This was our tenth award and we thank everyone who entered. Nine hundred and thirty four fictions from thirty-two different countries:
Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
We love running this contest. It is the most rewarding experience to think so many people around the world are interested in writing flash fiction. It was our intention when we founded the Award, to increase knowledge of the form and get people to read and write it, and this certainly seems to have happened. The dedicated reading team, like our founder, Jude Higgins, are all flash-fictions addicts and throughout the life of each award we marvel at the huge variety of flash fictions we read among the entries; the inventive structures, moving themes,the wonderful use of language. It is a real treat, and a great learning experience too.
The last few weeks of the competition are always very busy and to add to the fun, for the second time, we offered a Last Minute Club Badge to the intrepid group of Clubbers who entered on the last day. (I think badges will be a feature). There were a lot of them. And yes, some writers do leave it until one minute before midnight, GMT. Our entry system is quick to do, so a minute is just about long enough to squeeze an entry in. Thank you to John at Ad Hoc Fiction who is on hand to sort out any problems fast. He keeps everything running smoothly.
This round, the first prize winner is a veteran Last Minute Clubber, Fiona J Mackintosh, a British/American writer living in Washington DC. Our congratulations to her and the other winners, Zahid Gamieldien from Australia and Emma Neale from New Zealand and the commended writers Rosie Garland from the UK and Simon Cowdroy from Australia. All marvellous stories which you can now read on the winners’ page. Big thanks to Nuala 0’Connor who judged this round and worked to our tight deadline schedules and wrote insightful comments on individual stories and the long list. She told us she had a rare old time reading them all.
You can soon read all the winners from the 2018 Flash Fiction Awards in the new anthology together with all the short listed and long listed writers who accepted the offer to be published in the book. About 135 short short fictions. Ad Hoc Fiction is now busy compiling the anthology. It’s going to be a great read and will be out in early December, just ready for Christmas and available from bookshop.adhocfiction.com
