Interview with Ellie Walsh 2019 Novella-in-Flash Winner

Read this fascinating interview with Ellie Walsh, the winner of our third novella-in-flash award with her wonderful novella, Birds with Horse Hearts.

This year, the Award was judged by Michael Loveday. In his judge’s comments copied here, Michael gives a synopsis of the novella. He writes:

Three women take centre stage in this novella-in-flash, a rich and poetic study of a poor farming family in Nepal, with whom a woman from Iowa is staying, for unnamed reasons, after the death of her husband. Here the impoverished and marginalised are, for once, placed in the foreground, and the story is partly about how we can and must find beauty and love amidst harshness and deprivation. At the centre of it all is the enigmatic, beguiling, and tragic figure of the young prostitute Putali, at once trapped in a difficult life, and yet as free-spirited as a butterfly. This is a novella shadowed by loss and the search for belonging; it is also, in its own quiet, subtle and radical way, a love story. The quality of the sentence-making is stunning, the characterisation vivid and unique, and the narrative compelling and effortlessly handled, layered with skilful exposition, motifs and foreshadowings. I couldn’t fault the decisions that had been taken by the author and, although there were several other very fine manuscripts of clearly publishable quality, in the end this dark jewel of a story haunted me the most out of all the submissions – as soon as I encountered it, the characters, setting, and storyline simply refused to leave my head.

We are very pleased that Ad Hoc Fiction is publishing Ellie's stunning novella-in-flash in a single-author book later this year. It’s a must-read. Ellie is also a member of a panel at the Flash Fiction Festival UK in June, discussing the Novella-in-Flash, with Meg Pokrass and Charmaine Wilkerson. Michael Loveday is chairing the discussion and facilitating Q and A. Read in Full

Novella-in-Flash 2019 Winners

Read about our winners and highly commended writers and go to our judge Michael Loveday’s report to see his comments on their wonderful novellas-in-flash. All six novellas-in-flash will be published in separate single author books by our small press, Ad Hoc Fiction and will be available to buy in paperback on the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop and in ebook formats on Kindle and Nook in due course. We are thrilled to publish such a brilliant variety flash fiction novellas by these authors and to further support a form of flash fiction growing so much in popularity worldwide.
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Winner, Ellie Walsh, with Birds with Horse Hearts. Ellie is a PhD student at the University of Plymouth, where her research focuses on Nepalese feminist literature. She has short stories and poetry published in UK, Canadian and Indian journals, and her play was produced in London. Ellie spends much of her time in Chitwan, Nepal, where the villagers teach her how to farm rice and often tell her to lighten up. Read in Full

2019 Novella-in-Flash Award Results and Round Up

Many congratulations to the 2019 winners in our 2019 Novella-in-Flash Award and also to the Highly Commended writers. First prize goes to UK based author, Ellie Walsh, for her novella-in-flash Birds with Horse Hearts. The two Runners-Up are Johanna Robinson, also from the UK for her novella-in-flash, Homing and John Brantingham from the US with his novella-in-flash Inland Empire Afternoon.

This year we are also pleased to be able to award three Highly Commended prizes to Francine Witte from the US for The Way of The Wind, Debra Daniel from the US for Roster and Dan Crawley from the US for Straight Down the Road.

We received 108 entries this year, nearly the same number as in 2018 and submissions came in from several different countries including the UK, Ireland, Spain, US, Australia and New Zealand. As our 2019 Judge, Michael Loveday, remarked in his report, the standard of entries was very high. And it has been exciting to read how different authors interpret the form. We love how the novella-in-flash allows for much experimentation, in the whole structure and within the individual flash fiction ‘chapters’. We received novellas in several different genres – science fiction based stories, stories showing life within a family or a relationship, historical stories, crime stories. Some covered large time spans, others focussed on events in a day, but all the long listed novellas had their unique ‘flash fiction’ take, making them very different from a ‘standard’ novella or short novel. The novella-in-flash is a form growing massively in popularity, with our inaugural winner How To Make A Window Snake , by Charmaine Wilkerson, winning the Saboteur Novella Prize in 2018 and recently, Sophie Van Llewyn’s novella-in-flash, Bottled Goods, published by Fairlight Press, being shortlisted for the Women’s Fiction Prize.

Having tested the water over the past two years and in light of these developments, we are very keen to further promote the form and to support our winners and commended writers by publishing the three winners each as a single book in both paperbook and digital copies. And we are also offering a similar publishing opportunity to our three Highly Commended Writers. These six novellas-in-flash are all fantastic reads and we believe they will encourage anyone interested in writing one, to have a go at the form.

We also hope, later down the line, to offer publication to the four other excellent novellas on our short list: Kremlin Quixote by David Rhymes from Spain; Off the Resting Sea by US based writer, Al Kratz; At the Bottom of the Stairs by UK author Chloe Banks, and George X by Peter Matthews, also from the UK.

Finally, we offer our huge thanks and appreciation to Michael Loveday, for all his work on judging our 2019 Award. He read and considered all the longlisted novellas very carefully, and has studied the shortlisted novellas even more closely. He is very enthusiastic about the novella-in-flash as a genre and keen on all its possibilities. It has been wonderful having him as our judge and we are very pleased to welcome him back to judge next year. The 2020 Award will open in April and end in mid January, 2020. More details posted soon.

Jude Higgins, BFFA founder,

Interview with Christina Dalcher First Prize February 2019

You suggested in a recent blog of yours that your first prize winning story ‘Candy Girls’ has quite a history. Can you tell us more about how you came to write this story?

The initial spark came while I was watching Woody Allen’s film ‘Radio Days’. Mia Farrow plays a cigarette girl who goes from rags to riches, and I wanted to write a piece about the lives of these young women who were probably selling more sex than cigars. There’s also a part in the screenplay where one character says, “They don’t take Jews in the Stork Club,” and another responds with, “No Jews, no colored.” Well, now I had to write the story. That line was so powerful; it grabbed on to me and wouldn’t let go.
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Novella-in-Flash 2019 Award Judge’s report

Our 2019 Novella-in-Flash Award judge, Michael Loveday’s writes about the process of selecting the short list and this is followed by his comments on the winning novella-in-flash, the two runners-up and three highly commended novellas-in-flash..Michael has judged everything ‘blind’ and did not know the names of the winners until this announcement. Read more about the 2019 Award on Jude’s Award Round-Up post. Read in Full

Novella-in-Flash 2019 Award Short List

Congratulations to all the authors who have made our Award short list.

To preserve judging anonymity, author names are yet to be announced. While we are happy for authors to share that they are on the short list, we ask that writers do not identify themselves with their particular work at this stage.

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Christopher Allen
Flash Fiction Award Judge
March 2019 – June 2019

Christopher Allen is the author of Other Household Toxins (Matter Press) and Conversations with S. Teri O’Type (a Satire). Allen’s fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in [PANK], Indiana Review, Split Lip Magazine, Longleaf Review and Lunch Ticket, among many other great places. Allen is a multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, The Best Small Fictions, storySouth‘s Million Writers Award and others. In 2017 Allen was both a finalist (as translator) and semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions. He is presently the co-editor of SmokeLong Quarterly and a consulting editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018.
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Award Round Up
February 2019

Again, we had another thrilling few months at Bath Flash Fiction Award for the eleventh Award with stories pouring in during the last few weeks, Our founder, Jude Higgins, writes flash fiction, and because she enters contests at the last minute herself, last year we thought the last minute crowd might like a (virtual) badge for entering on the last day. The third badge we’ve issued is pictured here and we think writers are collecting them! However, everyone deserves a badge. There were 981 entries this time from the 29 countries listed below and we very much appreciate everyone who took the time to write and enter a flash fiction.
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Christina Dalcher
February 2019 First Prize

Candy Girls

by Christina Dalcher

No Jews, no negroes, no single women after six. You can break all three rules if you hawk cohibas and candy from a tray strapped to your neck, so that’s how Miriam and I earn a buck. She became Marie. I bleached my skin. Doesn’t matter—at the Stork Club, men only measure your legs or peer down cleavage avenue while the wives powder their noses. They look harder when the wives stay home.

In our room, heavy trays and shoes kicked aside, we lie head-to-toe on a bed built for one. “Hurt, baby?” Miriam asks, rubbing the spot where too-tight heels made their evening marks.

Tuesday was our third time, and I’m leaving out recognizable names. You’ve seen them as giants on silver screens; later, they’ll shine on black-and-white sets, small as they really are. Only Miriam and I see the parts hidden under tuxedos and fedoras. We smell their breath—champagne-syrupy, gin-sharp. We feel their bodies stiffen and slacken before tales are told at ashtray-littered tables. You don’t know them like we do.

They’ll talk about our bell-shaped skirts and our smooth skin that, in dark rooms, tastes like girl—not Jewish girl, not colored girl. They’ll whisper about how my fingers find Miriam’s and we hold hands in the during and in the after. They’ll laugh.

Alone, we tell each other different tales:

Only a few more.

The money helps.

We’ll be fine.

And we tell each other truths that rhyme with I love you.

“Hurt, baby?” she says, kissing me everywhere, peeling the stockings off my legs, letting them fall in a puddle of fishnet on the bare floor.

“Not anymore,” I lie.

Then Miriam rubs the sore spots, even the ones she can’t reach.

About the Author

Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction addict from Somewhere in the American South. She is also the sole matriculant in the Read Every Word by Stephen King MFA program (which she invented). Find her sometimes-prize-winning work in The Molotov Cocktail, Whiskey Paper, and New South Journal, among others. If you’re looking for Christina, she might be here: @CVDalcher, www.christinadalcher.com, or hiding in a closet re-reading a tattered copy of The Shining. Also, she made a book called VOX.
Photo credit: Laurens Arenas

Fiona J Mackintosh
February 2019 Second Prize

Snow Falling Upwards

by Fiona J Mackintosh

Meteorology man, you called me when you first learned of my weakness for weather. My love for fire rainbows and sun dogs. For lake effect snow and katabatic winds.

“Weather is mood, and climate is personality,” I’d tell you as you tugged the shirt from my waistband. “As for snow falling upwards, it’s just a trick of the wind and the eye. Gravity will always make it fall.”

There’s a photograph of you lying on our seagrass rug, listening to Satie’s Gymnopédies, a sunbeam striped across your waist. You did bliss very well. In our thousand days together, you’d always listen like you were hearing music, even when it was just my voice, full of unnecessary language.

Over the years, I thought of our lives as railroad tracks, moving forward side by side but never touching. Sometimes I could taste the want of you, but then I’d think about sleeping dogs and Pandora’s box. Instead, I stalked the high latitudes for the greening pulse of the auroras, my wife holding the receiver to catch their eerie sighs and whistles. When she died, I said, “Soon,” but first there was the paperwork, a sorting through, and the four stages, a long tunnel with damp and crumbling walls. Only then did I send the letter drafted long ago, folded into clean, white thirds.

This is what I do, I wait too long. I’d imagined you in a wooden house in the mountains with a great lake spreading out from your door, but now I know there’s not a single place on earth I’d find your footprint. I only hope the spheres are making music where you are. Here, there’s nothing but a goitered winter moon and the slow drag of an ice circle turning in the dark.

About the Author

Fiona J. Mackintosh is a Scottish-American writer who lives near Washington D.C. with her husband and flies back and forward between her two countries at least twice a year. In 2018, she won the Fish Flash Fiction Prize, the NFFD Micro Competition, the October Bath Flash Award, and Reflex Fiction. Two of her flashes were selected to appear in the Best Microfiction 2019 anthology. In her non-writing life, she is a freelance editor for the World Bank. You can find her at www.fionajmackintosh.com.