Award Two

February 2016 Award Short List

Second Bath Flash Fiction Award Short List
Fiction Title	Author
And The Sea Rolls On	Emily Devane
Backroads	Michael Wheaton
Billy	Clodagh O’Brien
First catch your hare	Sharon Telfer
Five Months	Charmaine Wilkerson
Heart of Oak, Body of a Man	Kerry Hood
If We Could Dig To China	Amber Lee Dodd
My father, who ate a tree	KM Elkes
One two three, two two three	Jilna Shukla
Roll and Curl	Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Shadowtrain	Peter Blair
Teacher	Keeley Mansfield
The Gift	Jeanette Lowe
The love I feel in my belly	Joanna Matthews
The Old Man and his Wife	Rupert Dastur
Thinking about Jessica	Scott Wilson
Waking The House Of Feathers	Kerry Hood
What he said about the war	Samuel Dodson
Words is words is words	Tess Adams
You Have So Many More Choices than Fight or Flight	Al Kratz

BathFlash

February 2016 Award Long List

With huge thanks to every writer who entered our Award from all around the world.

Second Bath Flash Fiction Award Long List
Fiction Title	Author
All The Time In The World	Emily Devane
And The Sea Rolls On	Emily Devane
Are You Afraid Of The Dark?	Sarah-Clare Conlon
A widow with a bowl of wine and lipstick coming off	Nasim Marie Jafry
Backroads	Michael Wheaton
Billy	Clodagh O’Brien
Caterpillars	June Prunty
Cheese Sandwich	Emma Feasey
Claudia is in Love	Liz Cookman
Collecting Stones	Patrick Holloway
Empty	Bunmi Ogunsiji
First catch your hare	Sharon Telfer
Five Months	Charmaine Wilkerson
Guillotine	Matthew Fiorentino
Heart of Oak, Body of a Man	Kerry Hood
He Became Mr Maracas	Ruth Tamiatto
How To Find Contentment	Kit de Waal
I climb into a book	Shih-Li Kow
If We Could Dig To China	Amber Lee Dodd
Imminent	Ruth Tamiatto
Kong	Melissa Manning
Leo’s Song	Sherry Morris
Lorca’s Little Bird	Trisha Hanifin
Midnight in London	Jason Jackson
Mom Woke Us One Night	D.R.D. Bruton
My father, who ate a tree	KM Elkes
Natural Selection	Gayle Letherby
Nocturnal	Alex Reece Abbott
Not Crying Now	Sara Crowley
One two three, two two three	Jilna Shukla
Perhaps Rain, Later	Alex Coulton
Roderick Takes Control	Calum Normand
Roll and Curl	Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Shadowtrain	Peter Blair
Sniff The Rain	Nick Black
Static	Caitlin Stobie
Teacher	Keeley Mansfield
The Gift	Jeanette Lowe
The Last Taxi of the Year	Sarah Wallis
The love I feel in my belly	Joanna Matthews
The Motherbone	Jessica Franken
The Old Man and his Wife	Rupert Dastur
Thinking about Jessica	Scott Wilson
Unfaithful To The Land	Kit de Waal
Waking The House Of Feathers	Kerry Hood
What he said about the war	Samuel Dodson
When the In-laws Visit	Susan Kaberry
Words is words is words	Tess Adams
Worth the Having	Deb Tomkins
You Have So Many More Choices than Fight or Flight	Al Kratz

BathFlash

New Year Updates

BathFlash Thank you to everyone who contributed to the three Charity Editions of our micro fiction project Ad Hoc Fiction. Your donations made £47, we topped it up to £50, and sent it to We Stand Together, this year’s Guardian and Observer newspapers’ charity appeal in support of refugees.

We’re going to continue trialling an optional £1 contribution to Ad Hoc Fiction until the Summer. With all the takings going to each weekly winner, our thinking is simple: The more people contribute, the bigger the prize. We won’t be taking a penny. To date, winners have been receiving around £10 along with their usual free entry to Bath Flash Fiction Award. Which brings us rather neatly on to…

This weekend, there will be just four weeks left until we close Bath Flash Fiction Award on February 14th. Why not enter now before the rush and save money by sending in two entries for £15 or three for £18? Our judge, Tania Hershman is selecting from a 50 long short list.

And don’t forget our other project coming later this year – a print and digital anthology of flash fictions selected from our Award entrants.

Early Birds

We know all you writers love deadlines so we have given you two for this round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. Our Early Bird offer ends this Sunday, 13th December at midnight GMT. If you have some flashes ready to be launched into the world or want to write your last best flash fiction efforts for 2015 this weekend, enter them now and save some money. One entry for £7.50 and 2 for £12.00. Our three for £18 deal continues until we close on February 14th – yes, that’s only nine weeks and a few days left until we close.

It’s always better to send in more than one story to a contest if you can. Why? Because there’s the preference factor – some judges will like one better than the other. And that one may be your least favourite.

Our finalist judge, Tania Hershman, is reading a longer shortlist of fifty stories. So give yourself a good chance to make that list. And of course, you have the option of winning a free entry to the main contest by entering our weekly mini contest, Ad Hoc Fiction.

photography by Lou Abercrombie

Interview with our Judge
Tania Hershman

You’ve judged many other flash fiction and short story contests in the UK and elsewhere and have also selected flash fictions for journals. There’s a wide variety of styles in the flash fiction genre, but can you tell us what stood out for you in the winning entries and submissions?

Things that stand out for me – and I am only one reader, with my own tastes and preferences – are a love for language, a delight in what words can do, especially in such a short space. Also, a sense that the story was made for the length it is, that it is not a longer story compressed, that it is wonderful not despite but because of its brevity. As for styles, I am open to anything at all, I love being made to laugh and cry, but the main thing is: move me, surprise me, delight me. This can be done without fireworks, without car chases, without much action at all. Or: with all these things! I am looking for stories that sing, that I can hear in my head as I read and for hours, days afterwards. But sing in your own way, not in a way to please anyone else. Send us your best.

Tania Hershman
Our New Award Judge

Tania Hershman is the author of two short story collections: My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions (Tangent Books, 2012), and The White Road and Other Stories (Salt, 2008) and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, Dec 2014). Her début poetry chapbook is forthcoming in February 2016. Tania’s short stories and poetry have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is curator of ShortStops (www.shortstops.info), celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland, a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Bristol University, and is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

www.taniahershman.com

Welcome to Our New Award

First, we’d like to welcome our new judge, Tania Hershman. Regular contributors will notice that we’ve made a few other changes. In brief, here they are, and why we’ve made them.

We now have a closing date.
Many of you told us that you prefer to have a time scale to plan out your competition submissions through out the year, so we’ve introduced closing dates. Our intention is to keep the flash rolling by running three awards per year, each Award lasting four months. To encourage early submission to each Award – and hopefully avoid a last-minute closing date rush – submission fees are reduced for the first two months of each Award.