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2022 Bath Short Story Award Anthology Launch

Friday, 9th December may have been frosty in Bath but there was a warm atmosphere in our virtual reading room where 16 of the anthology authors, friends and family members gathered to share and listen to some brilliant stories. This was our ninth launch and the third on Zoom. Although live events are great fun, Zoom has made it possible for writers and guests to be with us from different parts of the world and from different time zones: Kerry Jewell joined us from Australia at 5am local time, Anna Dempsey from Sacramento at 1pm and all the other writers, including Emer Hoare from Dublin, popped up on screen from various locations across the UK.

Our first anthology was produced in collaboration with Good Housekeeping magazine in 2013 as an e-book and it was thrilling to see our dream in creating the award realised. Now, a further nine books on, we feel so fortunate to have been able to share the work of more than 150 writers (several have made multiple appearances) over the years. Continue reading →

BSSA Local Prize Presentation

Last Friday morning, Jude and Alison met Jenny Tunstall, our BSSA 2022 Local Prize winner, at Mr B’s Emporium of Books in Bath, so owner Nic Bottomley could present the book vouchers he generously donated for her win. We all posed in front of the book-filled bath in this fabulous bookshop and had a celebratory cup of coffee afterwards. A happy occasion. And thanks very much to Mr B’s for continuing to support our BSSA Award. Continue reading →

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 The BSSA team’s comments on the stories selected for The Acorn Award for an unpublished writer of fiction and The Local Prize are also included at the end of Paul’s report.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 →

Winners, BSSA 2022

Huge congratulations to all our winning and commended writers in the International Bath Short Story Award, 2022. The winning and commended stories were selected by our judge, writer, editor and writing teacher, Paul McVeigh and the Local and Acorn Award prizes were chosen by the BSSA team. Read the comments on the stories in our judges’ report. These winning stories, along with all the other brilliant shortlisted stories, will be published in our ninth anthology, to be published by Ad Hoc Fiction 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

Last chance to enter our 2022 competition!

As we enter the final hours of our 2022 competition, it’s time to repost the advice of Kurt Vonnegut!

– Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
– Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
– Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
– Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.
– Start as close to the end as possible.
– Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
– Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
– Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

But for every rule (well, almost every rule) there is an exception. “The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor,” writes Vonnegut. “She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.”

Good luck!