Tag Archives: flash fiction festival

Flash Around the World in June!

June is busting out all over with flash fiction, so if you are not aware of the coming delights, here’s a summary for you of what we know about the rest of the month. I am sure there is a lot more to add.

Sunday 9th June: In Bath, we have the closing date of the twelfth round of the Bath Flash Fiction Award for micros of 300 words. £1460 in prizes and judged by writer, writing tutor and editor, the amazing Christopher Allen. For those entering tomorrow, we will be sending out our famous Last Minute Club badges for anyone submitting during the day up until the midnight deadline. I think some people are collecting them! The picture of the February 2019 badge shows you what to expect as a late, and valued entrant. We also thank everyone very much for entering before the last day. The limit is 300 words max so you still have a little time to hone your flash and enter now.

13th June: Our small publishing press, Ad Hoc Fiction is a finalist in the publishing category of Creative Bath and the Award ceremony is in the evening of 13th June. Jude is going along with Diane Simmons, whose collection, Finding A Way, short-listed recently in the 2019 Saboteur Awards, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in February this year, and Alison Woodhouse who won the Ad Hoc Fiction weekly micro competition last year. Her story ‘Metamorphosis’ which was shortlisted by Vanessa Gebbie in the February round of the Bath Flash Award will be published in the 2019 Bath Flash Fiction anthology published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Wish us luck!

15th June: It’s National Flash Fiction Day in the UK!. And events are talking place in Coventry. Our founder Jude will be on a panel talking about competitions and publishing with Steve Campbell from Ellipsis Zine, Ingrid Jendrzejewski and Diane Simmons. Stephanie Hutton and Ingrid Jendrzejewski are also offering workshops. The extremely popular Flash Flood will also happen during the day and about 150 flash fictions will be published about every ten minutes or so. Loads of brilliant reads.

22nd June Lots going on today! It’s National Flash Fiction Day New Zealand and it’s also publication day for two of the new flash fiction books published by Ad Hoc Fiction, the everrumble, ‘a small novel in small forms’ by Michelle Elvy, Director of NFFD New Zealand and All That Is Between Us by K. M. Elkes who judged the NFFD New Zealand MicroMadness contest. One shortlisted story a day is posted from 1st June until 22nd June, when the winner is announced.

You can pre-order the everrumble by Michelle on the paypal button on the post about her book, linked here and Ken’s collection of flash fictions on the post about his book. Both collections are marvellous.

28th June -30th June The third ever Flash Fiction Festival UK is taking place at Trinity College, Bristol, UK! Workshops, talks, panels, readings, a raffle with great prizes including a week’s retreat in Italy, and a weekend in Wiltshire near Avebury stone circles, festival long mini comp with prizes, bar, bookshop and opportunity to submit to a post-festival anthology. Some day tickets available at half the full price now. Booking finally closes next week, Friday 14th June.

Book launches at the festival! Michelle Elvy and K. M. Elkes books will be launched at the festival and Birds With Horse Hearts by our 2019 Novella in flash winner, Ellie Walsh and the 2019 runner up, Homing by Johanna Robinson, and The Roster by Debra Daniel, which was highly commended in the 2019 Award, will be published on 29th June and launched at the festival. We’re thrilled that both Ellie and Johanna are able to attend and are participating in the panel hosted by Michael Loveday on the novella in flash, where their books will be launched. All these books will also be available to buy at the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop and in ebook formats on 29th June and we’ll have the first peek at the lovely covers of the novellas then.

30th June We have a very quick turnaround for our Awards. Christopher Allen is judging the 12th Award, and Jude and Christopher will be announcing the winners live at the Festival where he is running workshops. Notifications will be posted online as usual.

All That Is Between Us
Debut flash fiction collection by K. M. Elkes

Ad Hoc Fiction, our short-short fiction press, is thrilled to publish All That Is Between Us, the dazzling debut flash fiction collection by Bristol-based author, K.M.Elkes. The collection “explores the complex fragility of human relationships, both the challenges of belonging and how much we risk to avoid being alone. It is a book of moments, evoking the beauty and comfort that connection brings, and the pain when it is severed.”

All That Is Between Us, includes Ken’s first-prize winning flash fiction, Extremities from Bath Flash Fiction Award, June 2018 and many more wonderful fictions and is highly rated by the eight well-known flash fiction writers quoted below. The art work for the stunning cover is by Bridport based artist, Suzanne Clements.
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California Continuum by John Brantingham and Grant Hier

CALIFORNIA CONTINUUM, VOLUME 1: MIGRATIONS AND AMALGAMATIONS is “a nonlinear look at little discussed aspects of the history of California. Hier and Brantingham look as far back as California’s geologic past, fast forwarding to the age of the mastodons, then to the time when only Native Americans inhabited this land and finally to the present age.”

Review by Damhnait Monaghan
Last year at the Flash Fiction Festival, I attended a brilliant workshop on ‘Extraordinary Points of View’ led by American poets and flash fiction writers, John Brantingham and Grant Hier. My notes from their session contain many gems, including this tip for writing flash fiction: ‘cut straight to the character’s humanity.’

Brantingham and Hier have done just that in their recently published collection California Continuum (Pelekinesis, 2019). The characters in this collection are varied: a Japanese boy being sent to an internment camp; the daughter of a concentration camp survivor; gun crazy (and gun shy) boys; indigenous people of the distant past; and Mexican, Vietnamese, and other immigrants to California. Yet with all of them, we are taken right to the core of their thoughts and feelings. Read in Full

Michelle Elvy, published by Ad Hoc Fiction, June 2019

Ad Hoc Fiction is honoured to be publishing the everrumble, “a small novel in small forms” by Michelle Elvy. It’s a wonderful and important work of fiction highly praised by the writers quoted below. The striking cover art is by acclaimed Ethiopian artist, Eyayu Genet.

“the everrumble is a poetic imagining of intense focus and sweeping ideas. Zettie’s story is fluid and in motion, transcending geographies and time. She stops talking, at age seven, and starts to listen – to the worlds she finds in language and books, and to the people and places she encounters as she moves across continents. Her silence connects her to people, to nature and to the elemental world. Magical and beyond boundaries, this collection focuses on small fragments, taking Zettie, and the reader, inevitably to the place where human history began.”
the everrumble was launched at the Flash Fiction Festival, UK on 28th-30th June where Michelle ran workshops, chaired a panel on Flash Around the World, introduced the latest Best Small Fiction anthology, and talked about flash fiction in New Zealand. It is for sale at the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop in paperback in several different currencies and in Kindle ebook format via Amazon. Read in Full

Ad Hoc Fiction’s Fourth Birthday

It’s Ad Hoc Fiction fourth birthday! The micro contest opened for entries first on 15th April 2015 and the first winning story by writer, Nick Black was published on 22nd April, four years ago, today. Our big thanks to John at Ad Hoc Fiction, who runs the Ad Hoc Fiction contest; designs and publishes the Ad Hoc Fiction paper back and ebooks; administers the Bath Flash Fiction Awards, and who has been doing so much to help put flash fiction on the map in the UK and beyond. A lot has happened in the last four years and here are sixteen random Happy Birthday Ad Hoc Fiction Facts: Read in Full

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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Highlights from the book launches, 19th Jan, 2019

The gallery room at St James Wine Vaults, Bath was packed with readers, their friends and family and our guests for the joint launches of Flash Fiction Festival Two and Bath Flash Fiction, Vol 3, Things Left and Found By the Side of the Road. last Saturday, 19th January. We heard a wonderful variety of flash fictions from twenty-two readers in all, who had travelled miles from all over the country to attend. Bath Flash Fiction supplied wine and two ‘book cover’ cakes, which you can see Jude cutting up in the pictures, to celebrate the occasion. Everybody read brilliantly and we thank them very much for coming.

In the first half of the evening, ten writers, pictured in a group here, and who you can see individually in the gallery below, read their micros from Flash Fiction Festival Two, beginning with well-known flash writer, poet and Reader at Bath Spa University, Carrie Etter, who led a workshop at the festival and who is quoted recommending it as a place to be inspired on the back of the anthology.
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BFFA anthology launches

We are excited to be launching our two latest anthologies this week, on Saturday 19th January at St James Wine Vaults, in Bath, 7.30 pm – 10.00 pm. It’s going to be a fun and pacy evening with readings of micro fictions (around 2 mins reading time each) from Flash Fiction Festival Two by writers who came to the second Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol last July in the first half of the evening and after a break for chats, drinks, cake and book buying, readings from some of the winning, shortlisted and longlisted writers who are published in Bath Flash Fiction Vol Three, Things Left And Found By The Side Of The Road.

Flash Fiction Festival Two:

Things Left and Found At The Side Of The Road

Bath Flash Fiction Anthologies

Ad Hoc Fiction author, Diane Simmons, on Radio Bristol

We are delighted that our publisher, Ad Hoc Fiction is publishing Diane Simmons’ collection, Finding A Way, fifty one linked flash fictions which show one family’s grieving journey over the three years following a devastating loss. Diane is widely published in anthologies and magazines and has been successful in many writing competitions. She is a member of the organising team for Flash Fiction Festivals, UK and is also a Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day, UK. This Thursday, (November 15th) she read A Collection, the first story from her forthcoming book, on BBC Upload, the fantastic new evening magazine programme dedicated to showcasing local artists and writers, at Radio Bristol. Click here to listen. She comes in about 1.34 mins into the programme.

Radio Bristol have created a brilliantly simple system in Upload. All you need is a mobile phone to record and submit your creative works for possible inclusion on their programme which airs weekday evenings, from 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm. Jude was approached by the presenter, the dynamic Adam Crowther, who asked if she could suggest some local flash writers and it seemed a perfect opportunity for Diane to read one of her stories and talk a little about Finding A Way. Do listen. Diane often reads her fictions in the Flash Fiction Evenings Jude organises in Bath and she is pictured here at the Flash Fiction Festival in July, 2018, reading A Picnic in the Park, another story from her forthcoming collection. As always, she reads wonderfully here on the radio and in the interview with Adam after the reading, she talks more about her new collection and her writing. Do listen. Diane is currently putting the finishing touches to her book, which will be published in January and available for sale at bookshop.adhocfiction.com in several different currencies for world-wide sales. We are really looking forward to seeing it in print. More details soon!

Interview with Vanessa Gebbie
Flash Fiction Award Judge
November 2018 – February 2019

Vanessa has won multiple awards for both prose and poetry, including a Bridport Prize and the Troubadour. Her flash publications include Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures (Liquorice Fish Books) and the weird/irreal collection Nothing to Worry About (Flash: The International Short Short Story Press at Chester University) as well as many individual publications online and in print. She is author of three short story collections (with Salt and Cultured Llama), a novel (Bloomsbury), and two poetry publications (Pighog and Cultured Llama). She is also commissioning and contributing editor of Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt). She teaches widely www.vanessagebbie.com.
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