Pardon the title. I couldn’t resist this phrase, first recorded in Middle English in 1380, the meaning to do anything necessary to achieve a goal. Translating the idea into writing for a short story competition with the hope of a prize, here I concentrate on how you can hook our initial readers (who may have a batch of 50 stories to read in their inbox). Let’s have a look at ‘Dead Dog’ the 2022 Bath Short Story Award first prize winner, by Kate 0’Grady Continue reading
BSSA 2022
Judges’ Comments, BSSA 2022
Just under 1000 entries were submitted to the 2022 Award and we thank our dedicated and enthusiastic group of initial readers for helping the team arrive at a longlist of fifty. From there it was a difficult task for us to find the shortlist of twenty brilliant stories which we sent to our final judge, writer, editor and teacher, Paul McVeigh Thank you very much to him for making his selections and for his comments below. The BSSA team’s comments on the stories selected for The Acorn Award for an unpublished writer of fiction and The Local Prize are also included at the end of Paul’s report. We’re looking forward to reading all the winning and shortlisted stories in print in our ninth paperback anthology, which will be launched in November, 2022. Continue reading
Shortlisted writers’ bios, BSSA 2022
Congratulations to all the BSSA 2022 shortlisted writers, listed here in alphabetical order. In his general remarks, our shortlist judge Paul McVeigh said:
“The 2022 shortlist was strong. It speaks to the reputation of the Bath Short Story Prize that the stories had such variety in genre, plot and style with impressive quality and I very much enjoyed reading them.”
The 2022 anthology will be out in paperback and available from our publisher adhocfiction.com and from Amazon in January 2023. Continue reading
Longlist BSSA 2022
Many congratulations to the writers longlisted in our 2022 Award and big thanks to all those from around the world who entered. Sometimes titles are duplicated among entries and you will have received an email from us to confirm it is your story listed. You are welcome to share that you are longlisted on social media and elsewhere, but as judging is still in process, we ask you not to link your name with your story. Thank you.
| 2021 Bath Short Story Award Long List | |
|---|---|
| TITLE | AUTHOR |
| Acts of love on the 17.22 from Bristol Temple Meads | tba |
| All That Remains is Hope | tba |
| After the Good Shepherd’s Laundry, Buffalo | tba |
| A Good Night | tba |
| Beast | tba |
| Becoming a Ninja | tba |
| Bird of Paradise | tba |
| Bitty Vee | tba |
| Cock o’The North | tba |
| Dead Dog | tba |
| Don’t Step on the Cracks | tba |
| Extending the Olive Branch | tba |
| Flatmates | tba |
| Ham’s Place | tba |
| Hidden | tba |
| His Last Mandolin | tba |
| Hydrangea | tba |
| I Can’t Hear You | tba |
| Indian Tree | tba |
| Knowing the Enemy | tba |
| Landfill | tba |
| Looking for Anna | tba |
| My friend Jake | tba |
| Nine Storeys High | tba |
| Nobody believes a woman named Joanne | tba |
| Obituary Notice | tba |
| Only Me | tba |
| Park Life | tba |
| Polbo á Feira | tba |
| Raju and the Tiger | tba |
| Ratty | tba |
| Sophia Goes Bowling at 3.AM | tba |
| Starling Boy | tba |
| Stick People | tba |
| Still Life With Lemon | tba |
| Swimming Upstream | tba |
| The Ant House | tba |
| The Census Worker | tba |
| The Ghosts That Dance Between Us | tba |
| The Greenland Shark | tba |
| The Guising | tba |
| The Making of Koupepia | tba |
| The Neverending Picnic | tba |
| The Omiyage Maker of Yamanashi | tba |
| The Top Road | tba |
| The Vocabulary Builder of Utopia Gardens | tba |
| We are nothing more than birds | tba |
| Yellow Rose Fever | tba |
| Your_Bed | tba |
Under the Bonnet of Your Story
photo by Chris Knight on
Unsplash
For those last minute writers thinking of entering our 9th award, I’m going to stretch metaphor to its limits and ask you to get under the bonnet of your story.
Yes, if your story was a car, you need to undertake some maintenance before it sets off on its extensive journey via our BSSA readers and hopefully to a winning destination. Continue reading
What happened next? Interview with BSSA prize winning author, Hilary Taylor
We like to hear about previous prize winners’ successes. Hilary Taylor won third prize in BSSA 2018 with her story ‘Sea Defences’ and her story is published in our BSSA 2018 anthology. In this interview she tells us how she extended this prize winning short fiction into a novel with the same title, which will be published by Lightning Press on January 15th 2023. Congratulations Hilary! We also learn how she discovered her short story ‘Sea Defences’ online, analysed for an exam syllabus. A multi-genre writer, Hilary was recently a winner in the Flash 500 flash fiction contest and there’s a link to the story for you to read. She’s also given great advice for editing final short story drafts if you are thinking of entering this year’s Award.
Hilary Taylor grew up in Suffolk and Hampshire, and is a graduate of Edinburgh University. She lives in Suffolk, where she taught for almost twenty years, and now writes, reads, has serial arty-crafty obsessions (paper-making, marbling, wool-felting), and goes for long walks before breakfast. She has five grown-up children, and, at the last count, eight grandchildren. Her short fiction has won or been listed in competitions, including the Bridport Prize, Bare Fiction, the Bath Short Story Award and Flash500, and has been published in magazines and anthologies. Sea Defences is her first novel (although of course there are previous ones ‘in a drawer’, where they should probably stay.) You can find her on twitter @hilarytaylor00 Continue reading
New novel from BSSA 2021 prize winner, Kristen Loesch
Kristen Loesch won the third prize in our 2021 Award with her brilliant short story, ‘Important Letters’, which you can read in our 2021 Anthology, available from Ad Hoc Fiction and Amazon. This month (February 2022), her debut novel The Porcelain Doll, shortlisted in the Caledonian Novel Award and The Bath Novel Award is published in the UK and sounds fascinating: Continue reading
Unique Angles on The Short Story
Our Award ends on April 11th. In 13 weeks time. Want to write a short story with an unusual angle that stands out from the crowd? Join one of these very affordable short courses at The Crow Collective organised by dynamic writer and story teller, Sage Tyrtle. 
Continue reading
A new year, a new story?
January is a wonderful month (no it is, really) and one of the best parts is cracking open a brand new notebook and filling it with fresh words. Let’s not call them resolutions (not a fan, they can so quickly turn to disappointments and we use them against ourselves) but rather hopes and dreams; let’s take a gentler approach to writing and ourselves as writers (and humans!). Continue reading
Eight short story prompts for the winter solstice
21st December. It’s the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and today there are just under eight hours of daylight in London
Because most writers love a prompt to get them going here’s a list of prompts, one for each daylight hour. Maybe if you have some time today, see if you can write a rough draft inspired by one of them. Our 2022 Award ends on 11th April, so plenty of time to finish it.
photo by mikka luotio on Unsplash