June | 2025 | SkyLightRain

Clevedon shore. Photo by Judy Darley

I’m excited to be a co-judge for Clevedon LitFest Flash Fiction Award 2025.

Find the rules and all the details here: https://www.clevedonlitfest.org.uk/flash-fiction-award-2025.php

Important details

Prizes: Winner £200 + two runner-up prizes of £25

Closing date: 11.59pm 8 August 2025

Entry costs £5

Enter here: https://www.clevedonlitfest.org.uk/flash-fiction-award-2025.php

What is flash fiction?
Flash fiction is often described as being a short short story. However, it is defined by far more than its brevity. Written with skill, it layers the power of a far longer piece, even a novel, into the space of a paragraph or two where characters live and breathe, and your reader goes on a journey.

Flash Fiction has been likened to the flash of a camera, capturing an episode in time. It can be as long as 1,000 words, but it is often much shorter. In this competition, you have just 500 words to capture a whole story, with a story arc, and even if your story doesn’t contain a beginning, a middle and an end, something must shift between the open and close of your story.

Your writing needs to be evocative enough for readers to feel nothing is missing, yet concise, with vocabulary and imagery selected and crafted for impact. This means leaving out unnecessary words, choosing strong verbs and exploiting the senses. Nothing should be gratuitous, and nothing should be a cliché (unless that is deliberate).

Quite simply, with no more than 500 words to play with, every word choice matters.

What I’m looking for in entries:

“I want to be moved by what I read. A flash fiction tale should work like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, casting ripples that travel beyond the page. A skilled writer should be able to create a story arc within the 500-word limit. There should be some sense of change in the story, if only in the protagonist’s thoughts. I want to read stories that ignite my imagination and capture my heart.”

What my co-judge Jackie is looking for:

“I’m looking for writing that prompts a response in me, draws me into its world through originality, impact and engaging characterisation, with a hook and a story arc that make me want to read to the end. I want to feel the power of language use in transporting me or stirring my emotions, carefully crafted for maximum effect. Can the story successfully communicate what is in the imagination of the writer to the mind and heart of the reader?”

I hope to read your Flash Fiction Award soon!

I relish writing and editing short stories and flash fiction, and have a self-imposed rule of submitting every month. If you write, I highly recommend this trick. It ensures that for every rejection, there are still a handful of tales out in the world that may yet be published, plus a gentle flurry of successes to bolster your writing mojo.

Here are some of my recent and upcoming publications.

Upcoming

Vinegar Tits – National Flash Fiction Day #FlashFlood

A Haircut is a Poem – dif literary zine

Waterslides and Other Snakes – Decadent Serpent

June 2025

‘Low Tide at Poets’ Walk’ opens the poetry anthology Poets’ Walk, edited by Martin Rieser & Ralph Hoyte, and is part of a poetry app you can listen to while walking Clevedon’s Poets’ Walk.

‘Gen A Will Disapprove of the Choices We Made‘ appeared on National Flash Fiction Day NZ’s Micro Madness shortlist and was published on their website along with a recording.

May 2025

My story ‘Blue-Naped Parrots See More Than They Say’ has been selected for publication in the Best Small Fictions anthology.

This tale originally appeared in New Flash Fiction Review Issue 32.

April 2025

An Absence of Towering Leaves, an excerpt from my hybrid work-in-progress about loss and solace – ‘To Lay Sun Into a Forest’, an anthology from Sidhe Press.

February 2025

Bellis Perenis – Wordpeace

December 2024

To trust the hungry sea – Flash Frontier, CIRCLE | POROWHITA issue. This story was nominated for a Best Microfiction award.

Dad has received his festive trim – Paragraph Planet