Tag Archives: Santino Prinzi

This Alone Could Save Us by Santino Prinzi launched today, August 1st!

Want to listen to some great flash? This Alone Could Save Us Santino Prinzi’s new collection, which was published by Ad Hoc Fiction yesterday 31st July, is being launched today, Saturday 1st August, on Zoom, 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm. The book’s available to buy from the Ad Hoc Fiction bookshop for worldwide delivery and also in print or as an ebook on Amazon and as an ebook on Kobo.
The picture here shows Tino with his ‘book cover’ cake which Jude made for him and delivered as a socially-distanced surprise for publication day yesterday along with some ‘book cover’ Leibniz biscuits and jaffa cakes.

Tino will be reading several of his flash fictions and we will also hear stories by Kathy Fish, Meg Pokrass, Diane Simmons and Vanessa Gebbie who gave advanced praise for the book and are quoted on the back cover of the collection. It will be a fun event, hosted by Jude, with break-out groups interspersed with the readings for people to chat with Tino and the others and meet their flash fiction friends.

If you would like to join us, you can still get a Zoom invite today if you email jude at adhocfiction dot com before 6.00 pm. Thanks and hope to see you there!

‘This Alone Could Save Us’, by Santino Prinzi, Launch event, 1st August

Santino Prinzi’s new full collection, This Alone Could Save Us is the latest single author collection published by our small press, Ad Hoc Fictio. It’s published on 31st July and is being launched on Zoom on Saturday, 1st August, 2020 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm BST. We’d planned to launch the book at our fourth Flash Fiction Festival which was due to take place in June this year, but of course this was cancelled. The picture of Tino here is when he was reading at last year’s festival. One of the advantages of Zoom is that we can still hear Tino live and also include guests from all over the world.

Jude, director of Ad Hoc Fiction, is hosting the event and Santino has asked writers who provided quotes for his brilliant book, to read along side him. So, as well as Tino, we’ll hear Kathy Fish, Meg Pokrass, Vanessa Gebbie and Diane Simmons. It will be a great night with break-out groups interspersed with the reading sessions so you can talk with your flash fiction friends from around the world. Plus virtual cake and fizz. If you would like to come and support Tino, please email Jude asap at jude at adhocfiction dot com to get your Zoom invite.

Available here now.

Pre-order ‘This Alone Could Save Us’ by Santino Prinzi

We’re thrilled that Ad Hoc Fiction, our small press is publishing Santino Prinzi’s wonderful new collection. This Alone Could Save Us. The collection was due to be launched at our cancelled 2020 Flash Fiction Festival UK.

Available here now.

Read what writers say about it here:

With This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi has fashioned a collection of small, smart fictions that read large. Here is work undergirded by innovation, incisive wit, and a keen ability to navigate terrain that is personal, and at once universal to us all.’

–– Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing

‘Santino Prinzi is a word-wizard of the heart—a writer who fearlessly excavates uncomfortable secrets. In This Alone Could Save Us, Prinzi’s first full collection of flash fiction, human nature is the subject, gentle surrealism the medium. Bizarre yet real, funny and crazily sad—it’s mesmerizing to watch Prinzi’s vulnerable characters work to free themselves from life’s stickiest webs. Subversive, haunting, beautiful—a must-have collection!’

–– Meg Pokrass, author of Alligators At Night and Series Co-Editor, Best Microfiction 2020

‘This Alone Could Save Us is a richly varied collection of flash fiction. In these compact gems, Santino Prinzi makes exquisite use of magic and the surreal, but also the quiet, evocative gestures of ordinary life. You will find the deliciously unexpected within these pages, along with moments of breath-taking stillness. Highly recommended.’

–– Kathy Fish, Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

‘Tender, poetic, and wonderfully surreal, Prinzi understands that stories can save us. Powerful flash fiction that lights up the page, this is the book we all need right now. It is one for the ages. This stunning collection will stay with you for years.’

–– Angela Readman, author of Something Like Breathing and Don’t Try This At Home

‘In This Alone Could Save Us, Santino Prinzi demonstrates his enormous talent for drawing readers into his stories, often surprising them with surrealistic touches that appear totally believable and natural. The flash fictions in this impressive collection are widely varied, but each story is unmistakably Prinzi.’

–– Diane Simmons, author of Finding a Way

‘Exceptionally engaging, closely observed and thought-provoking, this collection shows us a flash master at work as he explores the fault lines that crack open under our feet at moments of unplanned change. Seen through his eyes, the familiar becomes strange, solid becomes unsteady, and even the moon loses its faith in humanity, so moves on. Sometimes sad, sometimes playful, always memorable.’

–– Vanessa Gebbie, author of The Cowards Tale and five short fiction collections.

14th Award Round Up

Thank you very much to all the world-wide Flash Fiction writers who entered stories in our 14th Award. I’s wonderful that so many people from around the world are writing flash fiction. Our entries increased again, this time to 1367. There were so many inventive stories, so many good ones to choose from to find our long list of fifty. Entries came in from the following thirty-one countries:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States

The last weeks of the Award were very busy and the Last Minute Club writers who, on the last day, 16th February, received their badge pictured here, this time a sunny yellow, were jostling at the door up until the very last seconds before midnight. We’ve produced badges for the last six awards and I am sure several writers have collected all of them.

Several different countries were represented in the long and short lists and this year, our five winners come from four different countries/continents. Many congratulations to our first prize winner Sharon Telfer, from the UK who has now won first prize twice, the last time in Summer 2016. She also had a story commended in February 2019. What a fantastic achievement! And many congratulations also to our second prize winner, Simon Cowdroy from Australia, who has had a story commended by us before, and third prize to Christina Dalcher from the USA, who was also a first prize winner in February 2019. Many congratulations also to Remi Skytterstad from Norway, who was highly commended and Claire Powell from the UK, also highly commended. All five stories are brilliant examples of flash fiction and you can read them on the winners’ pages on this site and later in our print anthology.

It’s always exciting to compile the first part of the year-end anthology and many long and short listed authors have already accepted our publication offer for the fifth BFFA anthology, which will be published in December this year, after all three yearly awards have been completed. We hope those who have booked for the flash fiction festival, 19-21st June and who are winners or listed writers, might like to read their pieces in our Open Mic Sessions. It is always great to hear them read out loud.

This time the Award turn around was even quicker than usual. We wanted to complete it by the end of February and we are very grateful to the reading team for dedicating many hours of reading during the life of the Award and in particular in the last few weeks and the final weekend and afterwards and for our judge, writer, editor and tutor and one of the Directors of National Flash Fiction Day UK, Santino Prinzi, for immersing himself in the longlist over several days to select the short list, find the winners and achieve a very fast result. He told us the whole process was a blast which he greatly enjoyed. Read his report and comments here.

The next Award judged by writer and writing tutor, Mary-Jane Holmes opens on March 1st and ends on Sunday June 7th. Results will be out by the end of June. We look forward to reading more flash fictions and be astonished, moved, humbled and amazed all over again.

Jude Higgins
February, 2020

Interview with Santino Prinzi, Judge for February 2020 Award

Santino Prinzi is a Co-Director of National Flash Fiction Day in the UK, is one of the founding organisers of the annual Flash Fiction Festival, and is a Consulting Editor for New Flash Fiction Review. He writes flash fiction, prose poetry, and is currently working on a novel. His full-length flash fiction collection This Alone Could Save Us is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction. His flash fiction pamphlet, There’s Something Macrocosmic About All of This (2018), is available from V-Press, and his short flash collection, Dots and other flashes of perception (2016), is available from The Nottingham Review Press. His work has been selected for the Best Small Fictions 2019 anthology, and he has received nominations for the Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, the Best British and Irish Flash Fiction, and the Best Microfiction anthology. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Jellyfish Review, 100-Word Story, Bath Flash Fiction Award anthologies, National Flash Fiction Day anthologies, Reflex Fiction, and others. Twitter (@tinoprinzi)
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.

The Best Small Fictions 2017
Edited by Tara L. Masih and Amy Hempel
Reviewed by Santino Prinzi

The third instalment of one of the most popular and esteemed series of flash fiction anthologies, The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books, 2017), is an essential read for every flash fiction writer or reader. From Matthew Baker’s island of presidential doppelgangers to Harriot West’s ekphrastic haibun story about Van Gogh’s sunflowers, each of the pieces in this anthology proves that writers are not only continuing to produce high-quality flash fiction, but that the imagination and scope of flash fiction is far-reaching, whether writers choose to explore the uncharted or re-invent the wheel.

A wonderful aspect of this series is its author spotlight, which includes an interview with an author with either more than one story in the anthology or multiple nominations (and being nominated just the once is an achievement in itself!). This year’s spotlight author is Joy Williams, a renowned American writer. The two stories, taken from 99 Stories of God (Tin House Books, 2016) serve as a great opening to the anthology and as a taster of Williams’ engaging, stripped-back collection itself. ‘36’ tells the story of Penny and the house she and her husband lived in, a house that she despises and rents out after her husband’s death. The story is laced with wit, the language is stripped back to the bare essentials, and culminates in a final striking image that offers a spectacular opening to the anthology.
Read in Full

Autumn Flash Friday

Friday 29^th Sept.
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar
free glass of wine
sweets and nibbles
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James Street
Bath
BA1 2TW

FREE ENTRY

Our founder, Jude Higgins, will be reading from her debut flash fiction pamphlet, The Chemist’s House, 13 flash fictions based on growing up in Mid-Wales. Published by V Press in June 2017.

Also reading – Meg Pokrass, Diane Simmons, Tino Prinzi, Conor Haughton and Alison Powell.

Come along, support Jude, and listen to some fabulous flash fiction. Everyone will read for ten minutes each with a twenty minute break half-way. We’d love to see you there.

Flashing in March
An account of our last Evening of Flash

There was a full house at the spring Evening of Flash Fiction at St James Wine Vaults, Bath on 17^th March. It’s a wonderful venue with a friendly bar downstairs, and we’re made to feel very welcome by owners Mandy and Neil who like to support artistic ventures in the local community.

images courtesy of Rebecca Noakes

Read in Full

March Flash Fiction Event

Friday 17^th March
7.30 pm – 9.30 pm
late bar, free nibbles
St James’ Wine Vaults
www.stjameswinevaults.co.uk
10 St James St
Bath
BA1 2TW