Skip to main content
Deborah Tomkins      
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Stories
  • Books
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact

Bath Flash Fiction Award

October 24, 2024 at 8:06 am, No comments
I'm delighted to find a tiny story of mine - a flash fiction - on the Bath Flash Fiction Award long list. It's a story I'm rather fond of, so I wish it well, and hope it goes further.

The Bath Flash Fiction Award is more than just an award for tiny stories. They also run a competition for novellas-in-flash, with publication with Ad Hoc Fiction as the prize, and an annual Festival. There are often online Festival workshop days too, scattered throughout the year. These days would be an excellent way to find out more, if you don't know much about flash fiction.

I went to the very first Flash Fiction Festival, run by Jude Higgins and her team, held in Bath in 2017, because I knew very little about the craft of flash, and wanted to know more. Subsequent Festivals have been held in Bristol, and are residential for those who wish to stay on site.  I can honestly say that I have learnt so much about the craft of writing from attending these Festivals, and reading and listening to excellent writers. The Festivals have a wonderfully supportive and fun atmosphere too - there is always a lot of laughter.

Without the Festival, I would probably never have written my prize-winning novella-in-flash Aerth, which is being published by Weatherglass Books in January. It is available to pre-order from the publisher and also from all major bookstores. The Weatherglass Novella Prize was judged by Ali Smith, and here (again!) is what she said about my book:

“What planet are we on?  Can we leave?  Does it mean we can never go home again if we do? What does a phrase like worlds apart really mean? Deep-forged, witty and resonant, this dimensionally stunning novella deals with dystopia and hope in a way that reveals them as profoundly related.  A work of real energy and narrative grip, brilliantly earthy and airy at once, it blasts open a reader’s past/future consciousness and taps into literary antecedents as disparate as Hardy and Atwood. Funny, terrifying, humane, this is a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet – no, the size of several, all of them altogether strange and uncannily familiar.”


WeatherglassNovellas_06_Single2.jpg



No comments

Leave a reply







Recent Posts

  • Book Launch
    20 May, 2025
  • Climate Grief and Eco-Anxiety
    9 May, 2025
  • Author events this summer
    22 Apr, 2025
  • Interview with Michael Loveday
    27 Mar, 2025
  • Bristol Climate Writers: Desert Island Books at Redland Library
    18 Mar, 2025
  • Signing books
    2 Mar, 2025
  • Desert Island Books
    17 Feb, 2025


Created with Mozello - the world's easiest to use website builder.

I do not permit text or data mining by AI for any purpose. This includes all content on this website, including images and text.