Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award long list and huge thanks to all who entered.
Novella-in-Flash 2021 Award Long List
News
Interview with K M Elkes, Judge, 18th Award
- K.M. Elkes is based in the West Country, UK. His flash fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) was shortlisted for a 2020 Saboteur Award. He is a previous winner of the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and the Fish Publishing Flash Prize, as well as being published in more than 40 anthologies and online literary magazines. His short stories have won, or been placed, in international writing competitions, such as the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature Prize and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. His writing has featured on schools and college curricula in the USA, India and Hong Kong and used by bibliotherapy charity The Reader. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University.From 2016-18 he was Guest Editor of the A3 Review literary magazine. As a writer from a rural, working class background, his work often reflects marginalised voices and places.
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17th Bath Flash Fiction Award Round Up
Thanks very much to everyone who entered the 17th Round of Bath Flash Fiction Award. We very much appreciate your support for the Award. We received 1447 entries (almost exactly the same number as in the previous round). It is a great privilege to organise an Award that attracts so many writers from all around the world. Especially in a time of great stress for everyone due to the continuing impact of the pandemic. This time 48 countries were represented.
Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Cyprus,Denmark, Dominica, Egypt, France, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan,Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia
February 2021 Short List
Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award short list and huge thanks to all who entered.
Pre-order The Yet Unknowing World, new flash collection by Fiona J Mackintosh
We’re so delighted that Ad Hoc Fiction, our short-short fiction press, is publishing Fiona J Mackintosh’s debut flash fiction collection, The Yet Unknowing World. It’s one of two books open for pre-order today, 22nd February, with a 25% discount during the pre-order period, by authors from two different hemispheres, Fiona in the US and Iona Winter in New Zealand. Both brilliant examples of the range of variety of the flash fiction form.
In advance praise, well-known writer and teacher of flash fiction, Kathy Fish, one of the acclaimed authors quoted on the back cover says of The Yet Unknowing World:
“These stories by Fiona J. Mackintosh are miniature masterpieces, resonating far beyond the pages they inhabit. Mackintosh’s pen is assured, her vision clear-eyed yet compassionate. Like the paintings of Edward Hopper, The Yet Unknowing World invites us all to peer into the dark, quiet corners of human yearning and to connect with the flawed, aching beauty of our own hearts.”
We agree. We love the variety of Fiona’s writing and her beautiful use of imagery and detail. There are such treasures within this book. In the interview below, Fiona talks about how the book came about, its construction, the cover design, where the title comes from and more.
We hope you will be able to come along to the Zoom launch Jude is hosting on the first day of Spring, Saturday 20th March from 7.30- 9.30 pm GMT. Please contact her at Jude {at} adhocfiction [dot} com for a link.At the launch, Fiona will read several of the stories,there will be extra short readings from guests, time to talk to flash fiction friends from around the world and we’ll give away two copies of the book for those who win our quiz.
The collection is published the day before the launch on 19th March and the book will be also be available on Amazon Kindle and in paperback from Amazon Worldwide, as well as from our bookshop.
February 2021 Long List
Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award long list and huge thanks to all who entered.
Launch of Restore To Factory Settings, BFFA Anthology Vol. 5
Jude Higgins is hosting the launch of Restore to Factory Settings on Zoom on Saturday evening 30th January from 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm GMT. There are 136 micros in the anthology from the three rounds of the Bath Flash Fiction Award 2020. We’ll hear many of the winning and commended pieces from each of the Awards plus some of shortlisted pieces. A fabulous evening of fun, flash and friendship from around the world.
Readers include Sharon Telfer, Johanna Robinson, and Fiona Perry, the three first prize winners, Hannah Storm, Simon Cowdroy and Tara Isabel Zambrano; the second prize winners, Christina Dalcher and Jan Kaneen the third prize winners; commended writers Emily Harrison and Alison Powell plus shortlisted writers Kate Lee, Nancy Ludmerer, Christopher Allen, Alison Woodhouse, Giles Montgomery, Maria Alejandra Barrios Velez, Danny Beusch and Sara Hills. J A Keogh will also read his story. ‘Restore to Factory Settings’. which inspired the wonderful cover. We’re delighted that the judges for the three Awards, Santino Prinzi, Mary Jane Holmes and Nod Ghosh are all able to come and will say a little about their selections.
Please email me at Jude {at}adhocfiction {dot} com for a Zoom link. We’d love to see you there. The anthology is available to buy from adhocfiction.com bookshop plus in print and digital versions in Amazon if you want to buy beforehand.
The books were all posted out to the authors within the pages in the first week of December and now most of them have reached their destinations. The pictures in the collages show their locations — all different parts of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia,New Zealand, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, France, Switzerland and elsewhere. I asked people to place their books next to rusty things and we have a wonderful selection here from rusty wheels and ancient machinery, chairs, grills, bird baths, fences, rust coloured cats, sculptures, teapots, hedges garden ornaments and rusty coloured clothes, as well as festive shots and views of mountains and deserts! Thanks so much to everyone for obliging.
Round up for 2020. Thank you to all our supporters!
At the end of another decade this is the fifth year of the Bath Flash Fiction Award.Thank you very much to everyone who has submitted to our Awards over the years. It has been a wonderful experience reading so much exceptional flash fiction. In 2020, despite everything, even more writers from around the world entered the 2020 Awards. In total, there were 4235 entries from 49 different countries and people tell us we have been part of putting flash fiction on the map. Which is a lovely thing to hear.
In recent weeks, our fifth anthology, Return to Factory Settings. has been arriving in many different countries. And we hope all 136 contributors, writers who were longlisted, shortlisted or placed in the three Awards will have received their copies. We love the fact that writers new to flash fiction are published in the anthology as well as those who have been published before. The brilliant cover, designed by Ad HocFiction, was inspired by a story within the anthology by UK writer J A Keogh, who explained that it was last year’s Bath Flash Anthology that got him started on writing flash fiction. We think that’s a great circle to complete.
This year, the judges were Santino Prinzi from the UK, Mary-Jane Holmes who is based in the UK and the USA and Nod Ghosh from New Zealand. We’re very thankful to them for the hard work and comments on the listed and winning stories.
You can buy all five anthologies, pictured in the gallery here, from adhocfiction.com
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Q & A with author J A Keogh author of Restore to Factory Settings
We think Restore to Factory Settings the title from a micro by UK writer, J A Keogh, is a great headline for the fifth Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology. Here, he writes more about the story and about writing flash, which he’s had much success at, after only writing in this form for a year. He was hooked when he read last year’s anthology, With One Eye On The Cows. and it’s particularly gratifying that one of our anthologies inspired him. A goal of BFFA has always been to encourage writers to read and write flash fiction. His story is the last one of the 136 fictions in the anthology, which you can buy from adhocfiction.com and from Amazon in different countries in both paperback and ebook formats.
As the anthology cover picture has the rusty background, I suggested authors might take a picture of the book with something rusty. Justin’s found a great image of a rusty couple in a boat. We thought they might be the couple in his story, who, he says below, have ‘a mutual addiction to impermanence’. Read in Full
Interview with Johanna Robinson, 1st prize winner, BFFA October, 2020
We’re delighted to share an interview with Johanna Robinson, who won first prize in the October 2020 round, which was judged by Nod Ghosh. The story plus two other listed stories of Johanna’s is included with all the other winners and longlisted writers who agreed to publication in Restore to Factory Settings Bath Flash Fiction Vol 5. released this week from Ad Hoc Fiction. Johanna was a runner-up in our Novella-in-Flash award in 2019 with her wonderful NIF, Homing. It is now available as an ebook from kindle as well as in paperback from the Ad Hoc Fiction Bookshop. Links to worldwide kindle are on the bookshop page. So if you want to read more of Johanna’s work, it is instantly available. We’re so interested to learn that her win, ‘Blessings 1849’, another historical piece, is a story which had been submitted into various competitions previously in different forms and had actually also been sent to BFFA before and not been listed. Johanna describes here how she edited it and we’d love to take up her offer to show the various versions of the story, in a new post on the site. It also gives encouragement to others, as she said, not to lose heart over a piece you are dedicated to. It might need working on, but it can still be successful in finding a home as a competition winner or in a magazine.
Interview Read in Full