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BSSA 2025 Now Closed

A big thank you to everyone from around the world who entered our 2025 Award which closed at the end of March. We appreciate your support. As usua, it was a hectic final weekend with entries flooding in and our team is now busy reading your stories.

The longlist will be out in early July and the shortlist by mid July. Judges Lucy Luck and Liv Bignold from C & W Literary Agency will select the winners by the end of July. Read the interview with them here

First Prize: £1200
Second Prize £300
Third Prize £100
Acorn Award for an unpublished writer £100
£50 in book tokens for Local Prize

Best wishes to all!

Debut Novel by Patrick Holloway, our 2023 BSSA winner, now published!

Patrick Holloway won first prize with his wonderful short story,’The Language of Remembering’ in our 2023 Award, judged by Farhana Shaikh. We’re very excited to announce that his debut novel, with the same title, was published at the end of last month by Epoque Press. and is available from their store, bookshops and from Amazon. The novel extends the story of the short story’s protagaonist, Oisin, and here’s a brief summary:

“The Language of Remembering is a novel that explores the ways memories can construe an identity and what it means to call a place a home. Brigid and Oisin embark on a journey of personal discovery, and as past traumas are exposed, they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are. The Language of Remembering asks how we connect to the people we love and how we move on from the past to find meaning in the present.” Continue reading →

Interview with BSSA Team Member, Jude Higgins

Jude is a well-known face in the short story and flash fiction world. In addition to being a prolific writer, she is a tutor, runs online Flash Fiction Festival Days three times a year, is the founder of Bath Flash Fiction Awards, directs the small press, Ad Hoc Fiction and also Flash Fiction Festivals UK, an in-person weekend event, now in its 7th year, which attracts writers from all over the world.

Her flash fiction has been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and The Chemist’s House, her debut chapbook of short fictions, was published by V Press in 2017. Last year Ad Hoc Fiction published Clearly Defined Clouds, her full flash fiction collection, also available from Amazon. It has been described as a ‘mastery of condensed fiction.’ She is also a founding member of Bath Short Story Award, which is where we’ll begin. Continue reading →

Finding a Title

Our 2025 Award closes on 31st March. In FOUR weeks. Maybe if you are entering, you are at the stage where you are thinking about a title. Maybe you began your short story with a title in mind? Maybe your story is still percolating before any words get down on paper?

How do you create a good title? So much has been written about this. Good ones stay with you for ever. I love Raymond Carver’s famous short story title, which is also the title of one of his collections,  “What we talk about when we talk about love.” Gordon Lish, his editor, retitled it  “I Am Going to Sit Down.” but thankfully,  it  was never published in that version.

There’s a fun thing I saw recently somewhere online, which suggested writing  bad versions of famous titles of novels and short stories. For example, ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ could be ‘The Fruits of Anger’. Worse, another Steinbeck novel. ‘Of Mice and Men’ could be translated into  ‘Of Rodents and Males.”What about this version of “Sons and Lovers” — ‘Offspring and Their Romantic Partners’? Or ‘Fondness in the Season of the Plague’. Silly, but useful to study the originals and see how they work. Is it the weight of the words, or what they encompass about the book or the short story. Is it the rhythm or the length of the title? Continue reading →

Tracy Fells joins the BSSA team

Tracy Fells was the 2017 Regional Winner (Europe and Canada) for the Commondwealth Short Story Prize. Her short fiction has been widely published in print journals and online, including Granta and Brittle Star. Her debut novella-in-flash Hairy on the Inside published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021, was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards in 2022 and the International Rubery Book Awards. Her shortstory collection The Naming of Moths was published in 2024 by Fly on the Wall Press.Tracy Fells has been a first reader for the Bath Short Story Award for many years, frequently selecting stories from the entries that go to to be shortlisted or to win a prize Continue reading →

One city, two literary colossi: Jane and Mary in Bath

Bath is well-known for its literary associations, the most famous being Jane Austen, who spent only a few years in the city and had a conflicted relationship with it. In a letter to her sister Cassandra, Jane wrote of her ‘happy feelings of Escape’ on leaving. That said, Bath is mentioned in all her novels and features most prominently in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, where the heroine Catherine Morland declares ‘Oh! Who can be ever tired of Bath?’ Certainly not the thousands from all over the world who will gather here this year to attend the balls and events to mark the 250th anniversary of Jane’s birth. Continue reading →

Karen Jones joins BSSA team

Karen Jones

Karen Jones is a flash and short fiction writer from Glasgow, Scotland. Her flashes have been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and her story “Small Mercies” is included in Best Small Fictions 2019. She has won first prize in the Cambridge Flash Prize, Flash 500 and Reflex Fiction and second prize in Fractured Lit’s Micro Fiction Competition. Her work has been Highly Commended or shortlisted for To Hull and Back, Bath Flash Fiction and Bath Short Story Award and many others. Her novella-in-flash When It’s Not Called Making Love is published by Ad Hoc Fiction and her ekphrastic novella-in-flash, Burn it All Down by Arroyo Seco Press She is an editor for National Flash Fiction Day anthology. Continue reading →

BSSA 2024 Anthology now for sale!

Our BSSA 2024 Anthology is now for sale from our publisher Ad Hoc Fiction and will be available from Amazon soon.
Eighteen fantastic stories of 2200 words or under. A marvellous variety, showing what can be achieved with the short form.This time, we have a blue/green back ground for the anthology with its strking collage pictur4e of a building in Bath, created by artist and former BSSA winner, Ele Nash. Continue reading →