Congratulations to Tania Hershman on the imminent publication of a new anthology of prize-winning flash stories from writers across the world, FUEL! The book comes out on 15th February, and is available for pre-order now. It gathers together 75 flash fiction pieces, all of which won competitions, including such venerable awards as the Bridport Prize, the Bath Flash Fiction Award and Mslexia’s flash fiction prize. Sales will raise money for fuel poverty charities in the UK. You can book to attend the online launch on 15th February here.
Tania Hershman is herself an award-winning author of flash fiction, short stories, poetry and a hybrid novel, Go On. Her latest poetry collection is Still Life with Octopus, and her other publications include and what if we were allowed to disappear (a hybrid particle-physics-inspired book), three short story collections and a poetry pamphlet. She is Arvon writer in residence for Winter 2022-23, and will be teaching her fantastic online course, Flash Fiction: The Tiniest of Stories at London Lit Lab this April.
Tania not only compiled the FUEL anthology but created the book herself! Here we ask her five questions about this extraordinary process, about writing and reading flash fiction, and publishing for good causes.
As writers, we usually get to hand over our manuscript, and someone else magically turns it into a physical book. Did you enjoy the practical side of making FUEL, and what are some of the things you learned from the process?
It was an absolutely fascinating process to be involved in from the entirely blank page all the way through to the box of books arriving from the printers! I won’t say it wasn’t fraught at times, and I did worry until the box arrived (this morning) that, despite it having been proofread by me over and over until I couldn’t see straight, and by a few of the very kind and generous authors in the book, I would have seriously screwed something up. But I loved having control over every single aspect, from the choice of fonts (I love fonts) to the page layout. The only part I didn’t design was the gorgeous cover, which my friend Katie Jacobs designed using a beautiful photo donated by Marie Leadbetter when I put a callout on Twitter asking if anyone had a fuel-themed image they might let me use for free. I’ve learned not only how to make a book look professional (can I say: mirrored pages, gutter, condensing and kerning), but also how to create an online shop. Trying to sort out postage rates for different countries and different numbers of copies of the book was really the first time I felt I’d put my maths and physics degree to good use. I do feel that, like getting a tattoo, once you’ve made one book, you’ve got an itch to do it again! I also have 8 more ISBN numbers to use. So, stay tuned, Tania Hershman Productions may be a thing (it needs a better name).
FUEL is a fantastic demonstration of the sheer range of forms and approaches used in prize-winning flash fiction. As you say on your website, it shows us ‘at least 75 different ways to seize a competition judge’s attention and never let it go!’ Is there anything at all you can identify that these flash stories have in common, apart from winning competitions?
I really can’t identify anything they have in common, which is exactly the beauty of the thing. Look down the contents page: there are very long titles, there are very short titles. There are simple titles which could belong to any number of stories, and then there are extremely specific titles that fit only that story. I added in an Index of First Lines to demonstrate, too, the huge wealth of ways a winning story might start. Some start with a number, some with a single word. Some are the beginnings of stories that consist of one long breathless sentence. Some start with dialogue, some with a scene, an image. This is not to mention the wealth of voices, of styles, genres, points of view. I want the fact that these stories have no unifying factor, no apparent “winningness” to be the thing that unlocks any reader who also writes, gives them permission to write the story they want to write as only they can write it.
There are seven stories in the book that happened to be ones I chose as first prize winners when I was judging the particular competitions. After I realised this was happening, as some of the competitions put first prize winning stories forward, I decided, somewhat reluctantly, to include one of my own stories because I thought it might be useful to demonstrate that the stories I picked weren’t necessarily like the stories I myself write. This is another myth that’s floating around along with the myth that there’s some “formula” for a winning story. But I want to make it clear that I was just one, entirely subjective, human judge. I loved these seven stories as much reading them this time as I had when I awarded them the prize. But a different judge would most likely have picked different stories in those seven competitions. It depends not only on the person judging but the pile you receive, the time of day you first read them, the time of day you read them again. It’s not a science. (And I say that as someone with a degree in maths and physics.)
We’re thrilled to see familiar names in the list of writers featured in FUEL, including previous attendees of London Lit Lab courses! You, of course, teach a flash fiction course for London Lit Lab. What do you love about the form, and why would you encourage other writers to try it?
I’m crazy about flash fiction! When I stumbled upon it about 15 years ago, after having been writing short stories for a few years, I couldn’t believe what could be done in a few pages, or less than a page. As a former journalist trained to get as much as possible into as few words, I thought perhaps I might try it. One of my first attempts won a 300-word story competition, I won £300. I thought, gosh, I’ll do more of this! What I love about flash fiction is everything it allows you to let go of when you’re writing. If you’re aiming to write a whole story in 300 words, or even 100 words, it’s almost all about what’s not on the page. You begin to get a feel for how little you need to conjure up the world of your story, and you start to trust the reader (flash fiction and short story readers are especially sophisticated) to fill in the gaps. You don’t need to give them everything; in fact, you can’t, there’s no space. It’s almost a relief, I’ve found, to let go of explaining too much, giving too much backstory. That said, there are no rules, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a wealth of characters, can’t have description, backstory, scenes, dialogue. You can do anything at all. The best flash stories may take minutes to read but they linger on, they resonate. There is nothing small about the effect they will have on you. I believe writing flash fiction is an extremely useful skill for whatever you write next, as it teaches you to weigh each word, each comma. That said, it’s also a great form for playfulness, for doing things that are highly weird and surreal, these tiny stories seem to lend themselves really well to that. Writing them is such fun!
FUEL will raise money for fuel poverty charities, and you built the website yourself, as well as making the book. By creating this anthology, you’ve done a huge amount to support not just important charities, but writers too. How did the idea for FUEL as a project take shape?
I was listening to the news last summer with increasing distress, as I imagine many of us were, finding it hard to believe that even before the predicted stratospheric gas and electricity price hikes there were people having to choose between heating their food and heating their home. It seemed so wrong. But I wanted to do something more than donate money to fuel poverty charities, especially because this is not a situation that is going to go away any time soon. It will most likely get worse. An anthology of some sort, I thought. Flash fiction seemed like a good choice, because I know most of the flash fiction community, I already had all the contacts, and I had no doubt that people would want to help. But I was nervous about doing it alone, I’d never undertaken anything like this.
It was a conversation with a good friend back in August, and her enthusiasm, that made me think I had to, and so I began to make a plan. It hit me that I could not only create something people would buy just to support the charities, but a book that would be different, useful. I decided to do something I hadn’t seen done before: a collection of flash fictions that had all won first prize in a competition over the past few decades. As I thought more about this I realised it could serve, as I mentioned above, to bust some myths about what kinds of things win writing competitions, as well as celebrating and giving another outing to all these stories, some of which had never been published in print.
As I began reaching out to competition organisers – who were all as brilliant and supportive as I’d known they would be – and then to authors, and as the stories started coming in, such a diverse and surprising set of stories, I thought of more ways to make the book helpful to writers, like the Index of First Lines, stories listed by title and then, at the end, by competition, and different suggestions for how to read the book. I am so delighted with how it turned out, when I showed the proofs to the 75 authors, the first people to see it, the response was heart-warming!
This wonderful project is bound to inspire many writers and would-be book-creators out there, as a way for our words to not only reach others but do good. What would your advice be to someone who would like to make an anthology, or raise money for charity through writing?
Go for it! There is a venerable tradition of charity anthologies – fiction, non-fiction and poetry – some themed, for example, some open. As writers I think we may have a particular understanding and empathy for others, given that we often spend our time inside other people’s heads, inside their skins, no matter that those people are fictional. We try to connect to others through the words we put out into the world. This is another way to connect, to create community. Would I have done this if I’d known how much work it would be? Well, let’s just say sometimes it’s best to dive in without thinking, and then ask for help when you need it. As I talk about in the Acknowledgements, it certainly takes a village to make a book, especially when you’ve never done it before! Dive in, do it your own way, and you’ll find your village right there to cheer you on.
Pre-order FUEL.
Find out more or book a place on Tania’s course, Flash Fiction: The Tiniest of Stories.
