Review of The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain, by Judy Darley

Judy Darley’s third collection, The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain’ was published by Reflex Press earlier this year and launched at Waterstones Bristol around the time of the spring equinox. Jude’s delighted to review this splendid selection of stories just before the winter solstice. Put it on your reading list for Christmas! It is available directly from Reflex Press.

Read more about Judy’s work on her website SkyLightRain, which includes links to her other collections, writing prompts, news of her teaching activities and her own excellent reviews of books and theatre productions. She has reviewed many of the books published by our small press, Ad Hoc Fiction and we are very grateful to her for careful and thoughtful reviews.

Review of The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain

There’s an elemental feel to The Stairs are A Snowcapped Mountain. Both because the stories are often located outside in the ‘elements’ and also because many include elemental themes. Judy Darley is skilful in her use of metaphor. She recasts fairy stories and conjures new mythological worlds including creatures and humans, showing how closely connected we are to other living things both physically and psychologically. Oceans,seas,lakes and rivers are frequently present. People traverse them, are soaked in a deluge or are on holiday in frozen landscapes. We learn about lonely and captive sea creatures. ’Honey in Solitude’ is from the point of view of a Bottle Nosed dolphin in captivity in Japan. ‘Why Rivers Run to the Sea’ a story from the point of view of a river, ends tellingly, with the line,”There’s a storm brewing, we’re all invited.”

One story with a title that suggests much about the very young protagonist’s life is called ‘The Sea Lives in Her Mum’s Head’. The girl’s Nanna has explained why her mother cries and wails. “Storms rile up the waves inside her, and tears happen when the spray breaks free”… “Her moaning, Nanna says, is the sound of the wind whipping salty air over the sea.” It’s only occasionally that the mother is calm.

Both the pieces mentioned above are very short and the collection comprises a mixture of short ‘flash fiction’ pieces and longer short stories. There are several stories concerning disrupted relationships — between sisters, parents and children and lovers. The use of the elements often echo themes in these stories. A favourite story of mine, ‘Fermented Cherries’, tells of a grandchild visiting their estranged grandfather in a Fado club to tell the old man the mother, his daughter, is dead. Again this begins with a metaphor of the sea: “The Fado rolls out, washing over me. It’s a salt-weighted tide that ebbs and rises above the listeners’ heads.” As in all of the stories in the collection, much care has been taken with the composition of sentences,the sensory details and the overall structure.The language is beautiful, metaphor deepening the story and adding universal resonance.

Another favourite story, ‘Old Friends’, does not involve the sea, but instead other aspects of nature. This is a touching story about a relationship between a father and a daughter, where the daughter joins her father’s dawn chorus walk with his old male friends. Everyone on the walk must tell a story. Her joining this long-standing group is an important occasion for the father. It evokes another much earlier shared father/daughter experience which she refers to in her story, reconnecting them all over again.

As well as stories successfully employing elemental metaphors, there are others with plainer language and excellent dialogue. Judy writes convincingly in the voice of children or young people. ‘In Kitten Shoes’ is a story showing the longing of a tall girl who wants new white patent leather kitten-heeled shoes but who only gets to keep the coveted pair for one day before her mother says they must go back. Judy also brilliantly captures an outsider adolescent’s breakthrough into being part of something, in a story about clubbing, called ‘The Go-Get-Gone’.

There’s humour, too, in these stories.‘Stealing from Windowsills’ is a darkly wry story based on the fairy tale Rapunzel, where ‘Zel’ hoodwinks the prince into letting her wear his jodhpurs and doublet and leaves him captive while she escapes on his horse.

I have read this collection a few times now and different aspects of these brilliant and varied stories strike me anew each time. The collection is a full and satisfying read.

Jude Higgins, December 2022

BFFA Prize Nominations

We are proud to nominate stories by winning and commended writers selected by our three judges, Karen Jones, Tommy Dean and Emily Devane in our Awards this year for the Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions and The Pushcart Prize literary awards. We aren’t eligble for Best Microfictions, unfortunately, because they don’t allow stories published in print anthologies. Congratulations and best wishes to all the writers whose stories are going forward in these three longstanding and prestigious awards. These stories will soon all be out in print in our end of year anthology, which also includes other brilliant stories from the short and long lists of each round of the competition. Read in Full

Interview with 23rd Award Judge, Sudha Balagopal

CRAFT, Split Lip,

SmokeLong Quarterly

Things I Can’t Tell Amma

Best Microfiction

Best Small Fictions, 2022.

We’re delighted to welcome Sudha Balagopol as judge for our 23rd Award which opens November 1st and closes on Sunday, February 5th, 2023 (Results out at the end of February). Read Jude’s interview with her below, where Sudha tells us about her long writing journey and how she became interested in writing flash. There are links to some of her own wonderful stories, and stories by others, showing her interest in different styles and forms of flash fiction plus tips on what she is looking for in competition entries.

Read in Full

Award Round Up, October 2022

This autumn,1248 writers entered our 22nd Award. Our team reads the entries as they come in, during the four months of the contest, and they are poised to deal with any last minute rush. We all enjoyed reading so many great stories on many different subjects.Thanks to everyone who entered from the 38 countries listed below.

Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Republic of Korea, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

Thank you also to everyone who entered for supporting the Award in these difficult times. The Last Minute Club on the final day is always a wild ride. And the badge this time was a sophisticated black and gold. We appreciated all who sent in stories at any time, early or later, or at the last minute. Some of you said, although you weren’t longlisted, it was worth entering for the experience. Others said they had been successful in reaching the longlist for the first time after many attempts.As someone who enters big contests myself and is frequently not selected in lists, I know it’s a disappointment not to be chosen. We say it often, but it is always true that it is very difficult to whittle the entries down to a final long list of 50 stories from so many very good and inventive pieces. Big thanks to our 22nd Award judge, writer, teacher and editor from the UK, Emily Devane for selecting the final twenty for the shortlist, for choosing the winners and for her excellent report.

You can read these brilliant winning stories on our winners’ page. Many congratulations to the top five. The first prize goes to Kathy Hoyle from the UK for her story ‘The Metamorphosis of Evaline Jackson’, second prize goes to Sarah Freligh from the US for her story ‘McDonald’s’, third prize to Kathleen Latham from the US for ‘Fourth Grade Science Lession, Chickasaw City, Alabama’ and the two highly commended. Debra A Daniel from the US for ‘In the Darkest Dark She Takes My Sleep’, and to Sara Hills from the UK for ‘A Beachcomber’s Guide to Desert Grief.’
Our seventh anthology is due out at the end of this year. We’re very happy that most of the longlisted writers from the three 2022 Awards have agreed to be published. All contributors will receive a free copy, posted worldwise. It’s going to be a fantastic read. Our 23rd Award, judged this time by writer, editor and yoga teacher, Sudha Balagopal from the US will open on November 1st 2022 and close in early February 2023. We look forward to reading more wonderful flash fictions.

Judge’s Report, October 2022

Our big thanks to Emily Devane for all her work! We so appreciate her comments here and for working to our quick turnaround time.

Emily’s Comments

First, I’d like to thank Jude for asking me to judge this round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award. It’s a competition that’s close to my heart – I’ll never forget the joy of having my story selected by Kathy Fish back in 2017. This award sets the gold standard for writing competitions in terms of organisation, engagement and quality. I love the buzz that surrounds deadline day, with entrants proudly sharing their Last Minute Club badges and cheering each other on. The reading team works incredibly hard to turn the stories around so fast. And goodness, what an amazing longlist of stories they picked.

The next stage – whittling down the fifty-strong longlist to just twenty stories – was quite a challenge. If you got to this point, seriously well done. It was such a pleasure reading your words. There was something to admire in every story on that longlist, and the selection was brilliantly varied – some made me laugh, some made me think in a different way, some took a piece of my heart, while others made me swoon at their boldness and originality. In a bid to ensure those stories were treated as if they were my own, I read them through then printed them out, shuffled them and read them again in a different order. It’s interesting how some stories grab you from the off, while others rise up the pile and demand more attention with each re-read. There were several stories I struggled to part with – stories which a different judge, or even me on a different day, might have put through. I’m excited to find out who wrote them all.

When it came to deciding the winners, I had a few sleepless nights, I can tell you. Every story on that shortlist was a potential winner. So, how to choose? Having read and re-read each one, I put them through a series of tests. Was there a sense of meaningful movement or shift? Was language used with precision? Was this story telling me something new or particular? Did this story resonate on an emotional level? There’s always that unknowable element, that magical alchemy that occurs between writer and reader. Ultimately, I had to be guided by instinct when making those tough final decisions. The stories I selected for my final five were those to which I kept returning. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

First Place: The Metamorphosis of Evaline Jackson
This bold and striking story got better with each re-read. There’s not a word out of place. The use of language is confident and playful, with brilliant flourishes and repetitions that mimic the ‘evolution’ of the titular character, Evaline Jackson. We have those ‘cling-cling shorts’, the ‘pop-pop’ of the boys and those dangerous rolling eyes. This is a writer absolutely in control of his/her craft. The theme is a resonant one, too. It tells us so much about teenage girls – how they long to be desired but they fear it, too. Here, the girls follow along behind Evaline Jackson, cutting and glinting and stealing and painting their way to Skittle Town Bowl, only to be appalled at what they’ve unleashed. I loved this so much.

Second Place: McDonald’s
This was one of the shortest stories on the longlist, but there is remarkable power behind it. McDonald’s is a gorgeous, unassuming story that sneaks up on you and leaves your heart in a puddle. The fast-food restaurant setting grounds us from the start. What I loved here was the elegant way in which the writer took us, in very few words, and with wonderfully specific details, into this mother’s experience, showing us how grief can ambush us in unexpected ways. We’re drawn in from the first line, which begins as if we’re already there: The boys again… I can’t read it without getting a lump in my throat. That last line is exquisite: it lands so gently, so beautifully.

Third Place: Fourth Grade Science Lesson, Chickasaw City, Alabama
I knew from my first read of this story that it would be among my top five. It’s a gorgeously written tale of hope. The clear, uncluttered prose brought to mind one of my favourite novellas, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The central image of the papery, brown bulbs that seemed doomed to fail, becomes symbolic of our hope for Rylee’s future – that, contrary to Olivia Hewett’s assertion that ‘flowers are born looking beautiful’, they can be nurtured from very little, ‘those funny-shaped husks hiding something wonderful.’ I love what this story tells us about the transformative power of education.

Highly Commended:In The Darkest Dark She Takes My Sleep

What bowled me over with this piece was the grandmother’s voice, which feels so vivid and alive. It’s a story about loss, but this is also about the ongoing effects of trauma, how the stories we hold are passed on to those around us. And this grandmother is fiercely protective, with her warnings about lightning that ‘seeks out animals’ and ‘bursts through faucets and drowns you in electricity’. There’s a recognition here, too, about the importance of listening. This child’s simple act of sitting in the dark, while her grandmother sits in her rocking chair recalling the story of her sisters, is as moving as it is haunting.

Highly Commended: A Beachcomber’s Guide to Desert Grief
This is a dreamy piece of writing. I chose it because of how it made me feel. The joy of this piece is in the imaginative use of details and vivid sense of place: we have a character wishing to immerse themselves in grief – the exact nature of which we never find out – by pretending that the desert is a seascape. But the attempts at healing are thwarted by the presence of a boy whose breath ‘is root beer soda and barbecue sauce’. A boy who is ‘not dead’. The lines between what is real and what is imagined are blurred at the edges. This writer drew me into the dreamlike world of this character’s sadness with such quiddity, I kept returning to it, turning up more layers of meaning.

Kathy Hoyle October 2022 First Prize

The Metamorphosis of Evaline Jackson

by Kathy Hoyle

When Evaline Jackson saunters into class after summer break, with brand new braids and cling-cling shorts – breast-buds pouting – we swallow down envy like clotted cream.

She flips her long, sun-kissed legs onto the desk and chips at her lilac glitter nails with fine white teeth.

The boys pop-pop in bubble gum bursts.

When Evaline Jackson sighs and rolls her eyes at them, we roll our eyes too.

When Evaline Jackson snips her tube top even shorter, with scissors stolen from art class, and glints her arms with beaded bangles, and steals mocha eyeliner from her mother’s make-up bag and paints curving cat-slants across her lids, we cut and glint and steal and paint too.

When Evaline Jackson eats fries down at Skittle Town Bowl on Fridays, we beg for chore money and cut and glint and steal our way down there. We order fries and roll our eyes too, and watch the boys pop-pop.

When Evaline Jackson says, gotta go, and slinks out to the parking lot, and the boys catch her scent and follow, fox tails flaring, we pull down our too-short tube tops and look anywhere but at the middle-aged fat-gut guys who smash the skittles and high-five each other and side-eye our long legs in cling-cling shorts.

When Evaline Jackson’s seat is empty Monday morning, we stretch our sweaters way down over our knees. We spit glitter polish from our teeth, stuff beaded bangles into rucksack pockets and crush the heels of our palms hard against our wiped-clean eyes to keep them from rolling.

About the Author

Kathy Hoyle’s work can be found in publications such as Spelk, Virtualzine, Lunate, Ellipsiszine, Reflex Fiction, The Forge, Emerge Literary Journal and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She previously won the Retreat West Flash Competition, came second in The Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award, and the HISSAC Prize. third in the Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize. Other stories have been listed in competitions includingThe Exeter Short Story Prize, the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize, Flash 500, and Strands International.She holds a BA (hons) and an MA in Creative Writing and lives in a sleepy Warwickshire village in the UK with her crazy labradoodle.

Sarah Freligh October 2022 Second Prize

McDonald’s

by Sarah Freligh

The boys again, their sneakered feet and chin zits and peach fuzz. Her boy at that age had been slow to grow, slow to do anything. At fourteen, he still had a voice like a flute and sang soprano in the choir until he dropped out because the high notes hurt his head. Everything hurt his head then – the light from the TV screen, the spin cycle on the washing machine – but she didn’t take him to the doctor until he imagined he could hear voices singing opera on the phone wires. The doctor tapped his right knee and ordered an MRI that lit up his brain pink and purple, like a sunset after a storm’s passed through only the real storm was coming and there was nothing to do but shut the windows and keep him quiet for as long as he had left, which turned out to be five months, three days. Ma’am, the boys call her when they come to the counter to ask for something, salt or straws or cups of ketchup. Ma’am, they say and when they say it softly enough, it sounds just like Mom.

About the Author

Sarah Freligh is the author of four books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis, and We, published by Harbor Editions in early 2021. Recent work has appeared in the Cincinnati Review miCRo series, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Fractured Lit, and in the anthologies New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), Best Microfiction (2019-22) and Best Small Fiction 2022. Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.

Kathleen Latham October 2022 Third Prize

Fourth Grade Science Lesson, Chickasaw City, Alabama

by Kathleen Latham

When Rylee’s class plants papery, brown bulbs in mason jars, she’s sure nothing will come of it. Olivia Hewett told her flowers are born looking beautiful, and she should know because she lives in a house with a bedroom all to herself. Rylee lives with her mama and little brother in the Housing Authority where nothing grows but washed-out patches of grass for dogs to pee on.

“Why can’t we have flowers?” Rylee asks her mama.

Mama rolls her eyes at the question. “You wanna spend five dollars on somethin’ be dead in a week, or you wanna get two roller dogs and a Polar Pop at Circle K?”

At school, Mrs. McCarty says they need to be patient. Olivia Hewett says they need bees. Rylee takes notes in her science journal and waits for the experiment to fail.

Brown lump, she writes. Still nothing.

But then roots appear. Tiny white tendrils snaking against glass.

Worms? Rylee writes.

Next, green shoots, straight as a pencil.

Grass?
The shoots make her fidgety. She tries not to think about them, but at recess she finds a weed with white flowers growing by the fence. She pinches some of its dirt and sprinkles it onto her bulb for good luck. Doesn’t tell Olivia.

A week later, the class arrives to find thirty-one tulips lined up on the windowsill like ladies waiting to dance. Rylee touches hers to make sure it’s real.

Petals like wax, she writes. Purple as nail polish.

The flowers fill her with a hopefulness she can’t define—each of those funny-shaped husks hiding something wonderful.

She saves the petals when they fall off. Keeps them hidden in a plastic bag behind her pencil box. Takes them out from time to time and cradles them in her hand like a promise.

About the Author

Kathleen Latham is a native Californian who’s been living outside of Boston, Massachusetts long enough to have her loyalties questioned. She loves ice hockey, her family, and her cat—not necessarily in that order. A recent winner of the Web Microfiction Prize for Women Writers, her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Masters Review Anthology XI, 100 Word Story, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Tipton Poetry Journal and Constellations. You can find her on social media at @lathamwithapen or online at KathleenLatham.com.

Debra A Daniel October 2022 Highly Commended

In The Darkest Dark She Takes My Sleep

by Debra A Daniel

“Get up,” my grandmother says. “It’s storming. The lights are out.”

I want to say, “Of course, they are. It’s the middle of the night,” but I don’t. She’d tell my mother, and I’d be punished for sassing.

Whenever it storms, my grandmother drags her rocking chair into the hallway. There are no windows. She can’t see what’s coming. She makes me sit with her until the danger of lightning death passes.

In the dark, she recites her storm rules. No bobby pins in my hair. Lightning searches for metal. No petting my dog. Lightning seeks out animals, even jittery ones like chihuahuas. No going into the bathroom no matter how bad I have to pee. Lightning can burst through faucets and drown you in electricity.

I want to ask why she only wakes me and not my mother who’s sleeping in her pink bedroom without my father who isn’t home in the middle of the night.

I want to say I have a math test and went to bed reciting formulas for circles—area, circumference, radius—so I won’t fail, but now I’ll be sleepy and confused by circles that spin me until I’m helpless.

But I don’t speak. I sit near the creak of the rocker and listen to her story about sisters she knew when she was eleven. Sisters struck by a bolt straight out of a blue sky. Sisters who never saw it coming.

“You must watch in bright of day,” my grandmother says. “and darkest night. Especially then. That’s when no one realizes the lights have gone out and you’ve lost your power.”

The black storm surrounds us. I hold onto my pillow and listen to pour of rain, the whipping wind, and, from behind her bedroom door, the sleeping hush of my mother.

About the Author

Debra Daniel, from South Carolina, sings in a band with her husband. Publications include: The Roster, (Ad Hoc Fiction, highly commended for the Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash, 2019), Woman Commits Suicide in Dishwasher (novel, Muddy Ford Press), The Downward Turn of August (poetry, Finishing Line) As Is (poetry, Main Street Rag), With One Eye on the Cows, Things Left and Found by the Side of the Road, Los Angeles Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Kakalak, Emrys, Pequin, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River, and Gargoyle. Awards include The Los Angeles Review, Bacopa, the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, and SC Poetry Fellowships. Her second novella-in-flash A Family of Great Falls was shortlisted in the 2021 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Awards and was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in July 2021. She also won third prize in the February 2022 Bath Flash Fiction Award.

Sara Hills October 2022 Highly Commended

A Beachcomber’s Guide to Desert Grief

by Sara Hills

The boy on his bike is a shark. Each clump of grass? Seaweed. Each broken crash of cholla? A jellyfish. The ground is water—that’s what you tell yourself—not hard-packed desert dirt.

You throw yourself into the waves and float, waiting to feel lighter, waiting for the boy to pass. But he doesn’t. He rolls up next to you and stops, hovering there with his sharp fin, scenting for blood.

You’re here to feel the salt spray on your face, taste the tang of summer on your lips, sense the sun shimmering on water. You’re here to listen, and he’s ruining it.

Doesn’t he know that each inch of this ocean is a cure? That time is held in each grain of sand? That if you get quiet enough, the seashells will whisper your sister’s secrets to you?

They might, but not with him here.

The cool of his shadow falls across your face. His breath is root beer soda and barbecue sauce.

You play at being invisible until he touches you, until his words bubble to the surface.

‘Not dead,’ he says and laughs.

When you open your eyes, you see his bike tire as a whale’s eye. See his mouth, a pufferfish. See that he’s not going to leave. So you leave first.

Each footstep sucks the wet sand and the ocean slowly recedes behind you, out of your memory. The wheels of the boy’s bike follow, spokes flickering, tires spinning up droplets of dust.

For one last glimpse, it’s sunlight on water—every chance at being washed clean—then it’s gone. And it’s just the hard desert dirt all around you, miles and miles of dry despair.

About the Author

Sara Hills is the author of The Evolution of Birds, winner of the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection, and co-author of a collaborative novella-in-flash forthcoming with Ad Hoc Fiction in 2023. Her stories have won the QuietManDave Prize for flash nonfiction, the Retreat West quarterly prize, and been selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 and The Best Small Fictions. Her work is widely published in anthologies and magazines, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, Fractured Lit, Cease Cows, Flash Frog, Splonk, and Reckon Review. Originally from the Sonoran Desert, Sara lives in Warwickshire, UK and tweets from @sarahillswrites.