Thank you to all those from around the world who entered our February 2022 award, the 20th one we have organised since 2015. There were 1222 entries this time, stories entered by writers in 40 different countries listed below. We very much appreciate your support for our thrice-yearly awards and as always, there were very many exceptional and inventive pieces to read. We love flash fiction and it is a joy to read what writers come up with.

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

We continued the fun of the virtual Last Minute Club badge, and many writers obliged by entering throughout the last day of the competition and right up to midnight to receive one. We know if some of these late entries don’t make our final lists, they go on to be successful in other places. So we like to provide the impetus for people to write. We may have some real-life badges for sale at the in person flash fiction festival taking place the weekend of July 8th-10th in Bristol!
There was a guessing game for the colour of this badge with one of our anthologies the prize the day before the final day of the award. The badge is supposed to be beige, and we decided that peach and terracotta were the nearest guesses. So two people received an anthology this time.

Our huge congratulations to the winners.: Louise Mangos from Switzerland has won first prize; Iona Rule from the UK, second prize; Debra A Daniel from the US third prize; Kathryn Aldridge Morris from the UK and Sam Payne from the UK were both highly commended. You can read their wonderful stories on the winners page and they will be published, along with everyone on the longlist who has accepted publication, in our year end anthology which will contain flash fictions from all the 2022 awards and will be posted free to contributors.

Thanks very much to Karen Jones, our 20th Award judge for her work in reading the longlist, selecting the twenty on the short list and then the winners, and writing a great report and comments on the process and on the winning pieces. We have a tight turnaround for the Award and very much appreciate her for doing all this a short time period. You can read her excellent report here.

We also thank our initial readers for their dedicated work in reading the stories as they came in and for the intensive final burst of work.

The next award, this time judged by writer, editor and teacher from the US, Tommy Dean, opens tomorrow, March 1st and ends in early June.
We hope that you will enter again, and we look forward to more fantastic flash fictions to read.