Flash Fiction Shortlist 2021

Adele Evershed

Serial Killers

Adele Evershed is a teacher who is gradually starting to call herself someone who writes. She was born in a small town in South Wales and now lives in a small town in Connecticut. She started her writing journey by producing corny rhyming couplets and scripts for a British expat group’s annual Panto. Since then she has had poetry (of the non-rhyming sort) and prose published in a number of online journals and print anthologies. Some of the places you can find her writing including Every Day Fiction, Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Prose Online, High Shelf, bee house Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Tofu Ink Arts Press, The Fib Review, Sad Girls Club and Green Ink Poetry. Visit her website at thelithag.com

MJ Harbottle

Two Faced

Although my name is Mary-Jane, most people call me MJ. I live in North Yorkshire, with my husband and our rescue Jack Russell terrier. I teach law at a university, which I really enjoy – my wonderful, lively undergrad law students keep me on my toes! 

 I only started writing when the first lockdown hit, in March 2020, and I signed up to an online beginners crime fiction writing course with the National Centre for Writing. Crime fiction and psychological thrillers are my favourite genres to read. I’ve since been long/short-listed a number of times, including being long listed for the Staunch Flash Fiction prize in 2020, and a finalist for the latest London Independent Story Prize (Flash Fiction category). 

Katrina Moinet

Cornered

Katrina Moinet writes short fiction and poetry that explores female experiences, both personal and political. She won the 2021 Globe Soup Short Story prize with ‘Nowhere Else I need to be’. Her work is included in the Poetry Marathon Anthology 2021 and she’s been longlisted for Cranked Anvil’s Short Story competition.

Katrina is completing a Creative Writing Masters at Bangor University and The Open University. She lives in Wales with her husband and daughter. When she is not writing, you can find her climbing in Snowdonia’s mountains or surfing the Anglesey coastline. You can follow her on Twitter @KMoinetwrites. She is also shortlisted for the Staunch Short Story prize!

Ros Thomas

How To Leave Your Childhood Behind

Ros Thomas grew up in Perth, Western Australia. After a 20-year career in current affairs, Ros became a long-running weekend columnist for The West Australian Newspaper. Ros’s short stories have won international prizes. Her award winning black comedy Iron was published in the UK collection All Those Things You Never Thought Mattered. Her flash fiction has also won awards and been published in the 2021 collection Twice Not Shy by Night Parrot Press.

Her first novella, How To Shame The Devil, the story of a man caught up in a #MeToo scandal from his past, is published by Night Parrot Press.

Click here to go to the Short Story Prize shortlist!

The Staunch Book Prizes for thriller novels and short fiction open in February 2022.

Check out our sister project The Staunch Test which rates films and television dramas for violence against women. There you will find a growing database of titles rated as PASS, FAIL or DEBATE, and many reviews of films and television shows from the Staunch Test perspective.

Alison Ringrose

Pale On The Gatepost

After a career as a linguist and teacher of modern languages, I am now  retired and finally have time to write, a pleasure abandoned when Life got in the way.

Born in South Wales, I worked abroad and then in London where  I married and  had three children.  Later we moved to Northumberland which is a wonderful place to bring up a family and indulge in my love of the arts.

I belong to a wonderful writing group, Northumberland Writers, who are all very supportive and I edit a monthly magazine for the Parish. Apart from my children, my five grandchildren and a beloved dog, my writing is a joy and a delight!