I have selected the longlist for our NIF Award since the inaugural year, 2017, reading over the past nine years, several hundred novellas. We don’t receive a huge number of entries (compared to the numbers who enter our three times a year single flash award). This year we received just over 80 submissions But I so appreciate everyone who has entered since our first award. Some writers have entered several times. It’s a difficult form to write and as someone who has written, but not yet completed several novellas-in-flash, I have learned a great deal from reading so many good NIFS.

This time, there were many inventive takes on the novella-in-flash form, some surreal and highly metaphorical, others with fragmentary structures, others with more traditional story telling. The subjects ranged widely. Many focussed on relationships in the wider context of today’s world including climate change and political events. Historical novellas, mainly set in the 19th and 20th centuries featured strongly and included strong dilemmas or shocking occurrences, which have relevance to today.

The novella-in-flash has evolved over the years since our first Award and some of the criteria for the form has altered over this time. Because including context is necessary for the flow of the story, not all flash fictions can stand alone as a story outside the novella. In my close reading I was, however, wanting what I call ‘a felt gap’ in between pieces. This could be a time leap, a different situation for the character, or a shift to another character’s perspective. At the same time, stories needed to have enough ‘connective tissue’ to flow, but not to flow seamlessly from chapter to chapter like a traditional novella. Each ‘chapter’ needed to feel like a complete flash fiction, rather than fragment or a traditional chapter. I am interested in the many variations possible in the the flash fiction form, and if experiemental flash forms (for eg, list stories, stories in letter form or revisioned fairy tales) worked with the story flow, I was happy to see them.

Judges of writing competitions frequently say it is the stories that stay with them which end up the top five. This was the case with me. I felt very involved with the characters in the winning novellas. I could strongly visualise where they were. I was moved. I rooted for them, hoping they could overcome obstacles, held my breath, wanted their lives to turn out well. I was drawn in at the beginning and felt satisfied with the endings.

I’m looking forward to seeing the top three novellas in print, published by our small press, Ad Hoc Fiction and launched at the Flash Fiction Festival in July, this year. Very best wishes to the highly commended authors for future publication and to all the authors with stories in our long and short lists. In the past many novellas entered for our awards have been published elsewhere and won prizes.

Here are my selections (and you can read the biographies of the authors on our winners’ pages)
!st Prize: In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit

I loved this novella on many levels. I liked its close focus on the life of a family in the USA in the 1960s and how they navigate day to day situations. I liked the POV, in the strong and believable voice of a young teenaged girl, and the way she thinks about her family and relates to them. The adults are flawed but believable too — a fearful grandmother who makes doom-laden remarks and has many strange habits, a self-preoccupied mother, a father who spends much time away from the home and an aunt who reveals secrets. We learn more about why the adults are like this as the novella progresses, sometimes via the aunt and often by the inclusion of ‘list’ stories, which add depth to the characters. It is clear the girl loves her parents and grandmother even though she longs for a ‘show family’ of the kind she sees on the television where they are happily together. The novella is moving, and also has humour — a great combination. The use of the rabbit motif threading through, adds a further depth. In the end, the family, in crisis, does pull together.

Runner-Up: The Lives of the Dead
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.

Runner-Up: Spin of the Triangle
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.

Highly Commended: Playing With Fire
In this novella, we follow the journey of Jewell as she develops a career as a potter after the break up of her marriage, Jewell is an engaging protagonist who has the courage and determination to carry on and overcome obstacles to success. The author uses the different states of clay — Greenware, Bisque, Glaze, in the three different sections of the novella to show how Jewell progresses and this works very well. The dialogue between Jewell and the other characters is fresh and lively as are the titles of each short flash chapter, which further enhance the whole piece. Set in the US in 1980s, it gives a vivd portrayal of the times.

Highly Commended: Codewords
From the very first story in Codewords, the author gives us a vivid picutre in full sensory detail of life in Belfast in the 1980s/90s —during the time of ‘The Troubles’, The Northern Ireland Conflict, where day to day living involves people existting in deep fear of what might happen to them, from shootings,to knee-cappings, buses burning and bombs. Codewords shows the impact on various families, mainly through the voices of children, in an extremely powerful way. Adults talk in code, sometimes to try and protect the children. And this strategy echos through the novella in different ways. It’s hard for children to work out what the adults mean and sometimes even more frightening to hear half-truths. The mixture of what is said and what is not said is very effective.