Splonk is very happy to team up with the Allingham Flash Fiction Prize this year, to offer publication to the winners in this our twelfth issue. I was delighted to judge the competition, and I was awed, as I always am as an editor, by the quality of the work. I read every story that was submitted. I took my time. Considered and re-considered. I have – as reader, as writer, as editor – my own tastes, and the winning stories are just the kind of work I enjoy: they display attention to language; they are atmospheric to the max; they’re both immersive and thought-provoking. In short, as reader, they make me feel. And that’s what I want from all the fiction I read: to be quickened and refreshed.
Third prize winner, ‘Your Heart’s Right There’, by Jo Nestor, is an Italian-set story about the joy of music and kinship, that examines homesickness and communion. There is pathos and celebration in this story; gorgeous imagery; and a final burst out of joy and poignancy, so beautifully linked and passed on to the reader. I loved it.
Second prize winner, ‘Sunk’, by Ciaran Cunningham, is a visual feast, a watery immersion in the narrator’s water-bound dilemma. I loved its gorgeous salty sentences; the untethered, suffocating nature of the narrative; the attention to exact words; how those words stoke up the fever-dreamy atmosphere. The imagery is fresh and arresting; and the reader is hauled beautifully in. Just gorgeous.
First prize winner, ‘The Questions’, by Partridge Boswell, is a wordy triumph, a poetic, run-on interaction, that pulls the reader breathlessly by the hand. This piece is full of wisdom, and literary allusions, and it folds and re-folds over time in an intricate, beautifully handled way. It is about parenthood, and grief, and the brief mystery of life. Packed with internal cadence, of the human and language varieties, it sucked me in from that first long, rhythmic, lightly loaded line. A triumph.
Congratulations to all three winners and to the seven other writers of the stories – listed below – who made the top ten.
Nuala O’Connor, EIC, Splonk
November 2024
Allingham 2024 Flash Fiction winners and shortlist
1. The Questions
2. Sunk
3. Your Heart’s Right There
Highly Commended:
· Unstable
· Such Consolations We Find
· Big Top
· Saltwater
· Terms and Conditions
· White Horses
· Jonah