Emma Neale won third prize in the October 2018 round of Bath Flash Fiction Award with her densely evocative and powerful flash fiction, The Local Pool. Nuala O’Connor the judge for the October 2018 round said this about Emma’s story.

I loved the elliptical nature of this flash, the reader is told just enough and the opening paragraph is a perfect blend of language and sense-memory. The story perfectly captures the confusion of adolescents dealing with large issues and does it at a remove that adds to the power of the piece.

In this interview Emma tells us more about the background to the story and shows how one event based in a small community in the past can, in the way it is written, give resonance to many larger concerns, also highly relevant today. So many layers in such a short piece. We very much like her advice to other writers about not rushing to a finished flash but rather leaving it for several weeks to ‘marinate’ so those deeper layers can emerge and then crucially, reading it aloud. Emma’s story is now also available to read in print in Things Left And Found By The Side Of The Road our new anthology of flash fictions from the 2018 Awards and you can also read her story. Courtship which was commended in the Bridport Prize in their new anthology. We also look forward to reading Emma’s new poetry collection, To The Occupant, forthcoming in 2019. It’s fascinating to see where a writer works; there are so many interesting objects on Emma’s wall, desk and door. And also we love the picture of her with the family rabbit which she sometimes pops out to see during a writing stint. Read in Full