We’re delighted to publish BSSA team member Jane Riekemann’s interview with award-winning author, screen writer, broadcaster and Booker Prize judge, Sara Collins, who won the Costa First Novel Award in 2019 with her best-selling novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton. Sara’s brilliant short story, ‘Say You’ was a third-prize BSSA winner, way back in 2016 and two other of her superb stories have been shortlisted in our Awards; ‘Light Like You’, also in 2016 and ‘Lilith’ in 2015. The stories are published in our 2015 and 2016 anthologies which you can buy from Amazon. In this fascinating interview, among other things, Sara tells us about adapting her novel for the TV, her current writing projects and daily writing rituals and gives great advice for anyone thinking of entering BSSA 2024, which closes three weeks today, Monday, April 15th. Continue reading
Christopher Fielden: top tips from a short story guru
As short story writers, where do you find the best places to send your work? Social media platforms, the magazines and journals you read and competition listing sites of which there are many. Listing sites do seem to come and go and, when I was posting our award this year, I noticed that many we’ve used over the decade have folded. One that seems here to stay is Christopher Fielden’s website where you’ll find the BSSA listed under ‘Prestigious &/or Big Prize Competitions’
In addition to running the site, Chris is an award-winning and Amazon best-selling author, editor and blogger and runs his own short humorous story competition ‘To Hull and Back’ (more about that later). His short story collection, Book of the Bloodless Volume 1: Alternative Afterlives was published by Victorina Press and was a finalist in the ‘Fiction: Short Story’ category of the International Book Awards, sponsored by American Book Fest. It also won Author Shout’s Cover Wars. He also publishes thousands of writers’ stories in support of literary charities via his flash fiction writing challenges. Via the writing challenges, Chris compiled and edited a world record-breaking book. The 81 Words Flash Fiction Anthology that contains 1,000 stories written by 1,000 authors. It won Best Anthology in the 2022 Saboteur Awards. He also manages to find time to run an email newsletter that goes out once or twice a month. It’s currently free to sign up and gives regular details of writing competitions, guest posts by experienced writers / editors, details of new books that have been published by subscribers, and lots of other writing-related content.
I met Chris at an anthology launch in the days before Covid, when we held in-person events at Mr B’s Emporium in Bath and am pleased he was happy to share with us, in the following interview, his thoughts on short stories and those parts of the writing industry he knows so well. Continue reading
Writing Inspiration: Read short story titles!
How to …
Once upon a time I told my dad I was going to be a writer and he bought me one of those Dummy Guides. It had a bright yellow cover and practically guaranteed I’d produce a bestseller, fast. After a few weeks Dad asked how I was getting on? Had I worked my way through the chapters yet?
Reader, I had not.
He shook his head sadly. Dad was an autodidact who’d taught himself to play the piano, speak three languages and produce a passable watercolour. Surely anyone willing to apply themselves, could learn the ‘rules’ of writing? It’s a question I think about quite a lot, especially as a teacher and mentor. Wouldn’t it be great, the theory goes, if there was a map to follow, a class to take, a video to watch, some instructions we could stick to that would get the story written!
Well, no, actually! Isn’t that the fear of AI? Where would the personality, individuality, oddity and beautiful imperfection be in a creative work written by rote? Following the rules can certainly polish a piece of writing, but can they make it sing? Continue reading
Review of A Tricky Dance, By Diane Simmons
Diane Simmons was an initial reader for Bath Short Story Award for several years. She is now more involved with National Flash Fiction Day, which she co-directs, writing flash fiction and judging flash fiction contests. A Tricky Dance, published in January 2024 by Alien Bhudda Press, is the third novella-in-flash she has published since 2019. You can find out more about the others, Finding a Way, and An Inheritance on Diane’s website
For those unfamiliar with the form, a novella-in-flash has short flash fiction stories as chapters, which are often, but not always self-contained and together form a narrative arc. A Tricky Dance is the story of Elspeth, a Scottish school girl from a single parent family in the 1980s, who is trying to fit in with her school mates but hampered by a lack of money. Continue reading
Every Picture Tells a Story
I was going to call this Pic Fic but, on checking, found that’s already a registered title for an X -Files archive and this blog is definitely not that. I’m not sure if there’s an actual genre for stories inspired by paintings but certainly the visual arts have rippled across literary sands, occasionally making big waves as the works of a particular artist or school have popped up over the years.
Vermeer and Dutch paintings of the 17th Century became a focus in the 90s through the novels of Tracy Chevalier and Deborah Moggach. Girl with a Pearl Earring (the title of Chevalier’s book as well as Vermeer’s painting) mixes a smidgen of fact with a rich imagining of the identity of the enigmatic subject and her relationship with her master Vermeer. It was a commercial success globally and predictably a film followed. In Moggach’s Tulip Fever the characters are fictional but the subject is real: tulip mania, which saw the price of tulip bulbs soar until the speculative bubble market crashed. This is the backdrop to the story but Moggach’s inspiration for her tale of love, beauty and the payback for greed was a painting by a very minor 17th Century Dutch artist that she bought at auction and, in the narratives of both Chevalier and Moggach, the world of dark Dutch interiors is illuminated on so many levels.
Walking familiar paths with freshly curious eyes
I walked for several hours today, in the surprisingly warm sunshine, because I couldn’t settle and I’d spent hours doing admin jobs and rearranging my notes. It’s been a worryingly recurrent feature of the last few months, and I’ve tried to confront it with my usual tricks (star charts, targets, treats, journaling, reading, essay writing, editing etc) but to no avail. Creatively I feel paralysed, the world overwhelming, my expectations of myself and what I should/could/ought to be writing derailing me before I begin.
I set off on my usual route but when I came to the first fork in the path, this way or that, I stopped and thought about what would make me feel better, rather than just move forward on auto pilot or along a predetermined route. None of these paths are new (sorry Robert Frost!), but today I looked for where there was more sunlight, more snowdrops. I chose woodland tracks over tarmac because I wanted to be amongst trees. I walked up a hill to get the view. As I walked I let each previous choice inform the next one and the next until, almost by accident, I left my gloom behind and felt invigorated. Continue reading
Review of The Naming of Moths by Tracy Fells
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.
Review
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. It’s a pleasure now to write a short review of her new short story collection, The Naming of Moths. which was published by Fly on the Wall Press late last year and is available from them or from Amazon.
In their guidelines for submission Fly on the Wall Press state:
“We prefer writing with a sprinkle of social consciousness and political engagement. This encompasses terms such as social commentary or observation, as well as more overtly political storylines. We believe, sometimes, our very existence in a certain setting is political and a story can be political simply in viewpoint.”
Tracy Fells,is a writer who, I believe, exactly fits Fly on the Wall Press’s brief. Her stories are rich with social commentary and observations on how people navigate life in (usually) the present day UK, whether they were born in this country or have travelled from elsewhere. . Continue reading
Political writing: The ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th, 1983’ by Hilary Mantel
In the eleven years we’ve been running the Bath Short Story Award, we’ve been treated to over 12,000 stories on a wide range of themes and genres, presented in a variety of styles. Our anthologies have showcased some 210 of those wonderful stories, many of which have induced tears of sadness, recognition and laughter. But in all the years I’ve been part of the BSSA reading team I can’t remember coming across an overtly political story, say, one just about Brexit, party political shenanigans, or the reality of a protest march.
Of course, stories that deal with topics such as war, refugees, pandemics, homelessness, crime and the climate, for example, will naturally be political in the broad sense and will probably be richer and more textured for it, but one specifically pinning its colours to a ‘party political’ or an issue-specific mast?
Perhaps, there’s a dearth of such stories? And then you come across ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th, 1983’ by the late Hilary Mantel. It was the title story in Mantel’s second collection, published in 2014; she has been more highly acclaimed for her long historical narratives but the collection, as a whole, bears her trademark style of framing moments in disquieting prose. In 2015 it was selected for the BBC National Short Story Award and generated a huge amount of publicity, with the Daily Mail calling it ‘warped’ and ‘a distasteful fantasy.’ The subject matter was certainly shocking as the highly divisive former Prime Minister had only been dead for a year when the story was first published. Continue reading
Interview with Patrick Holloway, the 2023 BSSA First Prize Winner
Q. We were delighted when Farhana Shaikh chose The Language of Remembering, as our first prize winner. It’s a beautiful, haunting story about, amongst other things, memory, language and grief. Could you tell us a little about the process of writing this story. It’s genesis and iterations? The use of second person is so powerful here, I wondered if you landed on that straight away for the story or found your way there? Continue reading