Congratulations to all who made it through to our short list.
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October 2016 Award Short List
Interview with Kathy Fish
Flash Fiction Award Judge
October 2016 – February 2017
We’re delighted that renowned American flash fiction writer and teacher, Kathy Fish is judging our next award, which opens on November 1st.
Kathy teaches flash fiction for the Mile High MFA program at Regis University in Denver. She has published four collections of short fiction: a chapbook in the Rose Metal Press collective, A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women (2008); Wild Life (Matter Press, 2011); Together We Can Bury It (The Lit Pub, 2012); and Rift, co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2015). Her story, “A Room with Many Small Beds” was chosen by Stuart Dybek for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press).
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October 2016 Award Long List
Congratulations to all who made it through to our long list, and huge thanks to everyone who entered from all around the globe.
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Dots and Other Flashes of Perception
Debut flash fiction collection by Santino Prinzi
Review by Jude Higgins
Forty six stories are included in Santino Prinzi’s debut collection of flash fictions published by The Nottingham Review. Many of the characters in this diverse and fascinating collection see life from the periphery, longing to connect with others and finding this hard or impossible.
Stories take place in cafes, parks, food and clothes stores, kitchens and parties and reveal the lives of (usually) young people in contemporary urban society. Prinzi’s style is clean and precise – low on metaphor, simile and embellished language of any kind. This way of writing suits the subject matter and setting of the stories, which have no fluffy edges, although some are humorous and playful. Shelf Life is like that – a neatly crafted story following the path of a relationship all the way to its noir end as the protagonists wander around a bookshop morphing personalities as they select different genres of writing from the shelves.
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December Flash Fiction Event
Friday 9th December
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James St
Bath
BA1 2TW
We’ve a great line-up of readers for the second Bath Flash Fiction reading this year. Our Summer event at the end of July was so much fun, and we’re sure this one will be too. We’re delighted that Meg Pokrass and Ken Elkes are reading again, and this time they’re joined by wonderful flash fiction writers, Tania Hershman, Ingrid Jendzrejewski, Freya Morris and Michael FitzGerald.
Book early to avoid disappointment. We’re looking forward to a great evening of flash.
The Best Small Fictions 2016
Eds. Tara L. Masih & Stuart Dybek
Reviewed by Santino Prinzi
The Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2016) is the second instalment in this series of anthologies that pull together the very best in small fiction. To say this is no easy task is an understatement, one with which I can only begin to empathise. Tara L. Masih, series editor, highlights in her foreword to the anthology: “out of thousands of published small fictions, my staff and consulting editors and I narrowed down the field to 100”, to which the guest editor, Stuart Dybek, whittled this selection down to 45 stories. This feat is admirable in itself, but truly rewarding for readers of this anthology.
An additional feature to this anthology are interviews offering a spotlight on a particular author and on a particular press, magazine, or journal. Both Megan Giddings, (formerly an Executive Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, now co-fiction editor at The Offing mag and a recipient of the Kathy Fish Fellowship) and Texture Press, received five nominations and have two small fictions featured in this anthology. Not only is this an incredible achievement for both Giddings and Texture Press, but, and most importantly, when you read these pieces you see how their places are more than well-deserved.
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Interview with Matt Potter
Founder of Pure Slush Magazine
Pure Slush was established in December 2010, publishing flash fiction online for anyone who wants to read it. Moving into print publication in late 2011, what has followed includes two further imprints (Truth Serum Press and Everytime Press) and almost fifty books. There are many more to come – memoir, how-to resources, anthologies, fiction, poetry – so there is always something to like about the entire catalogue. The best words to describe Pure Slush: zesty and cosmopolitan.
Pure Slush founder, Matt Potter, was born in Adelaide and has lived most of his life in Australia … but keeps a key part of his psyche in Berlin. If you want to know more about him and the way he thinks, read his travel memoir Hamburgers and Berliners and other courses in between (Červená Barva Press, 2015). Does his Australian outlook affect the work and the mood and the tone of Pure Slush? Yeah, he reckons it does.
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Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer
Edited by Robert Swartwood
Reviewed by Santino Prinzi
Hint Fiction (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) is, as the title suggests, an anthology of fiction where each story is 25 words or fewer. There are 125 stories to be found in this anthology, divided across three broad themes: life and death; love and hate; this and that, which entails any story that fails to fit into the first two categories. The anthology boasts a series of celebrated writers, such as Joyce Carol Oates, Gay Degani, Stuart Dybek, among others. Robert Shapard, the editor of numerous flash fiction anthologies who has provided his views on the reverse of this anthology, believes that “some of these stories suggest entire novels in just a few words,” and, as became clear on reading, these stories really are microcosms of universes that become apparent once the penny drops.
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Ad Hoc Fiction Autumn Special
An opportunity to be published in the UK and US in a new high quality magazine
We’re delighted to link up with new quality magazine Project Calm for an Ad Hoc Fiction Autumn Special, scheduled to open Wednesday 21st September. One winning Ad Hoc story and two runners up will be published in the second issue of the magazine which will have a focus on books and the love of reading.
The ethos of Project Calm is one of creativity and mindfulness. This fits with our view of writing. To create very short fiction you need to be present and aware – paying careful attention to every word. It’s often a meditative experience. Alison Wassell, who wrote the winning piece, Just a Crisp was recently interviewed by Once We Were Fiction about her method of writing. Ad Hoc Fiction involves writing a very short fiction to a given prompt word. Alison describes how she lets the prompt word float around in her mind, then “writes” very short stories in her head when she is walking to work at 7.00 am in the morning. She says “the walk takes about 40 minutes, which is plenty of time for 150 words.”
Though our special contest doesn’t launch until Wednesday 21st September, we’re happy to tell you that the prompt word will be ‘CALM’, so you’ve an extra week to let your ideas form. The three stories with the highest number of votes will be the ones chosen for the magazine. As usual, the winner will get a free entry to Bath Flash Fiction Award.
Issue Two of Project Calm will be published in the UK on the 24th November and sold in outlets including WH Smith, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. In the US it will be published on the 24th December, available in Barnes & Noble among other places.
It’s a wonderful and unmissable opportunity to be widely published around the world. Have a look at a digital sample of the now sold-out first issue. The Issue One focus is not on writing, but it is packed full of creative ideas.
And a video of Issue One can be viewed here on Facebook.
Project Calm can be contacted via Twitter @ProjectCalmMag and via their main Facebook page here.
Songs Without Music by Tim Stevenson
Reviewed by Santino Prinzi
Songs Without Music (Gumbo Press, 2016) is the third fiction collection from Tim Stevenson. He is a first prize winner of the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Competition, has had his fiction published widely in magazines, anthologies, and online, and is judging this year’s Bridport Flash Fiction Prize.
The collection is presented with the by-line “flash-fictions and curiosities”, which is an accurate and all-encompassing description for Songs Without Music; we have flash, haiku, centipieces, and other forms possibly eluding definition. Not only are there different forms of fiction but different genres too, making for a collection that invigorates the imagination and provides a varied, thought-provoking reading experience.
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