Flash Fiction

Amanda Huggins
June 2018 Commended

Strong, But Not Rough

by Amanda Huggins

If I was pretty like Laverne, then I’d go out with Rory Campbell. I’d hold his hand under the table, and it would feel warm and strong, but not rough. If I were tall and lithe like Laverne, I would see over the heads of the boys who think they’re clever and cool, and I’d notice the way Rory’s hair curls into his collar, the way his smile reaches all the way up to his eyes, and the way he stays quiet when the others fight.

When we leave the pub and pile into Robert’s car, Julie and Laverne slide across the boys’ knees, feet wedged into the seat backs, heads pressed against the vinyl roof. Laverne sits on Rory Campbell’s lap, and I squeeze in next to them. Laverne doesn’t talk to Rory, she leans forward between the seats and strokes Carl Broadbent’s neck, blowing her soft girl’s breath in his ear. Carl laughs in that stupid way of his, and Rory catches my eye, smiles as though we’re sharing an intimate joke.

If I was Laverne I’d be jealous that the world’s most beautiful boy was smiling at another girl. Especially when that girl is the dumpy one with mousy hair and a snub nose. And if I was Laverne, I’d notice when he reached along the back of the seat to rest his fingertips on the girl’s shoulder. Then I’d probably feel sick inside.

But I’m not Laverne, I’m Cathy Carnes, and I can feel Rory’s touch like so much fire as we race through the country lanes. My heart is beating louder than the music. When we hit the bank and the car flies through the air, I don’t even notice, because Rory Campbell is gripping my shoulder with fingers that are strong, but not rough.

About the Author

Amanda Huggins is the author of the flash fiction collection, Brightly Coloured Horses, published by Chapeltown, and the short story collection, Separated From the Sea, published by Retreat West Books.

Her work has also been widely published in anthologies and literary journals, as well as in national newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Wanderlust and Mslexia.

Her travel writing has won several prizes, including the BGTW New Travel Writer of the Year Award, and her short stories are regularly placed and listed in competitions, including Bare Fiction, Fish, InkTears, and Cinnamon Press.

June 2018 Short List

Congratulations to all the authors who made the short list.

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June 2018 Long List

Congratulations to all the authors who made the long list, and huge thanks to all who entered and continue to support our Award.

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Interview with
Molia Dumbleton
February 2018 Flash Fiction Third Prize

Molia Dumbleton won third prize with ‘Why Shit is Still Like This Around Here and Probably Always Will Be‘ Our judge Tara L. Masih said it was ‘a precise and perfect’ micro and we agree.

Kathy Fish, who judged our February 2017 Bath Flash Fiction Award is renowned for sparking stories that get published and win contests in her Fast Flash intensive writing online course. Molia’s piece was partly inspired by attending one of these amazingly productive courses and also from a random event that stuck in her mind. Her advice to other writers of flash is to sometimes just let the writing ‘come out’ and if this was the case with her piece here, it has worked very well. She also has interesting things to say about finding a title – how it is worth thinking about them for a long time. We think her long title for this story adds much to the story itself and it’s interesting that other story titles reference Shakespeare and the Bible and enhance the layers of the stories in question. She also has another discussion starter in her view that collections can contain a mix of flash fictions and longer short stories. And why not? We’re certainly looking forward to reading her collection that contains both. Finally, we thank Molia very much for her kind words about the Bath Flash Fiction Award and for being ‘with us’ from Day One over three years ago. We love flash fiction, and enjoy helping to build a friendly writing community.
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Interview with Lee Nash
February 2018 Flash Fiction Second Prize

Our judge Tara L Masih, was struck by the tight writing style of ‘When the rubber hits the road’ by Lee Nash and the way so much is covered. Many decades are traversed in the one long paragraph and like Tara, we love the way the elements shape the piece, and show how the events that take place instigated by one real and one imaginary man in different centuries, are sometimes out of human control. Henry Wickham, who the story is about, is pictured below along with some pictures of rubber sap collection. Lee writes in several different condensed forms, and her recently published poetry collection Ash Keys includes haibun, sonnets, a prose poem and haiku. She also enjoys writing poems based on historical figures. We think it’s interesting to find a way into a historical character’s life by thinking of how they have overcome incredible hurdles and failures. She has a floating ‘muse’, pointing out that inspiration is all around, and that she combs through all manner of experiences to find an ‘entry point’. Take on her tip to read your flash again and again for syntax, vocabulary and rhythm and maybe try writing your own historical flash fiction for the next round of the Award, which closes in June.
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Interview with Jo Gatford
February 2018 Flash Fiction First Prize

Jo tells us how she moved from writing her prize winning story in her head while driving, repeating the words out loud and then shaping the story on the page later. A busy writer, with all sorts of projects on the go, she is drafting a second novel with an interesting theme about survival in an apocalyptic world, has given herself the challenge of making 100 submissions this year and also co-runs the inspiring Writers’ HQ which gives opportunities, encouragement and support to writers from all backgrounds and income brackets. Whenever she’s lost for inspiration in her own writing, she always returns to Shakespeare and points out that reading Shakespeare, or “Shakey P” as she calls him “will tell you everything you need to know about writing”. Her other great writing tip for those wanting to enter Bath Flash Fiction Award is to find the “fundamental nugget of human truth in a story; something that resonates with a reader, almost on an unconscious level.” I am sure Shakespeare would have agreed with that.
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Interview with David Gaffney
Flash Fiction Award Judge
March 2018 – June 2018

David Gaffney lives in Manchester, UK. He is the author of the novel Never Never (2008) plus the flash fiction and short story collection Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). The Guardian said ‘One hundred and fifty words by Gaffney are more worthwhile than novels by a good many others.’ He has written articles for The Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect Magazine and was judge for the 2015 Bridport Prize. His story ‘The Staring Man’ is featured in the 2016 collection Best British Short Stories, his new novel, All The Places I’ve Ever Lived came out in February 2017 on Urbane and his graphic novel with Dan Berry, The Three Rooms in Valerie’s head is out now with Top Shelf.

In your excellent article for the Guardian in 2012 about flash fiction, you listed the following tips for writing micro fiction – start in the middle, don’t use too many characters, make sure the ending isn’t at the end, sweat your title, make your last line ring like a bell, write long then go short. Is there anything else you would add six years down the line?

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Award Round Up
February 2018

Thank you to everyone who entered the February round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. You kept our readers busy during the four months of the competition and as usual we had a deluge of entries at the end, which made it all very exciting. We received nine hundred and thirty-two submissions, from thirty-three countries:

Australia, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam

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February 2018 Judge’s Report
Tara L. Masih

Stephanie Clement Photography

Consider my introduction to the following Bath Flash Fiction contest results as a kind of Thank You letter. A Thank You to the many contestants who participated, and to the staff who had to create the long list. But mostly this is a Thank You to the writers who listened. In my judge’s interview, I asked entrants to “Try to do something unique. Unique can mean using different subject matter, vocabulary, format, syntax, punctuation. Experiment a bit. Let loose. Find a story that has to be told. Make the judge forget the outside world for a moment.”
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Jo Gatford
February 2018 First Prize

Things Left And Found By The Side Of The Road

by Jo Gatford

Baby car seats, sometimes with babies in them, swiftly recovered. Nettles flourishing in the face of toilet breaks. Things said in anger and in tiredness, whipped free from wound down windows. Singular shoes. Houses turned into islands, refusing to bow to the bypass, clinging to their land. Roadkill; fox-ochre and badger-stripe and innards turned outer. And crows, wherever things are dead and forgotten. Shopping lists never fulfilled. Plastic bags, flocks of them, as everlasting as the old gods. GPS-related swearing. A horse, filthy white, the same colour as its hay, watching the traffic, dreaming of leaping three lanes to greener grass. Dozing lorry drivers, longwave sewn into their sleep. The shouts of children: Cows! Red car! Lions! Lions? No. Cows! The snap-shut replies of parents who should have stopped for a wee miles ago. Imaginary friends, abandoned because of older sisters who said they were babyish. Garden centres where time is liminal and space folds in on itself somewhere between the box shrubs and the trellis. Petrol stations, though never when you need one. Yawns no longer suppressible. A cigarette butt flicked through a window slot, its glowing ash streaking back inside to burrow into denim thighs. Traffic cones like shells for urban hermit crabs, crushed and dented, flashing silently into the night. A moment of lapsed concentration. A time when you wouldn’t make it home for Christmas, or the weekend, or at all. A time when these were Roman roads and the unexpected turn would not have existed. A time when all of this was nothing but fields. Car parts, tyre skids, blood spots, and perfect cubes of safety glass. The knowing sighs of EMTs. Roadside recovery phones standing at respectful intervals like neon orange sentinels. Angels, fallen, bewildered in concrete, wondering where all the souls have gone.

About the Author

Jo Gatford is a writer who procrastinates about writing by writing about writing. Her debut novel White Lies won the Luke Bitmead Bursary and was published by Legend Press in 2014. Her short fiction can be found in Smokelong Quarterly, Litro, Aesthetica, PANK, Open Pen, The Fiction Desk and elsewhere. She is one half of Writers’ HQ – a writing organisation which offers online writing courses, workshops and retreats for ‘badass writers with no time or money’ – and swears at people on the internet for a living.