Winners
Short-list
Long-list
From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024.
The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – 15 July. Venue: Marino Church, 6.30 pm. It is a free event and all are welcome.
Winners
Here are the 10 winning Flash Fiction Stories, as chosen by Michelle Elvy, to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2024.
Comments on the flash stories are from Michelle, who we sincerely thank for her time and expertise.
FIRST PLACE
Messiah: by Kate O’Grady
A story that feels energetic and unbound, but is finely crafted, about individual anguish and loss, and collective responsibility and guilt. The reader is caught from the very start – from the opening lines that suggest innocence alongside a more sinister sense of hysteria. And by the end, the collective ‘we’ can’t be escaped; we feel, eerily, hope in the remembering but also intense regret. We see the cruelty of children, the human potential for bullying. The tone is controlled as it moves from early antics to serious concerns for survival, as it shifts from past-tense memories to present-tense grief. The extended saviour metaphor is created in the dark spaces between fantasy and reality, and the use of second person – and the unforgettable image of the greatcoat and Docs – builds both tension and tenderness. A beautifully haunting story that surprised me and did not let go.
SECOND PLACE
Starship Borders General: by Susan Shepherd
This story begins simply enough but before you know it you’re in a whole community, an entire world. And even if dead serious, the language is lively and playful: a baby’s heart-shaped nostrils, son singing ‘You are my sunshine’ and the fishmonger, with ‘a turmoil of porpoises rolling in the blue carpet tiles of his wake’. The neatly ordered details in this narrative make it memorable: a father’s departure and a mother’s ‘mock croc handbag’; the whirr of the radiology machine and the memory of a cake with buttercream paste. This is sensory writing invoking the maddening present and the dreamy past, the borders fluid; despite the intensity of death or near-death in the ward, there is an overall feeling of jubilation at the unexpectedness of life. The final phrase sticks: ‘the colour of delicious’. It’s not where we think we are heading, and it’s just right.
THIRD PLACE
Blue Moon Memory: by PS Duffy
The casual voice invites us into this story; it’s familiar and comfortable. But this is not a comfortable story. What begins as a seemingly romantic encounter moves through a maelstrom of emotions, flashing backward and forward, tangling images and feelings in a brief moment of contact. The moment blurs to memory, and the story is alive with living and re-living. Here, a play with words that shows the uncertainty of the narrator-character, but also the careful rhythms of the writing: ‘when you stumbled, when I stumbled, when we stumbled into, I don’t know, the best of us’. What is striking is not only the story (of now, of then, of the residue of surviving), but the way this story is written, (the fragments, the repeated ‘remember?’), even as we are reading something so vivid as a moment that lives somewhere in the realms of darkness, rescue and salvation.
EIGHT HONORABLE MENTIONS (In no particular order)
A Story in 300 Words : by alfie lee
Coming of Age: by Jo Nestor
THE Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren: by Alan Falkingham
Pivot Point: by Judith Brown
The Importance of Firm Upholstery: by Fionnula Simpson
I Follow: by Seamus Scanlon
Things That Hurt: by Nicole Love
Blue Light: by RJ Dwyer
Notes from Michelle Elvy:
What a delight to read the submissions for the 2024 Fish Flash Fiction Prize, and what an honour and a challenge to make selections. The work I read demonstrates the way the form can be stretched, shaped and synthesised to create new imaginative views. Most pieces I read dealt with the landscape of human emotion and folly. Some read like traditional stories, some were like prose poems – all took risks in one way or another. The ones that engaged difficult subjects did so with an inquisitive and sometimes playful nature, also tenderness and grace. The works I selected for inclusion are the ones I returned to several times, and then several times again.
Some of them play with voice and form, from the deceptively simple backwards narrative of ‘A Story in 300 Words’ to the intimate second-person storytelling of ‘Coming of Age’ and the spare and poignant dialogue in ‘I follow’. Some explore the collisions and ruptures between people; despite the sometimes jaunty writing style, ‘No Idea’, ‘The Importance of Firm Upholstery’ and ‘The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren’ navigate complex terrain. Some stand out for the way they land: in ‘Blue Light’, ‘Things That Hurt’ and ‘Pivot Point’, the reader is left in a state of quandary, or wonder.
In the works selected, I found new ways of sensing realities, and what lies just beyond reality. Compelling is the way these fictions explore language, too. Each of the top three presents a steady and strong voice; there is writerly control while also a sense in each story that the edge is there to explore. These are big stories, whole worlds.
Writers of flash fiction are a fearless lot – and these stories prove that.
Michelle Elvy
A LITTLE ABOUT THE WINNERS:
Kate O’Grady is Irish by birth, but now roams the hills of Stroud, Gloucestershire trying to come up with ideas for stories. In fact she is obsessed with stories, the reading of them, and the writing of them. She also likes to eat bagels and lox with cream cheese. Her favourite short story writers are Lorrie Moore, Kevin Barry, Claire Keegan, Joy Williams and Wells Tower. Her favourite bagels are from Katz’s Deli in New York.
Susan Shepherd lives in the Scottish border town of Hawick, famed for producing medal-winning haggis and Scottish national rugby players. A journalist and poet – she won the Fish Poetry Prize in 2022 – Susan enjoys belting out hymns at the local Baptist church on a Sunday, and pushing her new granddaughter round the park in her pram. She is partial to Guinness, live music and the sound of oystercatchers along the river Teviot.
PS Duffy lives in Minnesota, where she misses sailing on the North Atlantic, yet, oddly, feels very much at home. Her publications include a memoir about her family’s time in 1940s Wuhan, China, where she was born, and The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, a WW I novel set in France and Nova Scotia. Published in the U.S., Canada, Israel, and the UK, it was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which recognizes the power of fiction to promote peace.
alfie lee discovered gravity and invented french kissing. when he’s not circumnavigating the globe on his solar-powered chimichanga he’s making stuff up. you can find them at alfielee.com.
Jo Nestor, retired Adult Educator, writes fulltime. She won the 2020 Leitrim Guardian Literary Award, has twice long-listed for FISH memoir competitions, and was shortlisted for Allingham Festival in 2023. Jo’s writing features in A Word in Your Ear – Roscommon New Writing Anthology 2019-2023, as well as several editions of the Roscommon broadsheet Autumn Leaves. Her well-received book reviews are available online at www.writing.ie . Despite global despair, she chooses to live in hope.
When Seamus Scanlon won the Fish Flash Fiction Prize with The Long Wet Grass (2011) he thought he had arrived (in West Cork). When the story became a one act play (2014) he thought he had arrived (on Broadway). When the story became a film (2015) he thought he had arrived (in Hollywood). When the play was translated into Japanese and staged in Tokyo (2018) he thought he had arrived (in the East). Will the Beauty Curse (2022) finally lift his arrival curse? Stay tuned www.seamusscanlon.com
Alan Falkingham currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, but originally hails from England. He is a published author of micro and flash fiction, short stories and occasional poetry. He has completed 2 full length novels. Alan’s 80,000-word dark mystery, Clearwater Lake, is represented by Meredith Bernstein. When not writing, Alan spends his time being ordered around by his two teenage daughters, guzzling craft beer with his partner, Gina, and following the latest sporting mishaps of Leeds United.
Judith Brown, born the eldest and only girl of five learnt early in life to seek out solitude. Then after a few years of marriage had solitude forced on her as a young widow. Even today, being alone is a natural preference apart from every other day when it’s not.
Fionnula Simpson is a writer, researcher, and teacher who is drawn to experimenting with poetry and prose. In her spare time, she likes to run (fairly slowly) and cook (rather poorly). She recently earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Galway.
Nicole Love is a bit of an odd blend. Malted in Scotland. Mashed in Belgium. Fermented in Singapore. Distilled in San Francisco. Aged in Boston. Shelved in Edinburgh. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh and has a gentle obsession with scotch, surrealism, linguistics and cultural oddness.
RJ Dwyer is a writer and doctor, currently pursuing an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. His stories have featured in thi wurd Magazine, The Interpreter’s House and the 2024 Anthology of the Federation of Writers (Scotland), among others. An extract of his novel-in-progress was shortlisted for the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. He has also worked as part of the editorial team for three books released by indie publisher thi wurd.
Short-list:
(alphabetical order: 31 stories)
The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren
|
|
|
Alan Falkingham
|
|
A Story in 300 Words
|
|
|
alfie lee
|
|
Flash Fiction
|
|
|
alfie lee
|
|
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
|
|
|
Amy Blau
|
|
Just a moment
|
|
|
Ciaran Fitzpatrick
|
|
Singles Night
|
|
|
Faye Stevenson
|
|
The Importance of Firm Upholstery
|
|
|
Fionnula Simpson
|
|
Fingers Crossed
|
|
|
Jacky Willett
|
|
Starry Mourning
|
|
|
Jaime Greenberg
|
|
Faceoff
|
|
|
Jim King
|
|
Coming of Age
|
|
|
Jo Nestor
|
|
Pivot Point
|
|
|
judith brown
|
|
Messiah
|
|
|
Kate O’Grady
|
|
The Blind Man
|
|
|
Katherine MacGloin
|
|
Wear your Pink Coat
|
|
|
Katherine William-Powlett
|
|
Fireworks
|
|
|
Kim Gravell
|
|
Leave Granted
|
|
|
L Khasanshina
|
|
Newborn Mother
|
|
|
Mary Butler
|
|
The Sweep
|
|
|
Michelle Bitting
|
|
Car keys
|
|
|
Nat Pree
|
|
Transient Household Contacts
|
|
|
Nat Pree
|
|
The Ritual
|
|
|
Natalie Morphet
|
|
Things That Hurt
|
|
|
Nicole Love
|
|
The maths lesson
|
|
|
NIROSHA GUNATILLAKE
|
|
Blue Moon Memory
|
|
|
P.S. Duffy
|
|
Blue Light
|
|
|
RJ Dwyer
|
|
I Follow
|
|
|
Seamus Scanlon
|
|
No Idea
|
|
|
Seamus Scanlon
|
|
Wings
|
|
|
Sean Murphy
|
|
Starship Borders General
|
|
|
Susan Shepherd
|
|
Long-list:
In Alphabetical order (124)
Rehab
|
AK~ Kaiser
|
The Interrogation of Lauren Lundgren
|
Alan Falkingham
|
STATIC ON THE LINE
|
ALEX REECE ABBOTT
|
flash fiction
|
alfie lee
|
A Story in 300 Words
|
alfie lee
|
The Door
|
Alison Bundy
|
A Stick of Incense
|
Alison Bundy
|
How Good Is Our Universe?
|
ALISON GROVE
|
What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
|
Amy Blau
|
The 52-year old man who turned into a cliché
|
Anita Lehmann
|
The Argument
|
Ariane Sherine
|
Polka Dot Cardi
|
Belinda Moore
|
A small diver and a very large pool
|
Bernard Steeds
|
1970s Kiev
|
Breda Nathan |
Just a moment
|
Ciaran Fitzpatrick
|
Apricity
|
David Micklem
|
Try
|
David Rhymes
|
Singles Night
|
Faye Stevenson
|
The Importance of Firm Upholstery
|
Fionnula Simpson
|
I’m up here
|
Frances Fischer
|
Family Violence
|
GAY LYNCH
|
Thanks. No.
|
GAY LYNCH
|
Mapping the Madness
|
Geraldine Walsh
|
A Swarm of Boys
|
Harriet Whitehead
|
Adieux, Henri
|
Helen Bar-Lev
|
Fluid of the Animal Body
|
Ian Lee
|
Fingers Crossed
|
Jacky Willett
|
Starry Mourning
|
Jaime Greenberg
|
Mind the Gap
|
James Garvey
|
Faceoff
|
Jim King
|
Who’s Greg Badger?
|
Jonathan Sellars
|
Can’t Kill the Spirit
|
Jude Higgins
|
Pivot Point
|
judith brown
|
The Holler
|
Judy Luttrell
|
Safe House
|
Jupiter Jones
|
To the Little Old Archivist Who Lives in My Head
|
Kaitlin Roberts
|
Messiah
|
Kate O’Grady
|
The Blind Man
|
Katherine MacGloin
|
Wear your Pink Coat
|
Katherine William-Powlett
|
Shaxton’s Law
|
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
|
The Drop
|
Ken Byrne
|
The difference between you and a drone pilot
|
Kevin Walsh
|
Fireworks
|
Kim Gravell
|
Leave Granted
|
L Khasanshina
|
Attendance: 9th Grade English, 8.00 am
|
Lana Holman
|
Buck
|
Laura J. Bobrow
|
Family – a collection of disparate memories
|
Lesley Bungay
|
Bone
|
Louisa Scott
|
Unrepairable
|
Louise Henriksen
|
But I’m Here Now
|
Luanne Castle
|
Subterranean Tears
|
Luka Bulajic
|
The CV
|
Maeve Shaw
|
Newborn Mother
|
Mary Butler
|
A Second Chance
|
Matthew Nicholls
|
Au Revoir, World Crisis
|
Michael Russell
|
The Sweep
|
Michelle Bitting
|
Car keys
|
Nat Pree
|
Transient Household Contacts
|
Nat Pree
|
The Ritual
|
Natalie Morphet
|
|
|
Things That Hurt
|
Nicole Love
|
Decimation
|
Nikki Barrowclough
|
The maths lesson
|
NIROSHA GUNATILLAKE
|
Paper Dolls |
Orla Russell-Conway
|
Blue Moon Memory
|
P.S. Duffy
|
(In)(Complete) Relationship Conversations
|
Pernille A Egidius Dake
|
If András Were a Soldier
|
Peter Dorward
|
That Day When …
|
Peter Rodgers
|
Just Breathe
|
PJ Lemer
|
PATTY’S ROAST CHICKEN
|
Rachel Fowler
|
CARRION CALL
|
Rae Cowie
|
Mariachi Pantomime
|
Randy Osborne
|
Blue Light
|
RJ Dwyer
|
The God of Diversity
|
Robert Paterson
|
Shall we call this just a Viennese Encounter
|
Saara Kahra
|
I Follow
|
Seamus Scanlon
|
No Idea
|
Seamus Scanlon |
%
|
Sharon Boyle
|
According to Wikipedia, Most Damelflies Emerge in Cool Daytime Conditions
|
Sherry Morris
|
Case Closed
|
shirley larkin
|
Fishface
|
Stephen Gallagher
|
Starship Borders General
|
Susan Shepherd
|
Swiped
|
Tim Fywell
|
Dave
|
Wiebo Grobler
|
Left Out
|
William MacFarlane
|
Déjà Vu
|
William Natale
|
Dymphna
|
Yanna Papaioannou
|
The Unbreakable Egg
|
Zoe Arena
|