Author Archives: Editor

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 →

Interview with BSSA 2025 judges, Lucy Luck and Liv Bignold

Our BSSA 2025 judges are Lucy Luck and Liv Bignold from Conville & Walsh Literary Agency,

Lucy Luck started in publishing as an assistant at Rogers, Coleridge & White before setting up her own agency in 2006. In 2014 she formally joined Aitken Alexander Associates and in 2016 she moved to C&W. Her authors have been listed for and awarded numerous prizes including the Rooney Prize, the Orange Prize, the Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Irish Book Award, the Costa Novel Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the British Book Award Newcomer of the Year, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, the EFG Sunday Times Short Story Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Impac Dublin Literary Award, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Encore Award.

Liv Bignold joined Conville & Walsh in May 2024 as assistant to Sarah Ballard, having previously spent two years at Curtis Brown supporting Alice Lutyens and, prior to that, Karolina Sutton. She has experience working on books that span all genres, and is enjoying getting to know Sarah’s exceptional roster of authors. Alongside her day-to-day workload, she provides editorial feedback to students enrolled on Curtis Brown Creative courses. Before deciding to pursue a career in agenting, she worked in Contracts at HarperCollins and in Rights at an educational publisher. She holds a first-class honours BA in English Literature from the University of Exeter.

We’re delighted that Lucy Luck and Liv Bignold from C & W Agency have agreed to judge our 2025 Award shortlist. They gave some great answers to team member, Alison Woodhouse’s questions below. Do read if you are thinking of entering our 2025 Award, open now for entries and closing March 31st 2025. Continue reading →