Up for pre-order from Ad Hoc Fiction now, three marvellous prize-winning novellas-in-flash from our 2024 NIF Award, to add to your collection, Hereafter, by first prize winner, Sarah Freligh from the USA and the two runners up, Nose Ornaments by Sudha Balagopal from the USA and Marilyn’s Ghost by Jo Withers from Australia. Three amazing writers who have also won prizes in our single-flash Awards. You can pre-order all three novellas now from Ad Hoc Fiction at a 25% discount on the full price until publication on 27th June. These brilliant novellas were selected by our 2024 judge, John Brantingham and you can read what he said about them here in his report. We’re really excited that Sarah is coming to the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol, UK (12-14th) July and her winning novella will be launched there. John Brantingham will also be at the festival
We’ve included descriptions or quotes from other readers here, so you can see how special and intriguing they are
Hereafter is a gorgeous and devastating triumph. This award-winning novella follows Pattylee’s journey from early motherhood through the fog of bereavement after she loses her teenage son to brain cancer. Infused with surprising imagery and textured, poetic language, Sarah Freligh guides us through the oft-fractured landscape of grief and memory, time and hope. This is prose that sparks with remarkable depth and emotional honesty. In her signature micro-style, Freligh delivers a true masterclass of the novella-in-flash form.
— Sara Hills, author of The Evolution of Birds
When Sudha Balagopal describes food, you get hungry. When she describes sadness, you feel tears in your own heart. And so it is with Nose Ornaments, this finely crafted family saga of Lakshmi, and her daughter, Savi, and Savi’s daughter, Mini. Spanning years and geographies and cultures, we see how each woman lives in her particular time. So much changes in terms of men and marriage and work life. It’s a testament to how women adapt and blossom. But even more than that, it is the exquisite detail of Balagopal’s writing which is so precise and sensory, you may very well feel that you are not just reading this beautiful story, but living it as well.
— Francine Witte, author of RADIO WATER and The Way of the Wind
A reporter who sees her as nothing but a meal ticket
A rookie cop dazzled by her fame
A seasoned police inspector who’d seen it all before
A man’s voice on the phone
Pills and champagne on the nightstand
Photographs from a disconnected life
Stories from the death scene of Marilyn Monroe – daughter, wife, starlet, legend, ghost…
The 2025 Novella in Flash Award for novellas inbetween 6000 and 18000 words will open for entries in July. And closes at the end of September this year. Results out in January, 2025.
Our single flash award closes on June 2nd. And sometimes, that single flash can spark off a whole series culminating in a novella.
Jude Higgins
