Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash contest and Other Emergencies, forthcoming from Moon City Press in 2025. Her work has appeared many literary journals and anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22). Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation. Read in Full

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.” Read in Full

Thanks very much to Michelle Elvy for all her work and great comments!

Winners and comments \
This was a rich set of flash fictions, and they required reading several times before the ones that stuck started to emerge – because so many were memorable. I kept thinking of the nurse on the ward, the boy in the car, the killing frost and the geraniums. I wondered about the coffee cup on the train, the gossiping crabs in the rock pool nursery.

The short list was made up of stories that sometimes circled and sometimes skewered the realities they examined. I was captivated by family drama, both loud and hushed; I was confronted by addiction and politics and cancer; I was swept away by imaginative dialogue, colourful, painted hearts and surprisingly observant seagulls. Some daring decisions were made, and I appreciated both the in-your-face approach to writing flash and the stories that required a gentle hand. Some reached, cleverly, to ideas and people familiar to us – faeries and rent hikes, Marlon Brando and Orson Welles – bringing them to the page with originality and flair. Some engaged parables and mystical imaginings. All of these decisions seemed deliberate, and the works on the short list delivered vivid imagery, sharp observation and carefully considered language. Some had beautifully memorable future-looking titles (‘The story we will one day never tire of telling you’) and some had wonderful images at the very end (‘her coat billowing behind her, like a galleon setting sail’).
And even as these flash fictions took on some heavy themes, there was also, sometimes, well placed – and much appreciated – humour. Perhaps just a hint, between breaths, but steady and sure.
A treasure of stories! I have so enjoyed considering the many virtues of all of them.

Highly Commended: The Bee
A story that delivers a whole lifetime in this small space, and brings remarkable detail – from the buzzing glory of angels to the everyday gleaming lawn mower. Here we have John and his entire family, and we see how life’s end may not result in a finality but is rather a moment in a series of intertwined moments. With such a simple title and point of focus at the start, the reader is tuned to nature’s precarious balance. This is a story that zooms in and out, with dynamic effect.

Highly Commended: Prognosis
A steady hand guides this story, and the second-person view connects the reader to a difficult moment, followed by the potential responses of anger, bafflement or denial. The reader sees this from the medical practitioner’s view, and we feel the push and pull between compassion and distance. All of this is delivered with care and close observation. There is tremendous feeling for the disorientation that occurs in the face of death, the tensions and intimacies, and some surprising moments. This is one of the gentlest stories I’ve read this season.

Third: On Friday Nights in May I Sit Quietly with a Friend

Reality delivered with a wry tone and a bit of magic. From the beginning, this is imaginative and expansive, looking beyond the park’s flitting insects and bounding dogs. The clever dialogue between narrator and faerie brings an original take to the internal sense of want and desire, and the bluebells as the central image, with their symbolic constancy, gratitude and love, sustains this sense of longing. There is a moment of wonderful humour as the flowers crumple in the narrator’s hands, and the faerie says, ‘Better keep trying’ – not a syrupy platitude about love but a matter of fact. Nature makes a soft backdrop – ‘the whisper of the leaves and ferns’ – but don’t be fooled: this is a marvellously delivered cautionary tale. And the last line is so effective, with its perfectly balanced phrasing and lingering question.

Second: Driving my Seven-Year Old Nephew to Visit His Mother at Rehab
A story so delicately told, if you blink you might miss it. With deceptively simple language, this story brings us into the world of a young person and his reality, and how the narrator is coping, or not. As the banter between the young nephew and the narrator continues, the layers of their story unfold. This dialogue gives the story forward momentum, but also keeps us grounded in the world that matters most: the future of this young person. This story is a memorable contemplation of frailty and resilience, and the tenderness that may exist between us, despite unwanted circumstances and burdens. The voice holds a strong narrative style, bringing into focus the tragic reality of human fragility, and the paths that lead to places where we might have to consider our own lurking truths. Powerful and unforgettable.

First: A Cock Among the BathersSo much to admire about this story! First, the forward-imagining sense of what will happen ‘tomorrow’. Second, the pacing – breathless and perfectly managed, maintaining a jaunty tone that uses repetition, imagery and play to keep us in the gallery, on the edge of our seats. Third, it’s a personal story with familiarity that pulls us into the space between the characters. This story is flash fiction fun, but it’s much, much more. Here we see a play on art – the very idea of an exhibition and what one might expect, or gain, from it. Here we are invited to frivolity and spectacle – the surface ‘look at me!’ moment that captivates and surprises (and maybe brings a flush to the cheeks). But this is also a summons to look again: there may be more here than meets the eye. The interplay between veneer and substance is built moment by moment. Besides all that, rich language and memorable phrasings add rhythm and pulse. I’ll not soon forget that ‘fur-tufted ass, cleft as a Cézannesque peach’. And I can still picture the retreat, with the operatic falsetto singing of love, or water. The title opens the scene among the bathers, and the last line is wonderfully surprising and satisfying.

Michelle Elvy, June, 2024.

Jude Higgins is a writer, writing tutor and events organiser and has stories published or forthcoming in the New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Frontier, FlashBack Fiction, The Blue Fifth Review, The Nottingham Review,Pidgeon Holes, Moonpark Review, Splonk, Fictive Dream, the Fish Prize Anthology, National Flash Fiction Day anthologies and Flash: The International Short Short Story Magazine among other places. She has won or been placed in many flash fiction contests and was shortlisted in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize in 2017, 2018 and 2023. Her debutflash fiction pamphlet The Chemist’s House was published by V.Press in 2017. Her micro fictions have been included in the 2019 and 2020 lists of Best Flash Fictions of UK and Ireland and she has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2020, Best Microfictions, 2023, a Pushcart Prize, 2020 and Best of the Net, 2022. Her story ‘Codes To Live By’ was selected for Best Micro Fictions and was longlisted for Wigleaf in 2022. Her story ‘Spinning’ is forthcoming in Best Microfiction 2024. She founded Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2015, directs Ad Hoc Fiction, the short-short fiction press, co-runs The Bath Short Story Award, founded and directs the Flash Fiction Festival, UK, organises reading events and teaches flash fiction sessions online. Her full collection, ‘Clearly Defined Clouds’ launched at the flash fiction festival this year is available from Ad Hoc Fiction

The 2025 Award

The 2025 Novella in Flash Award, this year judged by me, Jude Higgins, is now open (August 19th) and will close on October 31st. If you are writing/or thinking of writing a novella-in-flash, here’s some information and FAQ’s. To help write and understand the form, we recommend reading Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: From blank page to finished manuscript Michael Loveday’s multi-award-winning guide on the subject. Read in Full

We’re delighted to have Michelle Elvy back to judge the single flash fiction award again in the year that she is also judging the Fish Flash Fiction prize. Michelle judged our Novella-in-flash award in 2021 and 2022 and she first judged BFFA in June, 2016, when she selected Sharon Telfer as the first prize winner, for Sharon’s amazing historical flash fiction Terra Icognita. Read more about Michelle’s latest projects and writing services below and tips for writing great flash. Read in Full

Our big thanks to Susmita Bhattacharya for being our 26th Award judge, and for her close reading and excellent comments on the amazing stories she selected.

Comments:
Judging for the Bath Flash Fiction has been an absolute treat, but it’s also been quite stressful! I’ve enjoyed reading all the stories, and I didn’t mind reading them multiple times. I actually enjoyed all my train travels these past couple of weeks because I carried these flash fiction pieces with me and they kept me company wherever I went. But it was stressful to choose the three winners and the two highly commended. I had no problem choosing some of them, but with a couple of them, I really, really had to ponder about which one would make it.

I’m in awe of the flash fiction pieces I read, the idea, the crafting of the story, the structure and how these stories got such a variety of reactions from me. A sharp intake of breath, a few tears, a nodding of the head, a smile. When I read the winning story for the nth time on the train, and wiped my tears, the person sitting opposite looked at me uncomfortably. I so wanted them to read the story and cry with me.

All the entries are such excellent pieces, so congratulations to everyone who made it to the longlist, then the shortlist and then the winners, of course. And congratulations to everyone who wrote a story and submitted it. And congratulations to everyone who wrote something. Read in Full

Thanks very much to John Brantingham for judging our 2024 Award, and for his encouraging general comments as well as the specific remarks about the winners listed below. John is a big fan of the novella in flash, having also written several himself and we absolutely agree that all these novellas should be out in the world.

You can also read John’s previous comments on the longlist and short list and read more about the winners and commended below. As stated in our Award details, Ad Hoc Fiction is publishing the top three this year Hereafter,the first prize winner and the runners up, Nose Ornaments and Marilyn’s Ghost.

John writes:

I am thrilled with all of the novellas-in-flash in this year’s contest. Each of these had diverse subject matter, styles, and approaches to fiction writing, but I loved that each of them used the novella-in-flash form to help distill what they were saying about the world. In addition to this one unifying element, they also all dealt with those most powerful moments of the human experience. They dealt with issues like breaking with the past as one moves on into the future, how to negotiate life in a small town, grief and loss, thoughts of suicide, and the way society constructs and deconstructs fame.
As with last year, I would encourage any of the writers whose work I read to find a publisher for their work. These were all interesting and innovative, and the decision for the final choice is to some degree subjective. I can say that I loved reading all of them. I would have bought them had they been on a shelf in a bookstore.

Highly Commended
The Man with the Glass Blown Head and Brick Wall Face
The Man with the Glass Blown Head and Brick Wall Face is a fascinating novella about a man who discusses the endless abuse and self-harm of toxic masculinity and staying closeted that leads to self-harm. This work contains an interesting intrusive narrator who not only presents the story but also provides commentary on what was happening and the greater meaning of it all in terms of how the main character views the world and is handled by the world. He still keeps us at a bit of a psychic distance, which is the perfect place to keep up because otherwise it would turn pedantic. It is not just a strong novella-in-flash, but the stand-alone stories have self-contained emotional catharses that are moving in their own right.

Highly Commended
Nine Inches of Rain
Nine Inches of Rain is a historical novella-in-flash set in August of 1952 when a storm ravages a small town. Aside from any other considerations, the story of how a group of people deal with and live through natural chaos is compelling. The characters and their reactions are human and telling. However, Nine Inches of Rain uses the novella-in-flash form to explore what life in 1952 in the United Kingdom outside of London was like. It looks at the values and interpersonal relationships of the people in this world.

Runner Up
Nose Ornaments
Nose Ornaments follows the lives of three generations of Indian women as they migrate from India to Arizona. It looks at the Indian diaspora during a time of quickly shifting norms for women, and each generation finds that it needs to break free from the traditions of the previous generation. By using multiple generations, the author is able to bring humanity not only to the women as they free themselves from social norms, but also to show how disconcerting it is for a person of the previous generation to watch as her daughter acts in a way that doesn’t make sense to the mother.

Runner Up
Marilyn’s Ghost
Marilyn’s Ghost is a fictionalized account of the death and days following Marilyn Monroe’s death. It is a discussion not only of the characters in the story but also the social mores that surrounded the icon and our understanding of her. The shifting point-of-view helps us to understand who she was and how people projected their fantasies upon her. Just as important is a shifting style and approach to narrative. The author uses as many different ways of storytelling as possible in this short novella-in-flash. Each of them helps us to understand a different aspect of what the writer is suggesting about Monroe and our understanding of her.

Winner
Hereafter
Hereafter is a powerful novella-in-flash about the nature of grief. A woman loses her child when he’s young. There is no one there for her and those people who should be part of her support system, mother and partner and others, are either missing from her life or so critical of it and her that she might as well be alone. So she has to find a way to live and survive without the help of others. Hereafter is also a discussion of what it is for a woman to grow and feel invisible in a culture obsessed with sexualizing youth. What stands out as one of its achievements of Hereafter is the way that the main character doesn’t experience grief in a linear fashion or predictably. Years later, she’ll be reminded of what she lost and will be drawn into the pain in unexpected ways depicting the way that grief functions in a realistic way.

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian-born British writer. Her novel, The Normal State of Mind, was published in 2015 by Parthian (UK) and Bee Books (India) in 2016 and was long listed for the Words to Screen Prize, Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) Film Festival in 2018. Her collection of short stories, Table Manners, was published by Dahlia Publishing in 2018 and won The Saboteur Prize for the Best Short Story Collection in 2019. She teaches contemporary fiction at Winchester University. She was Writer-in-Residence at Word Factory in 2021. She is a regular workshop presenter at the Flash Fiction Festivals UK. She lives in Winchester.

• Thank you for agreeing to judge our 26th award that closes in February 2024.
  You write novels, short stories, poetry and flash fiction. Do you find in your writing that you switch easily from one form of writing to another?

I’m so excited to be the judge for the Bath Flash Fiction competition. I enjoy writing across forms and I love working in a new medium as I always love a challenge. I don’t necessarily write everything all at once, but I may have a phase of writing lots of poetry. Or a phase of writing flash fiction. Attending festivals, writing group events, workshops is helpful as a lot of work or ideas of new work get produced there. The novel is ever present in the background, and I dedicate chunks of time to focus on that when I can (which is why that is the slowest) and with short stories, I work on one idea at a time until I feel I have perfected it. Getting commissions is great, because then I have a deadline, something to work towards and most of my nonfiction writing is done through commissions. So is writing for radio. My flash fiction writing spree is particularly active closer to National Flash Fiction Day and before and after the Flash Fiction Festival! I don’t juggle all the balls at the same time, but I try and focus on one form for a while, or for a project or competition and then move on to the next. Poetry, I think, is a constant. I don’t share it as much, but I definitely write a lot more poetry than anything else.

• What do you like about writing flash?

I love flash for the immediacy, the sense of urgency in a story. It’s punchy and experimental, and although it could be even 100 words long, it’s no easy feat to create a narrative in those many words which has a plot, character development, emotions, conflict and a punchy that often leaves the reader breathless. It’s a great challenge and to achieve a successful flash fiction requires great skill. I love the flash community as well. Most flash fiction writers are very supportive and enjoy being part of the community without being to competitive. There’s a lot of encouragement to keep writing flash, and lots of events that help this community to grow.

• Recently, some of your short stories were broad cast on BBC radio. Was that under a special theme and is there still a link to listen to them?

I’ve had a few stories on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra.Table Manners was serialized for Radio 4 Extra and I was commissioned to write 2 short stories and a non-fiction piece for Radio 4. The latest is on the theme of Golden Eggs, where five British Asian writers take folktales or traditional stories and rework them in contemporary settings. My story is called ‘The Gift’, and you can listen to it here.

• You are an associate lecturer in Creative Writing in Winchester and have taught workshops and courses in numerous places, both for adults and young people. What upcoming events are you involved in?

I teach on the BA and MA programmes at Winchester University and I really enjoy it. I worked with ArtfulScribe’s Mayflower Young Writers for several years, and found that the young writers find the flash form really exciting as well. At the moment, I run the ArtfulScribe SO:Write Women’s Writing group, which is online on the 1st Thursday of the month and in person in Southampton on the 3rd Saturday of the month. It’s a fantastic way to meet women writers, talk about writing, write together and share work. We’re loving writing flash fiction at the moment!
I also developed and run a short story course for Professional Writing Academy.
What I’m currently excited about are the projects I’ve co-founded with Aiysha Jahan, Bridges not Borders and Write Beyond Borders, which are a combination of mentoring writers from South Asia and UK, doing folkart in schools around the Solent region, producing an anthology of short stories and having an exhibition in Portsmouth Guildhall in July next year.

• You have been a professional writer since 2005. Can you tell us some of the highlights of your career so far?

I think it depends on what one might call ‘a highlight’. Of course, having a book published is always a highlight. So having my debut novel, A Normal State of Mind, published by Parthian was definitely a highlight. Publishing by short story collection, Table Manners, with Dahlia Books was a highlight, and then winning the Saboteur Prize for Best Short Story collection was a highlight. Being a regular BBC Radio 4 listener and then having my stories aired on Radio 4 is a highlight.

But the true highlights that I will hold dear to me are the little things: readers appreciating my work, readers reaching out to me to let me know my words have moved them. For example, finding someone reading my novel in a hospital waiting room was a highlight! A terminally ill friend of my husband’s parking his car to ring him, to let him know he’d just listened to my radio essay about cancer and how much that had resonated with him that meant so much to me. A Year 2 child in my children’s school where I used to work as a dinner lady would stop me on the way to lunch hall to give me ideas for my next book. (They’d been shocked when I had visited their class to talk about writing and shown them my book! They had said, you’re our Dinner Lady. And I had said, Dinner Ladies can do loads of other things outside of the lunch hour!) My daughter forgetting her reading book in secondary school, and her teacher fishing out a book from her bag to give her to read. ‘It’s your mother’s book,’ the teacher said. ‘Have you read it?’ ‘No,’ said my daughter, probably embarrassed at all the attention she would now get. Then all her classmates googled me, and she came home, saying, ‘mum, you’re a celebrity! Google recognizes you as a writer!’ That made me chuckle! Being invited to Cardiff University to talk to MA students about my writing journey has always been special. It’s always a ‘this is where it started, this is how it’s going’ experience! These are some highlights I will remember fondly and forever!

• Finally, as our judge, can you say what sort of story would stand out as a winner for you?

For me, a flash fiction should immerse me in the story. It should feel immediate and also layered with meaning. It should leave something for the reader to work out, or have a moment of epiphany at the end. It could be a story about a theme without mentioning the theme. Think about Hermit Crab style or other ways of approaching a story. The story should make me wake up in the middle of night, still worrying about the characters, or trying to work out how they could work out the stuff they’ve been put through. A standout story would involve me as a reader, and make me care intensely for the character/s. In cricketing lingo, a story should not target the reader head on, give me a good googly ball – a sudden spin that will get you if, as a reader, you’re not ready for it!

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