It has been such a pleasure to sit with these fifty pieces over the past couple of weeks and to contemplate them through multiple reads. What I was hoping for was a nice variety of approaches and this is exactly what I got. There are pieces on the longlist that lean into the speculative, pieces that lean into the lyrical and pieces that bring the historical to life. There are pieces that made me think, pieces that connected with me on a deep emotional level, and pieces that made me laugh out loud. Flash fiction presents such a wide range of possibilities in terms of narrative, character, tone and form, and the writers of these pieces have made full use of these. I’m in awe of each and every one of them; the level of skill they demonstrate in these stories has made my job extremely tricky.
With just five pieces making it to the podium from hundreds of entries, the final decisions necessarily come down to subjectivity (a different judge in a different mood would have made very different choices) and the splitting of hairs (which went hand in hand with hair being pulled out and sighs being sighed). If I’d been allowed to, I would have picked a dozen winners, and it therefore feels right to celebrate some of those close-but-no-cigar stories before I get to my final five. One of the stories that immediately jumped out at me was “No One Can Figure Out How Eels Have Sex”—I love the way it braids together different elements in such a clever way. In terms of genre, I was wowed by “Hope Is A Four-Letter Word” for making me feel something real within the surreal landscape of a Zombie apocalypse; and I was similarly drawn in by the tense atmosphere of “Four for a boy.” I loved the humour in “6pm. Your BP is 190 over 110, and you are driving 15mph over the speed limit….” I loved the emotional power of “Try Again, Again.” And I will always think differently about mannequins after reading “Mannequin Body Parts.”

Highly Commended: He Owed Me

This was a piece that surprised me from my very first read. Right from the start, we have the title that leads us to expect one thing but by the end of the piece, that expectation has been flipped on its head. I love the voice here. It is wonderfully conversational and unspools through one long, unwinding sentence—this can sometimes feel slightly gimmicky, but here it fits so perfectly with both the narrator and the turbulence of their emotions. I get such a brilliant sense of them from the way the piece unfolds, and I also get such a brilliant sense of Luca even though the details around his life are so sparse. That, for me, is key. As with my other picks, this is a story that is so much bigger than its 300 words.

Highly Commended: GODETIAS

This story immediately jumped out at me in terms of form. Everything comes back to those Countdown words which create such an unusual narrative spine. The form is creative but it is also cohesive to situation and voice. The words have been chosen with such care and I love the way the piece moves between them and the unfolding of scenario, how Claire is the “FAVOURITE”, how she left the narrator with “RELATIONS”, how the reference to “PHYSICIAN[s]” is met with an acerbic splash of humour (“Nine letters but rare”). That wry tone of voice is used to lift the piece and creates a tonal contrast with the frustration and despondency buried underneath. For me, this is a story where all the elements are working in harmony—form, scenario, narrative, emotions and voice.

Third Place:There are times when we talk without talking

In a writing competition, when you are deciding which pieces make the podium and which ones just miss out, it mostly comes down to what connects with you at a personal level, and this is one of those pieces that spoke to me so clearly. I know this hospital. I know these people. I’ve experienced the way they talk without talking. But even if you don’t know any of this from personal experience, I feel as though you can’t help being drawn into this gem of a piece by the way the author brings the narrative world to life. The writing here is so original. I love the unexpected grouping of nieces “clad in looping scarves and the guilt of being absent”, the use of synaesthesia in “their vitality as sharp and painful as a knife”, and the way the piece as a whole ends on a note of anesis. Beyond the words and the evocation of place and people, there is such a quiet build of emotion, it is almost imperceptible, but it is there bubbling away and it left me feeling something raw and real.

Second Place: There you are

I’m always drawn towards the lyrical, the sort of prose that verges on poetry in the way it propels itself forwards with rhythmic intent, and this piece is a brilliant example of that. The author uses an anaphora repetition of “you wake” that repeats and repeats through the entire piece. That rhythm is layered with sound (I love the alliteration in “chickweed is coming up through the cracks in the concrete”) and imagery (there are so many highlights here but “the moon is a hot-white hangnail” is a favourite). The words are beautiful, and there is a wonderful build towards an emotional zenith, but it would be a disservice to suggest this piece operates only on the level of language and mood. What I found so clever here is the sense of story lurking behind all these places the “you” character wakes. Their life beyond these brief moments is there in the gaps between the sentences and the narrative is both specific to this individual and wonderfully universal story as well.

First Place: Visiting Lenin’s Tomb

This piece gave me something new on each successive read, and ultimately that’s what I look for in flash fiction. It has so many layers. The surface layer is tricksy. We are in the present but we are also in the past, and I love how the author skilfully weaves together those two timeframes, walking the tightrope between disorientating their reader on the one hand and not staying true to the emotional turmoil of their “you” narrator on the other. How reliable is that narrator? With each new read, I answered that question in a different manner. I also found myself noticing new elements of craft I’d not noticed before. There is so much skill here. We have flecks of Russian, we have humorous asides (“some honeymoon”), we have lyrical description (“eyes the colour of dill, mouths downturned sickles”), and we have lyrical moments that build emotional resonance (“what you wore, where you went, who you saw”). But what really solidified this as my winner was the way this piece experiments, the way it takes risks, the way it breaks rules. Risks often don’t pay off, but when they do pay off and when they connect with the right reader, wow oh wow oh wow!