Tag Archives: Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Ingrid Jendrzejewski
June 2018 Commended

Shadow Broth

by Ingrid Jendrzejewski

1 cup nothing / 1 tsp dust motes that fizz in unexpected light / dash of cobweb / memory, to taste. Weigh out the ingredients if you don’t have the right measures, spoon them from old canisters bought long ago at yard sales. Nobody will mind if you leave the crusts off or if the darkness fails to rise: dark is fine in small, dense portions. Nobody, in fact, is paying attention. When the oven fails to ignite, when the click-click-woosh of the hob is more of a tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick, when the gas man won’t answer the phone and you’re all alone with the lights off too, that’s when you can really get cooking. Leave it for one of those evenings when you know better than to work alone, and then do it anyway. Leave it, leaven it, then pick it up and turn it over in your hands. It will feel like dough and smell like yeast, but yet, it will remind you of the time that you brought home nothing but dust from the supermarket, even though what you picked up from the shelves came in bright, bright packaging. They’ve turned off the gas, they may turn off the electricity too, but it’s okay to sing to it, and let it sing back to you. If you have flour, flour your workspace. If you have water, save it. If you have an egg, crack it and let it run through your fingers, cold in the warm air. Yield: none. This is your red wine, your five-a-day. This is what will keep you going until the morning comes, until you pay the bills, until the silverfish scatter. This is what will sustain you until you wash your spoons.

About the Author

Ingrid Jendrzejewski primarily writes flash fiction and shortform work, and has published over 100 pieces since she started submitting in 2014. She has won sixteen writing competitions (including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and AROHO’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction), judged five, and has placed or been shortlisted in around fifty more. She is currently editor-in-chief at FlashBack Fiction and a flash fiction editor at JMWW. You can find her online at ingridj.com and on Twitter @LunchOnTuesday.

How to Write a Novella-in-Flash
Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Ingrid Jendrzejewski tells us how she compiled her brilliant novella-in-flash, Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping, which was one of the two runners-up in the inaugural Bath Flash Fiction novella-in-flash Award judged by Meg Pokrass earlier this year. The anthology of winning novellas How to Make a Window Snake was launched at the Flash Fiction Festival in Bath in June 2017 and the picture here shows Ingrid reading from her novella at the festival with winner, Charmaine Wilkerson, listening. Everyone at this event was very moved by both their readings. How to Make a Window Snake the anthology containing the novellas by Ingrid, Charmaine and the other runner-up, Joanna Campbell, is available from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop. The deadline for the second novella-in-flash award, also judged by Meg Pokrass, is on 29th January, 2018. Ingrid went through several stages, detailed below, before she finished her winning novella-in-flash.
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Novella-in-Flash 2017
About the Winners

Our winner and two runners-up tell us a little about themselves.
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Novella-in-Flash Round Up

BathFlash We were inspired to launch the inaugural novella-in-flash award by reading the excellent guide on the subject, My Very End of the Universe published by Rose Metal Press in 2014. Meg Pokrass’s flash novella, Here, Where we Live is one of five novellas in this book and she also has a craft essay in the book. The novella-in-flash is one of her favourite emerging forms, and we were thrilled when she agreed to judge the first competition.
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Novella-in-Flash 2017 Winners

I was honoured to be asked to judge Bath Flash Fiction Award’s inaugural novella-in-flash contest. There were many strong novella entries making the competition fierce. It was fascinating to see the different way each writer approached this challenge!

One of the most important traits of the flash novella is in creating a sense of urgency that pulls the reader in quickly. This is achieved through pacing, stand-alone story strength, and the creation of unforeseeable dramatic tension. Ultimately, success relies on the crafting of an inventive, non-traditional narrative arc. The short nature of the novella-in-flash does not allow for much context or rumination. Instead, it relies on tragic urgency.
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Interview with
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Ingrid tells us how persistence pays off when you’re faced with a blank screen. It certainly did when she cast about and discovered the idea for Roll and Curl, her first-prize winning flash. In this interview, Ingrid tells us more about this story and shares some of her writing methods.

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Ingrid Jendrzejewski
February 2016 First Prize

Roll and Curl

by Ingrid Jendrzejewski

It’s a small town, so when a call comes through from Amber Groves for Mrs. Philips, you know it can mean only one thing: either her husband or her sister has passed.

“She’s under the dryer,” you say and pop your gum. You think you’ve made your point but end up having to add, “Well, you can come on down and talk to her yourself, or you can wait until I’m finished with her wash and set. We’re in the middle of things here.”

You put the phone down and look over at Mrs. Philips. She’s under the hood dryer reading a magazine, lost in her plastic gown. She’s shaking a little and at first you think she’s crying, but then you see she’s laughing. She has some lipstick on her front teeth.

When her timer dings, you remove the hood and check her hair. The gel has set, so you wheel her to your station and take out the rollers. You run your pick through what’s left of her hair, teasing enough to make some volume, then combing the rest over the top to create the shape she likes. You form her bangs into curls by hand.

Then, you get out the hairspray. Mrs. Philips smiles, squeezes her eyes shut and lifts her chin. “This part always feels like spring rain,” she says as you begin to spray.

You carry on for nearly three minutes; you carry on until you’ve used up the whole bottle. You spray until her hair is as hard as a combat helmet, until that smile is fixed on her face like a shield. Then you give her some tissues. You tell her they’re for her teeth.

About the Author

Ingrid Jendrzejewski studied creative writing and English literature at the University of Evansville before going on to study physics at the University of Cambridge. Her fiction has appeared in The Conium Review, Inktears, Wyvern Lit, Vine Leaves, Flash Frontier, The Liars’ League NYC, and Williwaw: An Anthology of the Marvellous among others. Last year, she won Gigantic Sequins’ Flash Non-fiction Contest, Rochdale’s Literaure & Ideas Festival Bite-sized Enlightenment Flash Fiction Contest and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Links to her work can be found at www.ingridj.com and she occasionally tweets @LunchOnTuesday.