Ahead of the Flash Fiction Festival taking place 14th-16th July, in Bristol, where this book is being launched and where two of the editors are running a workshop on the form, we are delighted to publish Zen and the Art of Hybrid Flash – a review by poet and flash fiction writer, John Wheway, of Haibun; A Writer’s Guide ed by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts and Rich Youmans. Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023. (Available currently at Amazon worldwide and soon on the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop). Read in Full
We’re delighted to welcome Sara Hills as the judge for our 25th Award open today and closing in October. Sara is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won the Quiet Man Dave flash nonfiction prize, the Retreat West quarterly prize, and the National Flash Fiction Day micro competition. Sara’s work has just won second prize in our 24th Award, judged by Tim Craig. Previously, she’s been twice commended in our Award. She’s also placed second in the Welkin Prize, and was selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021 and 2022. Her stories have been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including The Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023, SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, Fractured Lit, Cease Cows, Flash Frog, X-RAY Lit, Splonk, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites. Read in Full
Tim’s General Comments
Damn, but this was hard. And inspiring. And fun. But hard.
I don’t think there were many stories in my long list of 50 which didn’t at some point occupy a seat, however briefly, in my short list of 20. Such was the standard.
You will doubtless disagree with some of my choices. I disagreed with some of my choices. But, in the end, the stories which made my final list of five were those which battled for my attention, won it, and held it for a long time after I’d finished reading them.
There were many stories on the long- and short lists which were beautifully structured and beautifully written; some which evoked powerful and/or tragic historical events; several which found new and clever ways to harbour time-worn human truths; which experimented with form and language in ingenious, original ways. To the writers of these wonderful tours de force of flash, I can only apologise there weren’t more places in the winners’ enclosure.
Ultimately, I was drawn to those stories which felt perhaps less formulaic, less heavily structured; stories where character and mood were granted at least the same weight as plot and theme, and which didn’t necessarily give up all their secrets on first, or even fifth, reading.
Thanks to everyone who entered this amazing competition for giving me such difficult decisions to make, to the readers who did such a great job of whittling the original entries down to the long list, and, of course, to Jude and the team at Ad Hoc Fiction for the honour of being its judge. Read in Full
by William Davidson
I’m early. I walk to the end of platform three. I like to see the name of the train I’m getting on. I know it’s daft. I like to see the name of the train and then get on at the front and walk through the carriages. I like to sit at the back of the rearmost carriage, facing forward. It’s weird and daft. I know.
I stand at the very end of platform three, at the top of the slope that leads down to the rocky ground by the tracks, the ballast I think it’s called, like in a ship, like the ballast that stops a ship from tilting and sinking. I gaze down the slope at the ballast and there it is, growing alongside a patch of rosebay willowherb. There it is – York groundsel. It went extinct decades ago but there it is.
I’m early so I’ve got time. It’s good I’m early. I walk down the slope and keep my eye on the York groundsel but it’s not going anywhere. I keep my eye on things that aren’t going anywhere in case they go somewhere. It’s daft. I know. It’s hard to walk on the ballast. It’s sharp-edged. I take off my jacket and roll it up so I’ve got something to kneel on. The York groundsel is yellow, like a remembered yellow, like a yellow that only exists in a photograph, but here it is, existing, in the ballast.
People are by me now. They must have seen the York groundsel too. They sound like they can’t believe it’s here.
‘It’s really here,’ I say. ‘York groundsel is really here.’
The people are tilting around me. A train’s coming. Its horn is blasting again and again, like an ocean liner launching, like something beginning.
William Davidson won the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015. His short stories and flash fiction have been published in various anthologies, including Solstice Shorts (Arachne Press) and Rattle Tales (The Brighton Prize). He has an MA and MFA in Creative Writing from York St John University, and teaches at Converge, an education project at the university that provides courses for people who use mental health services. He also leads an ecotherapy book club at St Nicks, a thriving nature reserve in York.
Twitter: @WmDavidsonUK
by Sara Hills
Weeks after we lose her, Lou and I take turns eating our feelings and secretly dosing each other with LSD. On Monday, he tucks a tab into the mayo on my sandwich. On Tuesday, I bury one in a swirl of cream atop his cake. Wednesday, it’s spiked marinara and milkshakes.
By Thursday we’re high as diamonds.
I call in sick and my boss’s teeth chatter through the phone like shiny stacks of white plates, rattling the hollow bowl of my body. He shouts, “You’re fucking unreliable,” a purple whelp of a sound that punches my useless empty breasts. Not for the first time, I realize how fragile we are, chipped monstrosities of ceramic-fired clay.
Lou steadies me with his fork-fingered hand and sings that my tits are happy soup cans. He draws faces on them in ballpoint pen, giving them toothy mouths and eyes wizened with promise. It’s the most enlivened I’ve felt in weeks—me, skin glowing iridescent against the dark ink; him, drawing with his tongue out, like a child would, all willowy limbs and hopeful yellow hair, tracing rainbows.
Later, we run into the box-small yard and let our crown chakras unfurl under the humming sky. We are sun-soaked artichokes beside our blue-walled house. And when the light fades, Lou, convinced that our hearts are bruised apples that need protecting, washes the pleated skin of my stomach with his tears.
By the time the moon rises like a refrigerator light across the empty shelf of the sky, Lou and I are already sinking. We lay back on the leaf litter, watching for comets and constellations, falling stars and signs. Above, 747s soar like milk bottles, blinking mandalas of coded prayers that vibrate the earth while we hold our breath and wait to feel forgiven.
Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021), winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection. She has won the Quiet Man Dave flash nonfiction prize, the Retreat West quarterly prize, and the National Flash Fiction Day micro competition. Sara’s work has been twice commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Award, placed second in the Welkin Prize, and was selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2021 and 2022. Her stories have been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including The Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023, SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, Fractured Lit, Cease Cows, Flash Frog, X-RAY Lit, Splonk, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites.
Thank you everyone for entering out 24th Award. Those who entered early, those who submitted in the middle months and those who entered on the final day and received our sophisticated purple and orange Last Minute Club badge, pictured here. A couple of people won prizes for guessing one colour each, the day before the badge went live. It was another exciting round with 1089 entries steadily arriving (almost the same number as in June, last year) from the following countries:
Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam.
Thanks as alwayys to our reading team, big flash fiction lovers, who, from a vast array of marvellous flash fictions of 300 words or under, selected a wide variety of stories for the longlist of fifty. And we are very grateful to our judge Tim Craig for his exacting work of selecting the short list of twenty and the winners. Read his very interesting and generous comments on the whole process and on the winning pieces. Thank you Tim!
This June, the first prize goes to William Davidson from the UK with his brilliant flash fiction ‘Remembered Yellow’. William won our inaugural award in 2016 with ‘Radio Alarm’ another great story and we’re so excited has won another first prize, seven years later. He is the second writer to win our Awards twice (the other writer is Sharon Telfer in 2020 and 2016.).
Second prize, for her exceptional story, ‘Failure to Thrive’ goes to Sara Hills, an American writer living in the UK, who has been placed twice before and long or shortlisted on many occasions. We’re also delighted that, by co-incidence, Sara is judging our 25h Award which opens July 1st and ends in October.
Third prize goes to Noemi Sheiring-Olah, from Hungary, for ‘To All the Copies of Us’ another maarvellous and moving flash fiction. Noemi has been successful in other major contests recently and we’re thrilled she has won a place in our Award.
James Montgomery won Highly Commended for his one sentence marvel, ‘Diamonds in the Earth’. He said on Twitter, he had been working on this story for about three years and had never been listed before. So it’s a lovely thing that his persistence has paid off.
Pilar Garcia Claramonte also won highly commended for’My Daughter the Wolf Therian’ a fabulous story with many layers and with such an intriguing title.
Huge congratulations to everyone You can read Tim’s comments on all these stories in his report. I have linked the titles of each story to the winners’ page on this website too and they will be published in our year-end anthology.
Our next contest, judged by Sara Hills, opens tomorrow 1st July and ends in October. We look forward to reading your stories.
by Noemi Scheiring Olah
To the soccer-patterned rubber ball, easy to kick, making us laugh every time it hits our shins with a burp sound, like Daddy, every time he gets home from work, all paint spots and sour smiles.
To the video player branded “videó player”, which instantly eats the rented Lion King tape, making the words slur like Daddy’s, slurping The tapessshit, and Merry Chrisssmasss, and Daddy lovesssya.
To the white sneakers with four black lines and a thin sole, which makes every pebble feel like we’re walking on broken glass, and when the kids at school finger-point and jeer Fakedidas, we borrow (if you’re Daddy), or steal (if you’re the head teacher) White-Outs, and smear white slime all over the fourth black line until it disappears.
To the fading library books Daddy brought home every weekend so us kids See the world, and Know how to find and lose beauty, like he found and lost Mommy, and like we now spill Bud Light over an unreturned Moby Dick, and watch the pages darken, and fold, and float away, like Daddy darkened, and folded, and floated away two weeks ago, frowning with twin brows that refused to let go.
To the hoarse TV in the kitchen coughing up successful flat people droning on and on about filling big shoes of successful flat fathers, who flash and mirror in the empty bottles that clink-clank across the room as we collect and throw them in trash cans, smashing, and crashing, and shattering; tearing to break free from all the copies of us.
Noémi Scheiring-Oláh grew up in a small flat at the edge of a Hungarian town. She’s now a nomad in a small world. Her writing has appeared/forthcoming in Passages North, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Molotov Cocktail, New Flash Fiction Review, Bath Flash Fiction Anthology, Maudlin House, Ellipsis Zine, Janus Literary, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize. Noémi is a fan of cats and underdogs. She’s also a Writers’ HQ member. Tweets: @itssonoemi Virtual home: noemiwrites.com
by James Montgomery
The bat splinters, the crowd roars, and the boy’s held fast by the arc of the baseball, blitzing a course straight at him, a mere speck in the outfield, twin eye black smears masking each cheek, a boy pinned to parched, rain-hungry grass, when one lone voice, his father’s bark—look sharp, Bobby!—barrels out from the bleachers, jolts the boy into action, who stumble-runs as the ball skims the crest of the August sun, and the boy’s running back, back to last Tuesday, and the promise of an empty house—his mother running errands, his father out of town—and in the cheval mirror, in a slant of light, with only the floating dust motes to bear witness, there he was: lips alive with painted red, nape and inner wrists perfumed anew, socked feet slipped into his mother’s Mary Janes—the heel but an inch high yet it felt like touching God, like discovering some heavenly body until now unfound—and behind him, his father, unexpected and unannounced, the bedroom door silently ajar, the quickening panic of dad, dad, dad, and, as the ball begins its descent, the boy knows if he can only grasp it tight and hold it close all will be absolved, so he runs and runs, extends both arms, and stretches back through hand-stitched, chain-linked muscle memory, towards freshly-cut weekends, diamonds drawn in backyard earth, the easy throw of nice one, bud through air, the soft ache of an unbidden shoulder squeeze, and the close grain of freckles on sun-blessed faces, as the boy reaches, for his father, for the ball… which, with a short, sharp pop, funnels like a fastball, powers into the glove’s pocket, while something small and hard—as if leather cased—catches in the boy’s throat.
James Montgomery’s stories appear in Reflex Fiction, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. He won the Best Micro Fiction Prize at the 2021 Retreat West Awards and is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Find him at http://www.jamesmontgomerywrites.com and on Twitter at @JDMontgomery_
by Pilar Garcia Claramonte
My daughter was on all fours in the garden last night, howling at the moon.
“It’s just a phase,” her father said. “Something she’s seen on TikTok, probably. Nothing to worry about.”
Today, at breakfast, she announces that she’s descended from wolves. I swallow hard, recalling a photo of her birth parents. Her brother sniggers and asks if there’s a dead moose in her lunch-box.
She shows us her new profile on her mobile. “Hi. I’m Leaf. I’m a wolf therian.” In the photo, her face tilts forward so close to the camera that the nose appears unnaturally elongated, protruding towards the world with a menacing sneer. Unnervingly her, but different. She’s only twelve. I wonder if she senses the many ways in which that name, those words, could mark a distance between us.
She nuzzles up. Will I help her to make a tail? Something she can attach to herself and swing side to side. She might wear it to school, she says. Pinned to her uniform. My stomach lurches.
“What will the girls say in class?” We’d done our sums and moved her to a new school that term. Small classes, lush grounds might smooth the jagged edges left from her early childhood, before she was legally ours. Whatever it takes.
“Call me names?” She shrugs. “I’m adopted. I’m used to that.”
As she leaves for school, she looks tiny in her new, too large uniform.
I know exactly where I’ll find some faux fur for her tail.
Pilar García Claramonte wishes that she had discovered the joy of creative writing much earlier in life. Now retired, she spends her time between the Kent coast, Oxford and the Basque Country, where she was born, trying to make up for lost time, aided and abetted by some great teachers and writing buddies.
Many congratulations to all the twenty authors who made the 24th Award short list, selected by judge, Tim Craig.
Read in Full