Ad Hoc Fiction
Three Years Old this April
Come to Our Ad Hoc Birthday Event!

We’re having a birthday evening of readings 4th May, 7.30-9.30 pm at St James Wine Vaults, Bath… free entry, free wine and free cake. About nine of our winners, including three of our mulit-winners, are reading their fictions. Do come and support them. More details about this on our events page.

If you don’t already know about Ad Hoc Fiction, our free to enter weekly micro contest, here’s what you do:

  • Write an up to 150 word micro including a weekly prompt word.
  • You can write your piece straight on to the website, which means that anyone without a computer but does own a smart phone, in any country around the world, can enter.
  • Winners are selected by a public vote. Readers choose their favourite story(ies) by pressing a button on an easy to use eBook of longlisted stories.
  • The winners get a free entry to Bath Flash Fiction Award.

Some Ad Hoc Fiction Facts

We have published 138 winners from countries including UK, US, Ireland, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Austria and Switzerland.

We have published 139 eBook issues, that’s around 9000 individual fictions longlisted from over 33000 entries.

One winner, Sharon Telfer from the UK, went on to win the £1000 first prize at Bath Flash Fiction Award with her free entry.

Ad Hoc Winners, Javier Gomez, Dan Coxon, Nick Black and Christina Dalcher who used their free entries, have been longlisted or shortlisted in rounds of Bath Flash Fiction Award and subsequently been published in our anthologies.

We nominate three Ad Hoc Fiction winners a year for the prestigious Best Small Fictions anthology. Writer Henry Peplow’s story ‘When Zeus Falls to Earth’ was a finalist for Best Small Fictions 2017 out of over 1000 worldwide submissions from magazines and publishers.

Christina Dalcher, Alva Holland, Fiona J Mackintosh, and Sharon Telfer have also had their winning Ad Hoc Fiction stories published in the anthology Flash, I love You, Paper Swans Press, 2017.

Multiple winners include:

Artist and writer kerry rawlinson has beautifully illustrated twelve Ad Hoc Fiction winners, including Henry Peplow’s story ‘When Zeus Falls to Earth’, the Best Small Fictions finalist.

Some writers like Sue Borgensen from Canada have entered more than 100 times and Sue has had a scarf made printed with all her stories. Sue has also won the competition once and has read many of them to an audience in a reading series in her home town.

Ad Hoc Fiction has twice been longlisted as Best Wildcard in the prestigious Saboteur Awards.

Ad Hoc Fiction has twice collaborated with the quality magazine, Project Calm. In November 2016 three winners were published in the magazine which is sold in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. This April three more winners will be published, with stories prompted by the word ‘spring.’

Sophie van Llewyn whose superb novella-in-flash, Bottled Goods is forthcoming from Fairlight Books in August 2018, was inspired to write flash fiction from entering Ad Hoc Fiction a couple of years ago.

Ad Hoc Fiction is now also a small press and book shop, publishing all our Bath Flash Fiction anthologies. There are also two individual collections forthcoming, Alligators in the Night by Meg Pokrass in 2018, and Finding a Way by Diane Simmons in early 2019.

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