Thank you to everyone who entered our 18th International Flash Fiction Award, the earlybirds, those in the middle period and the last minute writers. We received 1268 entries from 44 different countries:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia
Flash Fiction writing continues to astonish and delight and we received very many strong and inventive stories. As ever, we can sincerely say it was hard to chose the final longlist of fifty from such a fabulous selection of fiction. We looking forward to reading the stories from those who have accepted publication in our sixth anthology which will be published in paperback and ebook formats by Ad Hoc Fiction at the end of this year. All published receive a free paperback copy of the book.
Thank you very much to our judge, K M Elkes, for working hard in a short time window to select the twenty short-listed stories, the winners and commended pieces. And a further thanks for his very interesting report and insightful comments on all five flashfictions. This time the winners and commended writers came from the UK, the US and Australia. You can read more about them and their brilliant stories on our winners’ pages.Bios will be up soon.
The Last Minute Club has become a fun feature of the final stages of our our competition. Devised as a recognition of the phenomenon of so many writers entering on the final day, we’ve now produced ten badges since June, 2018, which was when K M Elkes won the first prize!
The next award is judged by writer and editor Sharon Telfer, who has won first prize in Bath Flash Fiction on two occasions. It’s open July 1st and will close on Sunday, 9th October. We look forward to reading more wonderful stories from around the world.
Jude Higgins, June, 2021.
