Tag Archives: Alison Woodhouse

By Hook or By Crook

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

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

Interview with BSSA 2020 first prize winner, Marissa Hoffmann

Marissa Hoffmann

Find out in this interview with Marissa Hoffmann, how her prize winning story ‘The Pencil Drawn Girl’ came into being, learn what she likes about writing short fiction and who her favourite short story writers are and get some great advice for writing a short story for a competition. Her winning story is the first one in our 2020 anthology, available from adhocfiction and Amazon in both paperback and digital versions.

Marissa Hoffmann’s fiction won the Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2019 and her stories have been variously podium-placed or listed in international competitions such as Mslexia, FlashBack Fiction, Fish, Flash Frontier’s Micro Madness and Reflex. Her flash stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, BIFFY 50 and Best Micro Fiction and one of her stories appears on the US Wigleaf Top 50 2020 long list. Read more about Marissa on www.marissahoffmann.com. She is currently working on her first novel. You can follow Marissa @Hoffmannwriter.
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Judges’ Comments BSSA 2020

Kate Johnson

This year our shortlist judge was Kate Johnson from MacKenzie Wolf Literary Agency and she made the following astute and helpful comments about the shortlist in general, the three winning stories and the two runners-up:
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