Tag Archives: Flash fiction

Judge’s report, 18th Award, by K.M. Elkes

General Comments
Judging a story competition with a high standard of writing is a whole, twist-filled narrative in itself. There are beautiful moments of discovery, difficult decisions, inner wranglings, a love story or two, sadness over loss, and the inevitable questions, mysteries, and ambiguities.

Working your way from longlist to shortlist, you encounter risky, raw stories that promise to leave you changed; love-at-first-sight stories full of confident verve; ones that have an allure through their use of language; quietly persuasive stories, confident in their low-key power; there are stories to admire for their elegance and beauty, and ones that raise a smile with their quirky charm.

After a lot of deliberation, the narrative gathers pace and the climax nears when there are just 10 stories left. You sit with them. Take them on a walk. Gaze at them in silence. Read their words out loud, over and over. You study their deployment of craft – tone and voice, use of narrative tools, the way thematic ideas are conveyed, the pace and flow of the narrative, how well the ending has been earned. You find yourself, in cheesy parlance, asking: ‘is this story the best story it can be?’

Choosing the final group of winning and commended stories is when the tension of the judging narrative reaches its final, feverish pitch. The plot now becomes more complex, stories slide in and out of contention, some disappear then reappear stronger than before, some fade, some remain strong. The pervading tone of this denoument is tough love, and no little admiration, as final decisions are made.

And so, many congratulations to everyone who made it to right to the end of this particular story. Your work deserves it, after the difficult journey it has been on. Congratulations too, to those who missed out on final places – it’s often a case of fine margins. And if you were shortlisted or longlisted, take much strength from that and go again.

Finally, thank you to the whole Bath Flash Fiction Award team for their hard work and dedication and to Jude Higgins for trusting me to be the judge for this incarnation of the Award. Read in Full

share by email

Sara Hills talks about her new collection, The Evolution of Birds

    We’re delighted to share an interview below with hugely-talented writer Sara Hills, whose debut flash fiction collection The Evolution of Birds is now available to buy on pre-order at a 25% discount from Ad Hoc Fiction until publication day on 9th July. Jude Higgins is hosting a Zoom launch for Sara’s new book on Saturday July 17th from 7.30 pm – 9.00 pm. Sara will be reading stories from the book and talking more about it. And three of the writers who have given her quotes for the back cover, Christopher Allen, Amy Barnes and Diane Simmons will also be reading a short piece of their own work. Do come to give this wonderful new collection a good send off into the world. Email jude (at) adhocfiction (dot) com for a Zoom link to the event.

Read in Full

share by email

Interview with Fiona Perry, 15th Award first prize winner

Fiona Perry is our 15th first prize winner in our three times a year Award, which has been running since 2016. Here she tells us how her winning story emerged from a ‘Covid’ dream about her father and a memory of going fishing with him. The painting reproduced here by Nod Ghosh, writer and artist, who is also the judge for our 16th Bath Flash Award, which ends in mid October, is called ‘The Sock’ and we agree with Fiona that it is very evocative of the sock of mussels alluded to in ‘Sea Change Fiona gives the tip to read lots of flash in order to get into the swing of writing it. We agree. There’s so much amazing stuff out there in anthologies, online and collections. Flash is evolving all the time. And we are very happy that ‘Sea Change’ will be published in our fifth year-end anthology in November this year, with many other great pieces from our 2020 Awards.

Interview

  • Can you tell us how your wonderful story ‘Sea Change’ came into being?
    Fragments of the story originated a Covid dream. My Dad died almost two years ago, I woke up with images of him visiting me at home. In the dream, he was in his prime and happy, we cooked mussels together. He had a friend with a boat and in the summer we would be given crab claws which we would boil and bash open with a hammer on the doorstep to eat with buttered new potatoes grown in our garden. We also loved the holiday oysters we would eat in Carlingford. Fishermen sold on them shucked on the roadside. You could park up in layby and wolf them down with Tobasco sauce! I think those things must have been swimming around in my head before I went to sleep.

    Before I structured the story, I researched mussels farming briefly, it was a bit of a gift because the language itself is so evocative and the process of mussel farming sounded symbolic of fatherhood (and transformation) to me so I wrote the story with that in mind. I’m also fascinated by how things and locations appear and disappear in dreams- a bit like a weirdly edited film- but somehow we accept that weirdness in dreams, we are rarely surprised. That’s how it came to be. It was interesting that Mary-Jane alluded to Gabriel García Márquez in her report. I re-read 100 Years of Solitude in lockdown so I guess that influence seeped into the story somehow too.

Read in Full

share by email

June 2018 Judge’s Report
David Gaffney

First of all, I’d like to say a big thank you to Jude and her team for asking me to be the judge of this round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award. I judge a lot of flash fiction competitions, and I used to write a lot of flash fiction too (not so much now as I’m concentrating on novels, graphic novels and longer stories). It was a pleasure to read all of the 50 stories that made the long list and as ever it was a fascinating dip into the psyche of creative writers at this point in time. Some of the titles were tempting enough on their own; Fat Girls Have Fine Nails. Elephants In Flip Flops. Valentines Day At The Walrus Colony. Tupperware Genie. What on earth could these stories be about? I was drawn in immediately. On a sentence by sentence basis, there were lots of examples of great writing here by great writers. Yet, often these were the one that didn’t make it. The ones that did make the top twenty, and ultimately the top five, were the ones that allowed the story and the ideas to shine through above everything else.
Read in Full

share by email