Thank you to everyone who entered the October 2017 round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. As always we had a mix of those who entered before and plenty of new writers. This time we received even more entries from around the globe – nine hundred and thirty-six from thirty-four different countries.
Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
You kept the reading team busy throughout the four months of the competition and especially at the end. Writers do like being part of the ‘Last Minute Club.’ It was very crowded. Thank you, to Ad Hoc Fiction for keeping everything running smoothly.
In this round, the first three prizes go to writers from the UK, as does the one of the commended writers. Our other commended writer, Al Kratz, who won second prize in February 2016, comes from the USA. And we’ve writers from New Zealand, Australia and Ireland represented in the long and short lists.
Our heartfelt thanks go to judge David Swann, who worked with our exacting schedule and with much enthusiasm, immersed himself in reading the anonymous long list of fifty stories, selecting the short list of twenty and the five top stories in the two weeks in between the close of the competition and results day. We really appreciate his extensive report on how he went about making his choices, and the encouraging comments for all.
It was also hard for us to select the longlist of fifty from the many strong and varied stories we received. It’s a delight to be able to read so much good fiction and to see how flash fiction is becoming more and more popular throughout the world.
It’s been a very exciting year for Bath Flash Fiction Award, with two of the winners from the 2016 competition, ‘Roll and Curl’ by Ingrid Jendrzejewski and ‘White Matter’ by Julianna Holland reaching the final of submissions to Best Small Fictions 2017 from thousands of stories. A story from our weekly Ad Hoc Fiction micro fiction contest, ‘When Zeus Falls to Earth’, by Henry Peplow was also a finalist and ‘One in Twenty Three’, another 2016 winning story by Helen Rye, was translated into Vietnamese. We hope that stories from the three awards this year will have similar continuing success. The anthology of stories from long listed authors from all three rounds will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction by the end of this year. It’s going to be a brilliant read! And out in time for Christmas.
The next award opens on Wednesday Novemeber 1st 2017 and and closes at midnight GMT on Sunday 11th February 2018. Our new judge is Tara L Masih. We’re looking forward to reading some more of your flash fictions and very much appreciate the support you give to the Award.
Jude Higgins
Founder Bath Flash Fiction Award
