‘GRANNY SMITH, QUEENE’ - WINNER OF THE QUIETMANDAVE PRIZE FOR FLASH FICTION
I was elated to win Manchester Writing School’s 2020 QuietManDave Prize for Flash Fiction, with my story ‘Granny Smith, Queene.’
Fluorescent men in high-vis vests hang like fruit in the trees.
I want to pluck one.
Slice him in half, peel off his skin, crunch out his eyes.
This first blue sky day of April, a lorry is reversing, and blue sounds like magpies and a chainsaw cutting down apple trees in the Bluebell woods.
An ancient doodle of wilderness, a dark skinny scrap of me, my parents, grandparents parents, tangling between the cracks.
Next year the wild-flowers here will be gone. No more apples, no more Witches’ Thimbles. No more nod and bow, no more great tits fighting worms in the dapples. The breeze will not bruise the fruit sweet.
There is talk of an apartment block, with parking for eighty cars.
The newspaper calls it progress.
I call it murder.
I wonder if I can kill a man with a kick to his ladder?
The QuietManDave Flash Fiction Prize is unique in celebrating a life through words; a legacy, in support of writers, and the Flash Fiction form.
The prize was established by the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, to honour and celebrate the life of writer and critic, Dave Murray.
It was judged by author and poet Tania Hershman, writer and poet Kate Feld, and lecturer and director, Shane Kinghorn.
The stories are all online now, and such a joy to read; Second Prize was won by Natascha Dercznski, and Third Prize by the incredible talent Helen Rye.
All stories can be read here.
Huge congratulations to all shortlisted and winning writers across both categories, Fiction and Non-Fiction:
Flash Fiction
1st Prize: Elisabeth Ingram Wallace – ‘Granny Smith, Queene’
2nd Prize: Natasha Derczynski – ‘Two Boys Together’
3rd Prize: Helen Rye – ‘The Lost Girls’
Flash Non-Fiction
1st Prize: David Calder – ‘These Insane Animals, or, A Strange Interlude’
2nd Prize: Alex Eiseman – ‘Mud’
3rd Prize: Jude Higgins – ‘Night Demons’paragraph