The International Bath Short Story Award, is currently organised by Jude Higgins, Jane Riekemann and Alison Woodhouse. who are in 2025, joined by new team members, Tracy Fells and Karen Jones. Launched in 2012 the BSSA has rapidly become established as one of the prominent short story competitions the UK receiving nearly 1000 world-wide entries each year and producing a yearly anthology of short-listed and winning authors.
Jude Higgins is a writer, events organiser and writing tutor. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University (2012) and writes very short (flash) fiction. In addition to co-running the Bath Short Story Award, she directs Flash Fiction Festivals UK, a yearly festival devoted to flash fiction. She is also founding organiser of the Bath Flash Fiction Award which runs a rolling competition with three rounds a year and a yearly award for a novella-in-flash. Jude is a director of the Award winning short-short fiction publisher Ad Hoc Fiction
Jude’s flash fictions have been published widely and she has won or been listed in many competitions for short-short fiction. Her chapbook of flash fiction The Chemist’s House, was published by V Press in 2017 and you can buy it from her website or on Amazon kindle. Her new flash fiction collection, Clearly Defined Clouds was published in July 2024.
Jane Riekemann is a ‘shameless activist’ according to the Daily Express, a UK tabloid newspaper. Since the 2016 Brexit referendum she has found that campaigning on a pro-EU agenda has consumed much of her time and energy and re-shifted her writing focus. As chair of the media team of Bath for Europe, a non-party aligned campaign group set up to stop Brexit (spoiler alert: it didn’t), her writing has shifted from the ‘creative’ to factual, persuasive non-fiction. She once won the Woman and Home Short Story Competition, but now produces releases, articles and opinion pieces, mainly for the local press and occasionally for West England Bylines, one of the emerging online citizen presses.
A former English and Drama teacher, she still co-runs the creative writing classes for a local festival and can be followed on Twitter @jriekemann
Alison Woodhouse is a writer and teacher. Her flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and anthologised, including In the Kitchen (Dahlia Press), With One Eye on the Cows (Bath flash fiction), Leicester Writes 2018 & 2020 (Dahlia Press), The Real Jazz Baby (Reflex Press), A Girl’s Guide to Fishing (Reflex Press), National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies and Life on the Margins (Scottish Arts Trust Story Awards). She has won a number of story competitions including Flash 500, Hastings, HISSAC (flash & short story), NFFD micro, Biffy50, Farnham, Ad Hoc Fiction and Limnisa and been placed in many others. In 2019 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. Her debut novella-in-flash The House on the Corner was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in October, 2020. Twitter: @AJWoodhouse Facebook: Alison Woodhouse
Karen Jones
Tracy Fells was the 2017 Regional Winner (Europe and Canada) for the Commondwealth Short Story Prize. Her short fiction has been widely published in print journals and online, including Granta and Brittle Star. Her debut novella-in-flash Hairy on the Inside published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021, was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards in 2022 and the International Rubery Book Awards. Her shortstory collection The Naming of Moths was published in 2024 by Fly on the Wall Press. Read Jude’s review of it here. Tracy Fells has been a first reader for the Bath Short Story Award for many years, frequently selecting stories from the entries that go to to be shortlisted or to win a prize.
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