News

The Power of Three

Just three weeks until our 31st Award closes on October 5thl .Thank you to everyone who has entered so far. We’re getting pretty busy.

To remind you, the prize fund is £1460. All 50 longlisted writers are offered publication in our tenth anniversary anthology and a free copy of the anthology will be sent to all contrinutors. Judge is muliti-award winning writer and tutor, Kathyrn Aldridge-Morris. Read my interview with her, (which also mentions her reaently published collection, Cold Toast here
Results are announced on this website by the end of the month and the long and short lists before that.

Here are three tips for you for creating new flashes or revising old ones. Yes, many of you know all these sort of things but every one forgets at least one of them.

1.Consider entering three stories. Readers have different tastes. Entries for three are discounted to £18

2.To make your story standout, go for your 3rd, 13th or even 33rd idea on a theme. So many editors and judges make the point that within competition entries there are many, many stories on familiar themes. You might not even realise how many dozens of stories can be about relationship break ups, dementia, or the end of the world. Many of these are excellent but the best ones add something new and arresting.

3.To add unusual departures in your stories pick three random words from three different pages in a non-fiction book, with the number three included, if you get stuck with your story. This activiy will be your personal version of ‘Word Cricket’, the exercise popularised by well-known writer and teacher, Vanessa Gebbie which she offers each year at the Flash Fiction Festival Bath Flash Fiction sponsors in Bristol in July each year. Vanessa starts off the whole group writing with the same phrase and bowls in random words at intervals which can make strange and wonderful things happen in a story. Often festival participants bravely read their new stories to the whole assembly. It’s extraordinary the drafts people write in a very short time, emboldened by the words and how differently the writers make use of these words.

I am suggesting a non fiction book to pick the words from because they often have a number of interesting words on any page. For eg. I just found up a copy of Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald a book of essays about the natural world and chose disarticulated, qualms and nightjar from three different pages. Including such words could make a potential story about a rocky relationship, for example, go in unexpected directions.

Best wishes everyone. The picture shows a lucky four-leaved clover! Three leaved clovers are far too common of course. So just add one extra extraordinary thing to your story for luck. A great title, a fantastic ending. Something oddly amusing.

Thanks

Jude
September 14th, 2025

4 weeks to go until the deadline of our 31st Award!

Our 31st Award closes 4 weeks today, on October 5th. Our judge is Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, a previous first prize winner of Bath Flash Fiction Award (read her story, selected by the judge of that round, Matt Kendrick here). Double and triple entries are discounted. £1460 in prize money. Results out at the end of October. All fifty longlisted writers are offered publication in our anthology. It’s your last chance this year to be published in our tenth anniversary award anthology and to receive a free copy of the book.

If you want a prompt,read our interview with Alison Powell, first prize winner of the 30th Award (story linked here).

If you want last minute inspiration, on Saturday 27th September and are in or near Bath, Jude’s holding a FREE evening of readings with readings from around 15 flash fiction writers, in St Jame’s Wine Vaults gallery room in Bath, from 7.30 pm to 10.00 pm. Free snacks and raffle with tickets £1.00 each and good prizes of books and other goodies. Proceeds from the raffle are again being donated to Penny Brohn National Cancer Help Centre, based in Bristol. At the in person Flash Fiction Festival, we sponsor, we raised £384 for Penny Brohn and they sent us this lovely thank you certicate to share. Thanks to all who came to the festival and bought tickets and for volunteer Nicold Keller (helped by Cheryl Markosky) for selling them

Dates For your flash fiction diary!

If you weren’t able to come to the in-person Flash Fiction Festival this July and want a festival vibe, I’ve organised another online Great Flash Fiction Festival Series. This one is series five. Three festival days from 11.00 am to 6.30 pm London Time, on 25th Oct, 29th November and 10th January on Zoom Each day there are three workshops. Two of 60 mins and one of 90 mins, a writing prompt for a free mini contest. Prizes for winners books and publication on line and in the 2026 Festival anthology, flash fiction readings from world wide authors, yoga for writers and community chats. (Plus a few little surprises).

The competitions and the day are a riff on the reality TV show, The Great British Bake Off. The writing prompts, which I set will, like the Bake Off series, involve a signature, technical, and showstopper challenge. One on each day. Exccept you will be cooking stories not cakes and sparking off an image plus some instructions from me (Jude Higgins).

Many of the workshops on offer are online versions of ones offered at the in person festival. Read all about them and the workshop leaders on flashfictionfestival.com. You can also see the timetable for each day there and you can book via Paypal or any card.

Each day only costs £35. Or you can buy all three days for the discounted price of £90

Hope you can come! The days are a lot of fun. And friendly and it’s nice to chat with your world wide flashy friends. You can also come of course if you are new to flash and what to find out more.

And here’s a reminder of other flashy dates. The 31st Bath Flash Fiction Award closes in just over four weeks (October 5th). It’s judged by one of our first prize winners, Kathryn Aldridge Morris, who has also won several other awards. Check out our interview with her). Results out by November 1st. Anthology publication offer in our special 10th anniversary BFFA anthology for all 50 longlisted. £1460 in prizes.

The 9th Bath Novella in Flash also closes in October (October 31st). For novellas in flash in between 6.000 and 18,000 words. Winner receives £300 and publication plus 5 free copies. And two runners up £100 plus publication and five free copies. I’m selecting again for this round. Read what I like here

Finally I’m hosting a FREE evening of readings in the Gallery room at St James Wine Vaults Bath on the evening of 27th September from 7.30 pm to 10.00 pm . Around 15 flash fiction writers reading. Plus raffle, free snacks and bar. All welcome.

Novella-in-flash news!

Our 2026 Novella in Flash Award, judged by me, Jude Higgins, is now open for entries until 31st October 2025. Results out in January 2026. For novellas-in-flash in between 6000 and 18000 words. First prize: £300 plus publication with Ad Hoc Fiction and five free copies. Two runners-up, £100 each plus five free copies and publication. Published in late spring, 2026.

All our three prize-winning novellas in flash from the 2025 which were launched at the flash fiction festival in Bristol in July are now available to buy from Amazon in paperpack as well as from our UK online bookshop, adhocfiction.com

They are all wonderful! Read more about them here

I’ve linked to Amazon below. Or buy from Ad Hoc Fiction

First-prize winner: In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit by Debra A Daniel

Runner-up: The Lives of the Dead by Fiona Mckay

Runner-up: Spin of the Triangle by Stephanie Carty

Q & A With Alison Powell,1st Prize winner, 30th Award

We’re delighted to publish an interview with our June first prize winner, Alison Powell, just before the end of the Early Bird Period for our next Award this Sunday 10th August. Read judge, Marie Gethins comments about her amazing first prize win and look for a great prompt by Alison to inspire you to write for the next round at the end of the interview,

Q & A with Alison

The City of Los Angeles is on Tactical Alert

Read in Full

2025 Novella-in-Flash Winners’ books back from the printers!

We’re excited that the top three novellas-in-flash from the 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in -Flash Award are back from the printers, just ready to be brought to the Flash Fiction Festival weekend 18-20 July where they are going to be launched. It’s even more exciting that all three authors will be at the festival, to receive their books and briefly talk about and read from them. Debra A Daniel won first prize with In the Dark Eyes of The Rabbit and the runners-up were Fiona McKay with The Lives of the Dead and Stephane Carty with Spin of the Triangle. Congratulations to all! It’s wonderful to see these novellas published now in paperback with Ad Hoc Fiction in the UK. In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit is also already published worldwide by Amazon in paperback and the other two novellas will also be published by Amazon in paperback soon.

Read about the authors here and what I said about them in my judge’s comments.

Jude Higgins, July 10th, 2025

Q & A with Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, judge, 31st Award

We’re delighted that Kathryn Aldridge Morris, a first prize and highly commended writer in previous competitions, has agreed to be our 31st Award judge.

Kathryn is a Bristol-based writer whose work has been widely published in anthologies and literary journals including Pithead Chapel, Aesthetica, The Four Faced Liar, Fractured Lit, Stanchion Magazine, Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. She has won the Bath Flash Fiction Award, The Forge’s Flash Nonfiction competition, Lucent Dreaming’s flash fiction contest, and Manchester Writing School’s QuietManDave Prize, and her work has been selected twice for the Wigleaf Top 50. She was recently awarded an Arts Council England grant to write a novella in flash. Her debut collection Cold Toast was published by Dahlia Books in May 2025.

Q & A

You won first prize in our Award in October 2024 with your story ‘Visiting Lenin’s Tomb’, linked above. In our interview with you last year you described how you came to write this story and how you like playing with the form. Do you have a preference for writing and reading flash that is experimental in some way.

Your flash fiction collection Cold Toast was published by Dahlia Books in May. Can you tell us something about the collection and where it is for sale?

It’s available to be shipped in the UK and overseas from Dahlia Books – thanks for asking!

The workshop you are running at the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol this July is about putting a story collection together. What will you be focussing on in this workshop?

We’ll look at the history of the chapbook as a starting point for digging into our own motivations for wanting to publish. We’ll reflect on my own and a range of other flash writers’ experiences so people can start to figure out what’s best for them. My goal is for people to go away galvanized, with an expanded awareness of the possibilities for getting their collections into the world and what to bear in mind when submitting. I want to embolden writers to make the choices that are right for them and their work. So this workshop is essentially like a massive heads-up to make sure writers aren’t just randomly throwing their words out there like a wedding bouquet for anyone to catch.

You received an Arts Council Grant last year to write a novella in flash. How’s it going and what are you finding most interesting in writing in this form?

I’m starting to realise how satisfying it can be to linger in moments and how this is taking my writing to new places. The novella in flash form has given me an ‘in’ and enabled me to tackle a longer project, but I’m wondering if the story is now demanding to be told as a novella. I’ve just passed the half-way mark and have gone from fantasizing about how much to charge Netflix for the rights to thinking I need to start all over! I’ve heard this is an inevitable trajectory, so maybe this means I’m a proper long-form writer now.

You’ve won first prize in other major competitions, including QuietManDave, Lucent Dreaming and The Forge prize for Flash Nonfiction, and have been listed or placed many times in others.What would you say was the most important thing to consider when submitting to a writing competition which receives hundreds of entries?

I rarely write with the explicit intention of submitting to a contest, so the stories I’ve submitted were things that had already been pressing themselves up inside me to be written and then the contest came up and seemed to be the right place at the right time. If a story doesn’t matter to me, it won’t matter to a judge. There has to be that emotional core. So, my advice would be to submit a story that took you by surprise, shook you up, led you to an unexpected place. Before I submit I will also consider the different ways my story might stand out to give me a chance. Does it perhaps tackle a theme I don’t see written about very often? Or does it have a unique setting which adds another layer of meaning or tension to the surface story? Does it take risks or try something new? Have I included unusual, resonant details? Ultimately, it’s about having the confidence in your own voice and telling a story in the way only you can.

July 1st 2025

Note: The 31st £1460 prize fund Award will be open for entries in the next few days and will close in early October this year. All fifty longlisted writers will be offered publication in our 10th anniversary anthology, out at the end of this year, or early next

Novellas-in-Flash by Fiona McKay and Stephanie Carty Now Up for Pre-order

Two more novellas-in-flash published by Ad Hoc Fiction are now available for pre-order at a 25% discount until publication day on 6th July!

The Lives of the Dead by Fiona McKay and Spin of the Triangle by Stephanie Carty were runners-up in the 2025 Bath Novella in Flash Award. Read more about the authors here We’re excited that both novellas will be launched at the Flash Fiction Festival 18th-20th July in Bristol, along with the winning novella, In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit by Debra A Daniel, also available for pre-order until July 6th.

The Lives of the Dead by Fiona McKay
“Newly married Kate, is in an unequal relationship. Her husband holds a firm grip on their future, his hand literally holding tight on her wrist, causes small bruise marks and this motif continues throught the novella. He wants children immediately, would like them to have four, for her to be a stay-at-home mum. Kate wants a different future and struggles to find her own way through. The author has structured the novella brilliantly with Kate’s journey to self-realisation interspersed with re-visioned fairy tales. The fairy tales offer great depth to how the story unfolds and invite many reads to get their full impact. The interior focus of the POV shows Kate’s sometimes guilty struggles about motherhood and competing desires very well” – Jude Higgins, Judge, 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash Award.

Spin of the Triangle by Stephanie Carty
“This novella-in-flash tackles an important and difficult subject in a very skillful way. We are introduced to the different women who take part a baby-trafficking business. They are all vulnerable and have lived lives where they have been exploited in many different ways. The author shows the characters in the novella convincingly occupying each of the three roles in the victim, persecutor and rescuer triangle, at different times. In the end, we see that it may be possible for them to step out of moving around this triangle and have a different life. I was impressed by the individual stories in different POVs All aspects of the baby-trafficking business are covered, from the young girls manipulated to give up their babies, the grief of those who regret their choices, the office manager deadening her feelings with alchohol, the lies told about the babies’ origins. And in the background, the men who control it all”.
Jude Higgins, Judge, 2025 Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash Award.

Round-up: June 2025 Award

We love the results of the June Award coming three weeks before the Flash Fiction Festival where so many flash fiction fans gather to celebrate the short-short form.

For this round we received 999 entries from the following 35 countries:

Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

Thank you to all of you. We appreciate all of you for your support. The Last Minute Club badge, issued to last day entrants reflected the colours on the cover of the 2024 Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology, recently published after a delay. As usual there were many writers who entered at the last minute and received their badges. Thank you to the earlybirds and the many others who entered before the final deadlines. We appreciate all of you for your support.

Our big thanks also to to Marie Gethins for judging th 30th Award, choosing the short list of twenty from our longlist of fifty and selecting the winners. Read Marie’s report to see comments on the longlist she received and how immersed herself in the stories and read and re-read the stories before coming to her decisions all marvellous stories:

This time round, three different countries were represented among our five winners.
First prize winner The City of Los Angeles is on Tactical Alert is by Alison Powell from Somerset in the UK
Second prize Psalm (Among the Animals) is by Joseph Randolph
Third prize Revelation, 1859 is by Sharon Telfer, from Yorkshire in the UK
Michelle Wright from Australia is highly commended for ‘Negative’ and Christine H Chen from the US is highly commended for ‘Awakening

All stories along with those by shortlisted and longlisted writers will be published in our 10th Anniversary Anthology, out at the end of this year or early next.

The 31st Award, judged by award winning writer and writing tutor and one of our previous first prize winners, Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, will be open tomorrow July 1st and will close in early October.

We look forward to reading your stories.

Jude Higgins, June 29th 2025

Judge’s report, 30th Award, by Marie Gethins

Thank you very much to Marie Gethins, our 30th Award judge, for her dedication to the task and for her great selections and insightful comments. Her comments on the stories are below. All the stories are published on this website and will be included in our 10th anniversary anthology, along with longlisted and shortlisted stories to be published later this year (or early next).

Judge Notes

Hitting that submit button is always an act of writerly courage and I applaud the spirit of all who entered this round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award. It’s been a privilege to read this rich array of flash. The fifty longlisted pieces revealed a wide range of approaches and areas of focus. Great to see historical, as well as contemporary, settings in the mix. Narrowing it down to twenty was difficult and winnowing it to the final five a true challenge. All stories were read and reread multiple times, mused over during long walks and a few even entered my dreams. Judging is inevitably a reflection of personal taste, writing/submitting often a test of perseverance. For those that didn’t make the final cut, keep going!

First Place: The City of Los Angeles is on Tactical Alert

The confluence of a sociocultural event with a deeply personal moment is deftly interwoven for devastating effect. Using anaphora for rhythm and emphasis, the author guides the reader on a relentless, emotional journey encompassing anticipation, joy, frustration, anger, fear and resolve. The flash reaps new rewards upon multiple readings. Precise word choice, mix of sentence lengths, and most importantly the careful thematic interlacing of public protest/law enforcement actions with differing parental response to a daughter taking her first steps results in a compelling final line: ‘This is all of us on tactical alert.’ A superb piece that is topical but destined to become a future touchstone.

Second Place: Psalm (After the Animals)
Beautifully framed by the protagonist’s well-loved, deceased dog, this lyrical and musical flash uses language to great effect with a powerful voice. The author conjures a mystical landscape with ‘moss that glows like bruised saints’ and ‘cedar tongues peel back from bark’. A full life is encompassed within a succinct, well-paced story that uses white space for excellent impact. Descriptions surprise and entice. The woman’s grief is palpable with the reader too welcoming the phantom dog’s return in ‘rainlight, tongue wild, eyes full of god’. A sacred song indeed.

Third Place: Revelation, 1859

An excellent title does a lot of heavy lifting here, settling the reader in time at the start, but adding nuance after the conclusion. The author skilfully provides a wonderful, atmospheric voice with historical vernacular for setting and era, while maintaining a clear storyline. Vivid descriptions place the reader in bed with the narrator during a storm, on the way to church and on the shore to witness the ‘revelation’. Lovely metaphors are sprinkled throughout: ‘thunder crashing loud as doomsday’, ‘grin as long as a flagpole, ‘teeth as big as bairns’. An intriguing historical flash.

Highly Commended: Negative

Negative considers grief with a husband’s response to his wife’s death via analogue photography. The concepts of light/dark and black/white are well wrought as the couple’s two sons try to navigate their father’s new hobby as his method of coping with loss. Yet, after his death the film negative strips reveal insights into their own grief.

Highly Commended: Awakening

Viewed through a child’s eyes, the flash relates the story of a mother’s grief after child loss and the father’s struggles to maintain family life when his wife disappears. An evocative conclusion with the narrator giving a mature observation of hope.