Christmas stories and final 2024 submissions
Two submissions deadlines in December
Hi, I had to postpone last weekend’s workshop as the power and telecoms engineers were scheduled to come and reinforce our lines as we keep losing connection whenever it’s a bit stormy. Instead we were hit by a storm that started on Friday afternoon and went on until Sunday morning. Non-stop 80-90mph winds and gusts of up to 150mph. The power was only out for a few hours on Saturday afternoon but the wifi has been out since then and they hope it will be back by Friday. I’m writing this in a cafe in a town 7 miles from where I live, which is the nearest place I could get connected.
Today was the first of the advent stories - luckily I had scheduled them all to go before the storm hit! If you are one of the authors being published I will be in touch about your prizes as soon as I can when the internet is restored. I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as we did - they’re a great mix of poignant, funny and powerful.
If you’d like your work to appear in WestWord in early 2025 then there are two final submission opportunities this month.
December Deadlines
Don’t forget to send your LIGHT-inspired stories by 15th December for the extended deadline for the Short Story Prize. £1000 in cash prizes to be won and publication in the anthology edition in February. Enter here.
The 1000 Word Photo comp wants your stories of EXACTLY 1000 words inspired by the photo. Deadline is 31st December as we all know writers don’t go to New Year’s Eve parties! Cash prizes are a share of the entry fees and publication is in March.
Early 2025 Submission Opportunities
Our second annual Hermit Crab Prize closes in February. Cash prizes and publication for all shortlisted and winning writers. Our judge is Avitus B. Carle. Get all the info here and read this year’s winners here.
Plus the Monthly Micro returns in January for tiny stories up to 150 words inspired by the prompt which is revealed on the first Monday of the month. Cash prizes, a secret prize for the winner of the public vote, and all 10 shortlisted stories published.
The theme for Edition 8 of WestWord - publishing April 2025 - is ILLUSION. Send your short stories, flashes and micros by 31st January 2025. Submit here.
The first Folktale Flash Contest has an April deadline. I’m judging this one and winners and shortlisted writers get cash prizes and publication. Info here.
Plus submissions are always open for Short Story Spotlight, Story Sunday and Flash Focus!
Join our community
Want to join our community and get craft workshops and submissions to lots of our editions included? Membership starts at just £6 a month.
To give you an idea of what you can expect from the workshops I have removed the paywall on a previous one: Writing Hermit Crab Flashes That Have Got Great Story. Watch it here.
Novella-in-Flash Online Festival
And finally, over at Retreat West we’re holding our first ever online Novella-in-Flash Festival and we are very excited indeed about it! We have great writers and presenters sharing insights on weaving together these exciting and innovative stories.
09th February 2025
10.00 - 10.45 GMT
The Novella-in-Flash: A Literary Labradoodle with Jupiter Jones
What is it that makes the hybrid form of the novella-in-flash such a distinctive, slippery, and maddeningly addictive thing to write and to read? Join Jupiter to find out!
Jupiter Jones lives in Wales and writes short and flash fictions. She is the two-time winner of the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Prize, and her work has been published by Ad Hoc, Aesthetica, Amphibia, etc. and rejected by many others. She is the author of three novellas-in-flash: The Death and Life of Mrs Parker; Lovelace Flats; and Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell. Being a proper nerd with very little social life, she is currently working on a PhD on the novella-in-flash.
11.00 - 13.00 GMT
Repeated Motifs and Images as Unifying Devices in the Novella-in Flash with Mary-Jane Holmes
The Novella-in-Flash ostensibly consists of separate standalone stories that incite, urge and summon a narrative arc rather than prescribe one through cause and effect. Recently when looking at her writing, Mary-Jane realised how frequently she includes certain images and motifs in her stories (mostly birds and insects). How might such repeated motifs and images work to unify the disparate scenes that make up a novella-in-flash so as to ensure that the work is dramatically and aesthetically pleasing? How might they act as symbols that layer the dynamics-of-desire crucial to the emotional movement of a character? Might we be able to structure a whole novella-in-flash on such repetition? Join Mary-Jane to discuss these questions and to experiment with the sensory!
Mary-Jane Holmes wanders and writes in the wilds of the North Pennines. She has garnered many awards including winning the Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize, the Mslexia Flash Prize and the Bridport Poetry prize. Her NiF Don’t Tell the Bees, is published by AdHoc Fiction. Her collection of Flash Fiction was published by V press in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Eyelands Literary prize in 2023. She was included in the BIFFY 50 2019/2020, showcasing the best British and Irish Flash Fiction. Her work appears in a variety of publications including anthologies such as Best Small Fictions 2014/16/18/20 and Best Microfictions 2020. She has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Kellogg College, Oxford and has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council studentship to complete a creative practice PhD at Newcastle University. UK. She is a member of the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes.
14.00 - 15.30 GMT
Mapping Your Literary Landscape: Approaching the Novella in Flash Through Setting with Sarah Freligh
Join Sarah to look at how setting can give birth to character and conflict, as well as inspire story, through guided prompts that will help you envision and design your very own literary landscape. Good for writers who are yearning to start a novella-in-flash or are currently working on one.
Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash contest and Other Emergencies, forthcoming from Moon City Press in 2025. Her work has appeared many literary journals and anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction(Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22). Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.
15.45 - 17.15 GMT
Just Around the Corner: Using Foreshadowing of Conflict(s) When Writing a Novella-in-Flash with Dan Crawley
When Dan first thought about writing a novella-in-flash, a myriad of how and why questions flooded his mind. How on earth would he link standalone flash fictions into an ongoing narrative thread? Why would this conflict drive the narrative better than others? And how can such an ongoing conflict be highlighted throughout?
Join Dan to discuss the answers he came up with and many more issues that bubbled up while writing his NiF, Straight Down the Road. You’ll also look at the specific tool of foreshadowing a strong conflict, along with vivid characters dealing with said conflict. After this workshop, you will have great success generating a novella-in-flash or finally finishing that one you’ve been working on.
Dan Crawley is the author of Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction), The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press) and Blur (Cowboy Jamboree Press). His writing appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including JMWW, Lost Balloon, Best Small Fictions 2023 & 2024, North American Review, SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years, Wigleaf, Quarterly West, and Atticus Review. He is a recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts creative writing fellowship. Also, he has multiple nominations for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, a Pushcart Prize, and appears on the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist (2019, 2021-2023).
