Flash Fiction 2023 competition winners

We had a great session on Wednesday night when Alex Davis was finally able to return to a Fosseway meeting in person (previously being stymied by train strikes and Covid). He announced the winners to our Flash competition on the theme of Mistakes and here’s his judge’s report:

1^st place: THE LAST NOTE YOU BRING HOME by Anne Howkins

Flash fiction at its very best can have a starling emotional impact, and this piece was a great example of that. In its short word count it really got over a broken family relationship, an abusive father and a daughter doing her best to dance around and avoid injury or worse at his hands. The ending of the story was especially striking, and while it did avoid being graphic its delivery on the imagery and visuals was fantastic. This flash fiction was well-written and served up a perfect – if very sad – vignette of life in its 300 words.

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2^nd place: A GIRL NAMED MISTAKE by Martin Costello

Another piece that did some wonderful character work, though in a very different way, with more of a confessional or even stream of consciousness style. This was also the story of a broken family, torn apart almost immediately by some bizarre and damaging name choices given to the children within it. But unlike our winner, we do close on a more hopeful note here, with our lead eventually discovering that her name wasn’t ‘mistake’ at all, but something else entirely. It’s also a fun choice at the end of the story not to tell us, and that epitomises the splashes of grim humour in the story too.

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3^rd place: MOLTON-IN-THE-WOLD BIRD PROTECTION SOCIETY – FIRST YEAR HIGHLIGHTS by Chris Cottom

This was a lovely light touch piece, and I’ve always said that humour is a hard genre to write – it’s easy to come over as too forced or unnatural. The presentation here was clever, with each section reporting on a mistake or disaster for the society to a great cumulative effect – and the fact that the only success was the Christmas dinner was a lovely closing flourish. It takes confidence from a writer to create something like this, and it’s certainly well-executed here too.

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Honourable Mention: GUILTY PARTY by Iain McGrath

This was a brave story that approached a difficult topic in a clever way, and one that throws in an unexpected moment in the very finale that makes you think differently about the tale after it all. It offers some good emotional insight for the character, and also sadly show what the reaction can be to accusations of rape, with shockingly few convictions actually made percentage-wise, so it had a strong message for the current day too.

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The top three will be added to our website shortly for you to enjoy.

Congratulations to the winners!