Back in April, we posted the news that there would be a 2025 Bath Novella in flash Award, this year judged by Jude Higgins, BFFA founder, who has read hundreds of NIF competition entries since 2017 when the inaugural award was launched, while preparing the longlist for the judges. This year, Jude is also selecting a short list and the winners. Read the Q & A with her about it here The Award is open now (20th August) and is closing 31st October, (a month later than we said back in April). Results will still be out in January, 2025 and the winners published by Ad Hoc Fiction, in late Spring. You still have time to write a short novella perhaps? Sarah Freligh’s novella was inspired by writing for the August micro-a-day challenge, currently on the go this year too. And you can read about how she went about it in this interview
In more recent news about our previous winners, we were delighted to hear that Jan Kaneen’s 2023 Bath Flash first winning prize novella-in-flash, The Learning Curve available from Ad Hoc Fiction and Amazon, was shortlisted in the international Rubery Award. Many congratulations to Jan.
Here is what the judges said about it:
A Learning Curve by Jan Kaneen
This is a compelling novella-in-flash depicting the life of a woman from university to widowhood. Kaneen uses quantum physics both as a theme and a structuring device, creating an interesting interpretive frame for the protagonist’s experience, and a linking motif for her short, fragmentary chapters. The latter work as discrete tales, and as a reader, you have to tease out the story in the same way that a person with Post Partum depression might have to tease out their lives. But it builds into a story that has both focus and momentum. The combination of verb tenses and points of view is effective, given the novella form. The book deals with life’s emotional challenges in prose that is consistently sharp, presenting moments of joy and sadness: the delights of childbirth to the trauma of postnatal depression; the bliss of romance to the despair of bereavement. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the book is riveting right up till the end. It’s a stunning example of a novella-in-flash that demonstrates the potential force and flexibility of this increasingly popular form.
This is the third time that Novellas in Flash from our Award have been listed in the Rubery Award.
Last year, David Swann’s novella in flash Season of Bright Sorrow, available from Ad Hoc Fiction and Amazon won the short fiction category and also Book of the Year at the Rubery AWard.
and in 2022, Tracy Fell’s novella in flash Hairy on the Inside , shortlisted in our 2021 NIF Award, was also shortlisted in the short fiction section of the Rubery.
We can’t enter Sarah Freligh’s 2024 first prize winning Novella in Flash into the Rubery Award as it is for UK writers only but it was marvellous to be able to launch Hereafter at the flash fiction festival last month and hear Sarah read from it.
