On Saturday 8th February, at the full moon and on a blustery night, we launched Flash Fiction Three and With One Eye On The Cows, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Vol 4 both published by Ad Hoc Fiction, our small indie press, at the lovely St James Wine Vaults in Bath. We were delighted that eighteen writers were able to come and read their micros from the two anthologies. It was a fast-paced and fun evening. We had a double-book cover cake, wine, nibbles, a raffle and plenty of time for chatting. The room was packed with our readers, their friends and family members and our guests.

In the first half of the evening we heard micros published in Flash Fiction Festival Three written by festival director Jude Higgins, festival team members and volunteers, Judy Darley, Michael Loveday, Grace Palmer and John Wheway, festival participants, Dave Alcock, Andrea Harman, Felicity Cowie and Ruth Foster and festival presenter, Carrie Etter. A whole range of great little stories — many of them prompted by workshops at last year’s festival.

In the second half, eight writers published in With One Eye on The Cows came to read their stories. And many travelled a long way.Several of these writers contributed photographs to our photo gallery when their books arrived. We were lucky to catch Fiona Mackintosh from the USA, on a visit to her family in England and Don Taylor came from Glasgow, Dide Siemmond and Clementine F. Burnley from London, Jeanette Sheppard from the Midlands, Leonie Rowland from Manchester and Santino Prinzi and Diane Simmons who live locally. More wonderful micros — winners, shortlisted and longlisted stories, selected out of our yearly total of over 3000 entries for the three 2019 Bath Flash Fiction Awards, last year judged by Vanessa Gebbie, Christopher Allen and Nancy Stohlman.

Michael Loveday sold raffle tickets with prizes of several books published by Ad Hoc Fiction, to raise funds for reduced cost places at the Flash Fiction Festival and we raised £45, enough to pay for one local writer, who is short of cash, to attend the pre-festival workshop on historical fiction by Nuala 0’Connor taking place from 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm on Friday 19th June, at our festival venue, Trinity College, Bristol. Contact us directly about this if you are a local writer on a low income and would like to take up the place. Nuala is a great teacher, historical novelist, short story and flash fiction writer.

The 14th Bath Flash Fiction Award closes in one week. And as usual we are looking forward to offering publication in our year-end anthology to the fifty longlisted writers in this round. The Festival is open for bookings and two-thirds of the places have now gone. We’d love to see you there!