My Fave Five…
March 2020
Series Editor: Jonathan Cardew
March Selector: Jude Higgins
What’s rare, what’s bright, what’s new?
This is what we ask a new writer every month in search of the best hybrid and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we catch up with Jude Higgins, publisher of the Bath Flash Fiction Award and flash writer extraordinaire.
Jude gives us a little snippet of her fave flash from March 2020:
Maybe You Catch Another Ray of Sun by Beth Gilstrap
Published in Atlas and Alice, 16th March 2020
The title holds the fragile hope for the future, but the last word of the story nails the whole piece. Just wait until you get to it.
Visiting Hour by Lori Sambol Brody
Published March in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 16)
What a setting and plot! The car park outside San Quentin prison. A young girl left there while her mother visits Charles Manson. A predatory hippy.
Eight Spare Bullets by Sharon Tefler
Published at Bath Flash Fiction Award, March 1st.
In the very far north, a marriage collapses while icebergs melt. How quickly life can change at micro and macro level. How unconscious people are.
The Dissolution of Peter McCaffrey by Simon Cowdroy.
Published at Bath Flash Fiction Award, March 1st
A farmer loses everything in the aftermath of bush fire and drought. Vivid and true. Searing images. A deeply touching and devastating last paragraph.
When Neil Armstrong Walks on The Moon by Sara Hills
Published March 13th at National Flash Fiction Day UK.
Set in Vietnam. GI’s on a drunken spree. The consequences of the Apollo 11 moon landing on one Vietnamese woman. ‘Giant leaps’ in only 100 words.
Jude Higgins’ flash fiction chapbook, The Chemist’s House was published by V.Press in 2017. She is widely published in magazines and anthologies including New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Frontier, Pidgeonholes, Fictive Dream, FlashBack Fiction and Moonpark Review. She organises Bath Flash Fiction Award and is a director of Ad Hoc Fiction and of Flash Fiction Festivals, UK.
Jonathan Cardew’s stories, interviews, and articles appear or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Flash, JMWW, People Holding, Smokelong Quarterly, and Segue, among others. He teaches at MATC in Milwaukee. He was a finalist in 2019 Queen’s Ferry Press Best Small Fictions. More at his website: https://jonathancardew.wordpress.com/.