Huge congratulations to our 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Award winners, the first, second and third prizes and the two highly commended, selected by Bath Flash Fiction Awards founder, Jude Higgins. Read Jude’s comments about them here. The top three novellas will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction and will be launched at the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol (18th-20th July).
First Prize: In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit by Debra A. Daniel
Debra A. Daniel, is the author of two novellas-in-flash, A Family of Great Falls and The Roster (Ad Hoc Fiction), novel Woman Commits Suicide in Dishwasher (Muddy Ford Press) and poetry chapbooks, The Downward Turn of August (Finishing Line Press) and As Is (Main Street Rag). She won the Fractured Lit Work/Play Challenge and was third place in Flash Fiction Magazine. She’s been nominated for Pushcart and Best Short Fictions, has been long listed and shortlisted in many competitions, and has won The Los Angeles Review short fiction prize. She was twice named SC Arts Commission Poetry Fellow, won the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, as well as numerous awards from the Poetry Society of SC. Work has appeared in journals and anthologies including: With One Eye on the Cows, Things Left and Found by the Side of the Road, The Los Angeles Review, Fall Lines, Smokelong Quarterly, Kakalak, Emrys Journal, Pequin, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River, Gargoyle. She is retired from a career in teaching, now sings in a band with her husband, and was once on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’
Runner-up: Spin of the Triangle by Stephanie Carty
Stephanie Carty is a writer and clinical psychologist in the UK. Her short fiction is widely published and placed in competitions. Her novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone won a Saboteur Award and her short fiction collection The Peculiarities of Yearning won an Eyelands Book Award. She has published two psychological suspense novels and two writers’ guides – Inside Fictional Minds on the psychology of character and The Writing Mirror on analysing your writing to better understand yourself.
Runner Up:The Lives of the Dead by Fiona McKay
Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies, Lost Balloon, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.
She is on X (formerly Twitter) @fionaemckayryan and Bluesky @fionamckay.bsky.social
Highly Commended:: Codewords by Justine Sweeney
Justine Sweeney is an Irish writer with an MA in Creative Writing from University of Hull. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in the Dublin Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine and the Bath Flash Anthology. Her first Novella-in-flash, Codewords, is a work of fiction which draws on her experience growing up in Belfast during the political conflict known as the Troubles.
Highly Commended:Playing with Fire by Bettyjoyce Nash
BettyJoyce Nash writes essays, articles, and stories. Her work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, North Dakota Quarterly, Reckon Review, Across the Margin, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Everybody Here is Kin (Madville Publishing, 2023), was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. Her writing has also been recognized with fellowships from artists’ retreats, including the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. A chapter from her flash novella, Playing With Fire, appears in The Weather Where You Are, Bath Flash Fiction Volume Eight. She lives in Charlottesville, VA.
