challenge each November. Read more about how she started this in my interview with her from last year. Want to write a novella-in-flash for our third Novella-in-flash Award? We think with the motivating prompts Nancy supplies, November is an ideal month to create a flash fiction novella draft. Thirty stories and you’ll have a complete draft manuscript at the end of the month. Don’t know where to begin? The prompts themselves may give you initial ideas, and they can also push forward a vague idea you already have and take it in different directions. You can also sign up to a Face Book group to receive daily prompts from Meg Pokrass throughout the month. Read in Full
Deadline Fever
At Bath Flash Fiction, we love the buzz around the end of the Award on social media. We’ve never quite worked out the psychology around writers and deadlines, so if someone wants to try an explanation, let us know. For our Awards, the pattern is always the same, 80% of entries come in the last few weeks even though discounted entries are available in the Early Bird deals which end half way through the contest. Some people buy their Early Bird entries and submit much later but not that many. A 
very large number of writers enter on the final day. Those writers are members of the Last Minute Club. Last time we introduced a badge for them, pictured here. And there will be another one for avid collectors on Sunday 14th October, which is the last day for this award. K M Elkes, the winner of the June round told us he is an up-to the-wire kind of guy. He said he entered not long before midnight on the final day. Just the one story. Read in Full
Nominations 2018-2019
We like to nominate winners’ stories from the Bath Flash Fiction Awards and the Ad Hoc Fiction winners for yearly anthologies and awards. Authors nominated by us have done very well. This year,’Tying the Boats’ by Amanda O’Callaghan, the first prize winner,from the June 2017 Award selected by judge Meg Pokrass was included in Best Small Fictions 2018 and The Hand That Weilds The Priest by first prize winner, Emily Devane, from the February 2017 Award, judged by Kathy Fish, was included in the long list out of thousands of submissions. ‘Roll and Curl‘, by Ingrid Jendrzejewski first prize winner in the February 2016 round judged by Tania Hershman was longlisted for Best Small Fictions 2017 out of a similar number of submissions, as was ‘White Matter’ by Julianna Holland, which won third prize in the October 2016 round judged 
by Robert Vaughan. Henry Peplow’s micro ‘Zeus Falls to Earth’, winner of Ad Hoc Fiction in June 2016 was also included in the Best Small Fictions 2017 longlist. Finally, we nominated Charmaine Wilkerson’s novella-in-flash How to Make A Window Snake for the novella category in the Saboteur Awards 2018, and it won the Award.
This year, two new opportunities to nominate stories have arisen. ‘The Best Microfiction 2019 anthology co-edited by Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke for stories 400 words or fewer published in 2018 and the Best 50 Flash Fictions from Britain and Ireland 2018-2019 organised by TSS. We’re also looking forward to nominating our winning authors again for Best Small Fictions 2019. See which stories we’ve currently nominated below. Read in Full
Writers and Their Dogs
At Bath Flash Fiction, a few winners have mentioned their dogs in interviews with me after their wins. So as we near the end of the October 2018 round of Bath Flash Fiction Award, judged by Nuala 0’Connor, we’re giving the winners’ dogs a spotlight. Dogs are inspirational and we know several other dog-loving flash fiction writers, whose dogs are essential to their writing lives.
Molia Dumbleton’s lovely dog, Huckle is pictured here with Molia. Molia won third prize in the February 2018 round of Bath Flash Fiction Award judge by Tara L. Masih, with her flash ‘Why Shit is Still Like This Around Here and Probably Always Will Be‘ In my interview with her, I asked her if her dog was her muse. She said. “I think my only muse might be a deadline. Ha! But sadly, kind of true. I go for very, very long walks with my dog and those are pretty essential, just for energizing and de-cluttering the head.” Read in Full
Ad Hoc Fiction at the Free Verse Book Fair
Jude Higgins and Meg Pokrass will both be at the Poetry Society’s Free Verse the Poetry Book and Magazine Fair, organised by The Poetry Society, on 
Saturday 22nd September in Senate House, London 11.00 am – 4.00 pm Jude will be taking along all the books published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Meg will be there to sign her new collection Alligators at Night published in July this year. Come along and say hello. We’ve special book deals on all the anthologies listed below: Read in Full
Teaching Alligators at Night – notes by Frankie McMillan
Frankie McMillan introduces flash fiction to her students at the Hagley Writers’ Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand by studying works of great writers of short-short fiction. Here she describes how she recently taught flash fiction using Meg Pokrass’s marvellous new collection Alligators at Night, published in July 2018 by Ad Hoc Fiction and available from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop. We thrilled that Frankie is widening the international line up and coming over from New Zealand to teach and read at the next Flash Fiction Festival, taking place at Trinity College, in Bristol, from 28th-30th June 2019.
Frankie says: Read in Full
Evening of Flash Readings
With members of Flash Fiction Festivals UK organising team and helpers.
Jude Higgins, Diane Simmons, Santino Prinzi, Michael Loveday, Karen Jones, KM Elkes, Matt Thorpe Coles and John Wheway.
Our readers are widely published writers and experienced performers of flash fiction. Learn more about them at on the festival website and at johnwheway.com. Each writer will have a slot of about 8 mins. A fun and pacy evening with many different styles of short short fiction to inspire you.
Sat. 6th October
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar, free snacks
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James St
Bath
BA1 2TW
| Cost £5 |
for your name put on the door.
Interview with Conor Haughton, June 2018 Second Prize Winner
In this fascinating and wide-ranging interview with scientist and writer, Conor Haughton, who won second prize in the June round, judged by David Gaffney with his story ‘The Undertakers’ Jolly’ you can learn a couple of words of Esperanto. Inspiration for flash fiction can arrive at any time and for Conor it was at an Esperanto conference, by the sea in Aberystwyth, when he was a little drunk. I suggest, as well as reading his interview, you watch the short and entertaining video, of him at Ignite Bristol telling the more-or-less true story, complete with cartoon illustrations, of the time he was arrested in London. That event in Bristol was where he was inspired to begin writing and only four years ago. We love his idea of a science and literature spoken-word event and if Conor ever does set one up, a Bath Flash contingent would be there. As he lectures close-by in Bristol University, I’d also love to sneak in to one of the lectures and grasp a little more about mathematical principles via his story telling to explain how theorems work. His longer writing project to write a story, not about a computer programmer but about programming itself sounds very interesting. Especially as it needs to contain some computer code and ways of explaining it. Finally, I’ve now discovered that possibly one of the vegetables in the picture Conor supplied to go with his bio, is a horse radish. Read in Full