Early Birds

We know all you writers love deadlines so we have given you two for this round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. Our Early Bird offer ends this Sunday, 13th December at midnight GMT. If you have some flashes ready to be launched into the world or want to write your last best flash fiction efforts for 2015 this weekend, enter them now and save some money. One entry for £7.50 and 2 for £12.00. Our three for £18 deal continues until we close on February 14th – yes, that’s only nine weeks and a few days left until we close.

It’s always better to send in more than one story to a contest if you can. Why? Because there’s the preference factor – some judges will like one better than the other. And that one may be your least favourite.

Our finalist judge, Tania Hershman, is reading a longer shortlist of fifty stories. So give yourself a good chance to make that list. And of course, you have the option of winning a free entry to the main contest by entering our weekly mini contest, Ad Hoc Fiction.

Interview with Damyanti Biswas
Bath Flash Commended

Damyanti Biswas

Our second commended writer, Damayanti Biswas, tells us how a blog challenge propelled her into writing flash fiction and owning Betta fish inspired her story for the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction award.

Interview with Sarah Henry
Bath Flash Commended

Sarah-Henry

It is always interesting to find out what prompts a piece of fiction. In this short Q and A, Sarah Henry tells us more about this and her particular interest in writing flash fiction. Sailboats, her inaugural award commended piece, can be read here.

Interview with Mark Ralph-Bowman
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Mark Ralph-Bowman

The winners in our inaugural award have written very different styles of flash fiction. Mark Ralph-Bowman’s piece, which you can read here, is all about dialogue. Mark, primarily a playwright and novelist, wanted to try a new form. More about this below in our short Q and A.

Interview with Eileen Merriman
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Eilleen Merriman

Eileen Merriman took second prize in our inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can read her winning piece here. Eileen’s work came to Bath Flash by winning free entry via Ad Hoc Fiction, available to read here. In this interview, Eileen shares some of her thoughts regarding her work.

Interview with William Davidson
Bath Flash Prize Winner

William Davidson

William Davidson took first prize in our inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can read his winning piece here. Now the dust has settled and our second award is well under way, we have been able to grab William for a few thoughts regarding his work.

photography by Lou Abercrombie

Interview with our Judge
Tania Hershman

You’ve judged many other flash fiction and short story contests in the UK and elsewhere and have also selected flash fictions for journals. There’s a wide variety of styles in the flash fiction genre, but can you tell us what stood out for you in the winning entries and submissions?

Things that stand out for me – and I am only one reader, with my own tastes and preferences – are a love for language, a delight in what words can do, especially in such a short space. Also, a sense that the story was made for the length it is, that it is not a longer story compressed, that it is wonderful not despite but because of its brevity. As for styles, I am open to anything at all, I love being made to laugh and cry, but the main thing is: move me, surprise me, delight me. This can be done without fireworks, without car chases, without much action at all. Or: with all these things! I am looking for stories that sing, that I can hear in my head as I read and for hours, days afterwards. But sing in your own way, not in a way to please anyone else. Send us your best.

Tania Hershman
Our New Award Judge

Tania Hershman is the author of two short story collections: My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions (Tangent Books, 2012), and The White Road and Other Stories (Salt, 2008) and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, Dec 2014). Her début poetry chapbook is forthcoming in February 2016. Tania’s short stories and poetry have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is curator of ShortStops (www.shortstops.info), celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Bristol University, and is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

www.taniahershman.com

Welcome to Our New Award

First, we’d like to welcome our new judge, Tania Hershman. Regular contributors will notice that we’ve made a few other changes. In brief, here they are, and why we’ve made them.

We now have a closing date.
Many of you told us that you prefer to have a time scale to plan out your competition submissions through out the year, so we’ve introduced closing dates. Our intention is to keep the flash rolling by running three awards per year, each Award lasting four months. To encourage early submission to each Award – and hopefully avoid a last-minute closing date rush – submission fees are reduced for the first two months of each Award.

On Closing Our Inaugural Award

BathFlash The inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award was launched in February 2015 and we’re delighted that Annemarie Neary agreed to be our first judge. She’s been very positive all the way through the contest, which has been a wonderful support – we didn’t know how long it would take to achieve the target of 1000 entries. In the end it’s been eight months from start to finish, roughly the same time as some other awards with known deadlines.

Running the Award without a deadline meant that we avoided the usual flood of entries that often arrive at the end of contests with a fixed-end date. We’ve been able to read the stories anonymously in batches as they arrived and select for a provisional long and short list as we went along. As a result, we’ve managed to announce the winners within a week of closure. Annemarie again helped with this. After receiving the shortlist, she spent a concentrated few days reading and rereading the stories to come up with three great winning flash fictions, two commended pieces and a very interesting and detailed report.