A big thank you to everyone who entered our 16th Award judged by Nod Ghosh from New Zealand. Once more we received a huge number of entries, 1457 from 37 different countries listed here:
Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Portugal, Romania, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
Again, we very much appreciated writers for continuing to support our Award and send in stories during this very difficult time. And we hope the competition as a whole is a positive experience for all. We try to make it a fun event by offering the ‘Last Minute Badge’ for those who enter on the very last day and having the quick turn around. But thank you also to the early birds and those who enter before the final rush. It’s all very exciting and the BFFA team love the experience too as well as loving flash fiction in all its variety. We read plenty of hugely inventive and moving stories and we had many close calls for the longlist of fifty. It was lovely to see from the activity on social media when the longlists were announced, that as well as recognisable names, there were a large number of writers who we hadn’t heard of who had never been listed before, as well others who had entered many times.
Thank you also to the BFFA reading team, who after a lot of practice now, pace themselves so well to work to our fast schedule. And thank you to Nod Ghosh also for working to the tight schedule and for spending an intense time, reading and selecting the short list of twenty from the fifty on the longlist and for her excellent and perceptive comments on the lists and on the five winners. You can read these in her judges report. The fabulous stories from our winners are also posted on the winners’ page. First prize to Johanna Robinson from the UK for ‘Blessings, 1849’; second prize to Tara Isabel Zambrano from the US for ‘Mother, Before’; third prize Jan Kaneen from the UK for ‘White Dwarf’; commended, Alison Powell from the UK for ‘Our Fathers, who we have strewn like seaweed behind us’ and commended, Jim Toal from the UK with ‘The reallocation of a child’s atoms.‘ Many congratulations to all!
Our fifth BFFA anthology will be published by our short-short press, Ad Hoc Fiction before the end of this year and many of the fifty longlisted in each of the three awards this year have accepted publication. It’s going to be a fantastic read. And we hope to have an online launch of this anthology early in the New Year when contributors have received their copies.
Our 17th Award. open tomorrow, 1st November, is judged by Charmaine Wilkerson, from Italy.
Many good wishes to all writers. We hope you would like to enter again and look forward to reading your stories, the early-bird entrants, those in the middle and those entering the Last Minute Club on the final day of the next round, February 7th 2021.
Jude Higgins
BFFA founder
October 31st 2020
