Sudha Balagopal – The Novella-in-Flash

Here’s a round-up of 2024’s NIF-related activities and news. In the list below, look out for details of recent book publications, online communities you can join, workshops/panel discussions, and announcements about awards successes!

(1) The annual Flash Fiction Festival took place once again in July, in Bristol, in the SouthWest of the UK. There’s always plenty of focus there on the novella-in-flash, with lots of recently published novellas for sale at the festival bookshop, and plenty of published NIF authors you can talk to among the festival attendees. Most years there are workshops, panel discussions and/or book launches related to NIFs. This year, for example, novella-in-flash author and teacher John Brantingham hosted a panel discussion about the form, and there was a dedicated workshop about harnessing everyday life when writing a novella-in-flash. Sarah Freligh and Karen Jones also launched their novellas at the festival. (See items (4) and (5) below) In 2025, the dates for the festival will be 18th-20th July – keep an eye out for news via this webpage: https://www.flashfictionfestival.com/

(2) The “NIFTY Book Club”, a monthly online book group for readers of novellas-in-flash, is continuing to flourish under Laura Besley’s stewardship. If you want to join during 2025, you can find out more details about this event series here: https://www.laurabesley.com/nifty-book-club

(3) Debbi Voisey’s Writers Reading series recently hosted a Novella-in-Flash special, with readers including the novella-in-flash aficionados Jan Kaneen, Diane Simmons, Finnian Burnett, Aline Soules, Lisa Jervis Biggar, Caroline Price, Bronwen Griff, Fiona Jane Mackintosh, Adele Evershed and Hilary Ayshford. Debbi hopes to run another NIF-themed evening again in future – keep an eye out for announcements.

(4) Awards success! In the Spring, Sarah Freligh won the Bath Flash Fiction Award Novella-in-Flash competition with Hereafter. The joint runners-up were Sudha Balagopal with Nose Ornaments, and Jo Withers with Marilyn’s Ghost. You can read comments from this year’s judge John Brantingham here. Later in the year, Jan Kaneen’s A Learning Curve, which had won the BFFA competition in 2023, was then shortlisted for the 2024 Rubery Book Award for Short Fiction. The judges said: “a stunning example of a novella-in-flash that demonstrates the potential force and flexibility of this increasingly popular form.” Finally, Deborah Tomkins’s novella-in-flash Aerth won the inaugural Weatherglass Books Novella Award, judged by Ali Smith, who described the book as “a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet”.

(5) A number of other new novella-in-flash publications made their way into the world in 2024. Here’s a list of further NIF releases, based on social media announcements I’m aware of:

Wes Blake’s Pineville Trace (Etchings Press)
Finnian Burnett’s The Price of Cookies (Off Topic Publishing)
Philip Charter’s Before. During. After. (Pelekinesis Press)
Peter Cherches’s Everything Happens to Me (Pelekinesis Press) (or from here for UK readers)
Adele Evershed’s Schooled (Alien Buddha Press)
Jeff Harvey’s Life Would Be Perfect If (Bottlecap Press)
Karen Jones’s Burn It All Down: An Ekphrastic Novella-in-Flash (Arroyo Seco Press)
Kristin Boryca Kozlowski’s Unraveling the Alien Missions (Four Born Press)
D.X. Lewis’s A Life in Pieces (Alien Buddha Press)
Diane Simmons’s A Tricky Dance (Alien Buddha Press)
Diane Simmons’s William Prichard & Co (Arroyo Seco Press)

[There may have been other NIF publications during 2024 that I’ve neglected here! Please comment below if you were published in 2024 and would like to be included.]

(6) A number of writers and teachers continue to support individual authors who want to explore the novella-in-flash form. You might access help from any of the following who often work with writers 1-to-1: Matt Kendrick, Meg Pokrass, Nancy Stohlman, Debbi Voisey, Michelle Elvy and Michael Loveday.

(7) 2024 also saw the announcement of a VERY exciting development for early next year: Retreat West are running the first ever dedicated Novella-in-Flash Festival (online, on the 9th February)! The programme of four workshops for the full day looks wonderful – a very rich set of craft topics for exploration.

And finally…

(8) This year the number of participants in the Novella-in-Flash Facebook community went past the milestone of 500! It’s a thriving forum for anyone wanting to discover more about the novella-in-flash, and it’s open to ALL. You are welcome to join here, where you’ll find a group of enthusiastic readers and writers all keen to support this unique literary form and share news and information. The group is a great place for finding out about new publishing opportunities for NIFs that you’re keen to get out into the world, new reading events, or new workshop offerings and mentoring from novella-in-flash teachers. So please do join us!

I think that’s it for now! Lots going on, and lots more novella-in-flash-related blogposts to look forward to in 2025…

This news round up is part of a regular blogpost series containing writing prompts, novella-in-flash book reviews, interviews, workshop/mentoring offers, and other announcements related to all things novella-in-flash.

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Are you working on a novella-in-flash? Or wanting to write one? Find out more about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: here.

Sudha Balagopal’s flash fictions and creative non-fiction pieces are always rich and fascinating.

Here’s a story of hers published recently in X-Ray Lit:

https://xraylitmag.com/the-prospective-or-what-i-tell-the-man-in-the-cafe-by-sudha-balagopal/fiction/

In this story, one thing that’s clearly in the foreground (for me) is the interplay between the past and the present, and the way this influences how “story” is cleverly revealed AND delayed (for example, the recurring, interrupting motif of the potato chips).

Also strongly in the foreground is the tension between individual choice/agency and social conventions – the constraints that families, communities, societies place upon on us. Some such constraints are of course written and explicit – for example, written into national law or policy. And some may be implicit pressures, unspoken codes or informal expectations. Many of these unwritten expectations, nevertheless, follow inevitably from broader social structures imposed by government policies, laws and judicial systems, religious doctrines, or organisational constitutions. A kind of trickle-down social ergo-nomics that permeates all behaviour.

Many writers consider that part of their role is to highlight social conventions, and ask questions about them, as Sudha Balagopal does here. This story, notably, ends on a question. One of the most radical things about this flash fiction, for me, is the fact that the narrator has seemingly agreed (in later life) to discuss exactly the kind of decision on behalf of her children that was made for her by her parents when she was young, and which she resisted at that time. Balagopal lets readers draw their own conclusions, and figure out how they feel. How might you do that in your own novella?

Invitation: Once you’ve read this story, consider the following:

• Explore an identity to which you are connected. (Or else do this for one of your novella characters.) This might be an aspect of national, religious or cultural identity. Or an aspect of identity to do with work/other responsibilities. Single out a social convention or expectation related to that identity – some unwritten code or formal requirement that is imposed by others. Work this into a flash fiction that fits your novella’s situation, exploring the push and pull between social expectation and the individual impulse to resist convention. Put pressure on the protagonist and their personal values, and see what unfolds. Does the pressure of convention/expectation affect the way they behave/speak/dress, their life decisions, their feelings about themselves or the world, and so on? What sparks of tension, disagreement or conflict might arise?

• Write a flash fiction for your novella that braids a scene from the past with a scene from the present, breaking each strand into sections, so the ongoing story alternates between fragments of the present and the past. OPTIONAL: Let one character be (in the past) a child or young person interacting with their parents, and then (in the present) the same character is a parent themselves, having to make choices on behalf of their child or children.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella about a disappointing date.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella about being a witness to (or on the receiving end of) the actions of an inconsiderate or capricious person. OPTIONAL: Characterise that person as sleazy or unpleasant in some other way.

• Write a flash fiction for your novella in which a character goes to the cinema with another person. Let the movie scenes on screen have some relevance to the relationship between the two people, creating a subtext that draws attention to an underlying tension between them (for instance, what’s shown on-screen might highlight a difference between what the two individuals each want or yearn for). OPTIONAL: Choose another cultural event or performance that’s not a film.

Above all, have fun and make it new!

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Are you working on a novella-in-flash? Or wanting to write one? Find out more about Michael Loveday’s Novella-in-Flash mentoring: here.

Tag: Sudha Balagopal

Round-up of Novella-in-Flash News from 2024…