Tag Archives: KM Elkes

Highlights from Bath Flash Fiction, 2018

2018 has been a fabulous year for Bath Flash Fiction and our publisher, Ad Hoc Fiction. We began the year with a joint launch of The Lobsters Run Free, Bath Flash Fiction Vol Two, the Ad Hoc Fiction published anthology from the 2017 Awards and Flash Fiction Festival One, the anthology of flash fictions submitted by particpants and presenters from the first Flash Fiction Festival in Bath. Thirteen writers, pictured on the left and below, who had fictions in one or both of the anthologies read their micros at the event. It was very pacy and fun. Read in Full

Evening of Flash Readings

With members of Flash Fiction Festivals UK organising team and helpers.

Jude Higgins, Diane Simmons, Santino Prinzi, Michael Loveday, Karen Jones, KM Elkes, Matt Thorpe Coles and John Wheway.

Our readers are widely published writers and experienced performers of flash fiction. Learn more about them at on the festival website and at johnwheway.com. Each writer will have a slot of about 8 mins. A fun and pacy evening with many different styles of short short fiction to inspire you.

Sat. 6^th October
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar, free snacks
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James St
Bath
BA1 2TW

Cost £5

for your name put on the door.

KM Elkes
June 2018 First Prize

Extremities

by KM Elkes

The way Bobby told it, one minute he was working the chainsaw and the next he was on the forest floor, wondering why there was nothing on the end of his arm.

The rest of the crew reckoned his hand got spun into a ravine. Nobody wanted to waste time searching while Bobby bled out. Logging accidents happen all the time – there’s extremities all over those woods.

When he got out of hospital, they gave him a party. I found Bobby outside, smoking a cigarette with his wrong hand. I’d brought him towels, stolen from the hotel in town where I have a summer job.

“Can I see?” I asked.

Bobby slid off the mitten they had given him to keep the stump clean. The end was puckered with stitches like sewn up lips. The skin flap they had stretched over had little hairs growing out.

“How’s it feel?” I said.

“My ghost fingers hurt at night,” he said.

“They say you get used to it.” I had no idea if that was true.

Bobby shook his head. “Funniest thing, right after it happened, it started raining. That sound, man. I thought it was people clapping. For me.”

I left the party early. I had to be at the hotel before my boss arrived – she’s a failed ballerina and bitter about it. I stay on her good side so she doesn’t find out about the towels or the cutlery or all the other things I’ve stolen. That job is my ticket out of these trees.

When I went, I saw Bobby alone again, holding out his stump up like he expected something to grow from it. I didn’t feel bad for him. I just felt sorry for the other hand, out in those woods, fingers curled, grasping at nothing.

About the Author

KM Elkes is an award-winning short fiction writer and editor from the West Country, UK. His flash fiction successes include winning the Fish Publishing Flash prize and the Triskele Books prize as well as winning or being placed in a number of international competitions, including the Bridport prize. His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio and appeared in more than 20 anthologies as well as many literary journals and e-zines. His short fiction has also featured on the school curriculum in the USA and Hong Kong. He is a Best Small Fictions Nominee 2018 and is a co-editor of the A3 Review magazine. He has also been guest editor of Flash Frontier in New Zealand.

Flash Fiction ‘Noir’
Evening of Readings

Sat. 25^th November
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar, free snacks
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James St
Bath
BA1 2TW

May Flash Fiction Evening

Friday 26^th May
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar, free nibbles
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James Street
Bath
BA1 2TW

Fissures
by Grant Faulkner
Reviewed by KM Elkes

In his introduction to Fissures, A Collection of a Hundred 100-word Stories, the author Grant Faulkner explains that the book is a “bag full of shards”, each one capturing the small, telling moments of existence: “I’ve always thought life is more about what is unsaid than what is said. We live in odd gaps of silence, irremediable interstices that sometimes last forever.”

Fissures is certainly an apt title – many of the stories revolve around moments of separation and disconnection; the heartache of missed chances, sexual loneliness and the deep cracks that open between lovers, travellers or families.

It’s not an easy task to achieve this level of resonance and depth when much of the armoury deployed in narrative fiction – plot, characterisation, pacing, extended imagery, description etc. – is limited by the drabble form. But this brings another kind of freedom – to create stories, sometimes tilted towards the fantastical, that contain just enough narrative thrust to create movement and change.
Read in Full

Our First Evening of Flash
An account and the start of something new

When we learned that Meg Pokrass, our novella-in-flash judge, was in the UK this summer, prior to moving here permanently, we grasped the opportunity to invite her to read and meet some other flash fiction writers in the South West. The evening was a resounding success. The lovely upstairs room in St James’ Wine Vaults in Bath was packed and the audience enjoyed a true feast of flash-fictions – a great mixture of styles, tastes and cultural differences.
Read in Full

Bath Flash Fiction Award

International Rolling Flash Fiction Competition