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Tania Hershman 🏳️‍🌈 @taniahershman.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Honoured to be this year's @bridportprize.bsky.social flash fiction judge! Send me your word-shapes of 250 words & under, the pieces you think only you might love, that might be “too strange” or “not quite enough…” There are no rules! bridportprize.org.uk/the-competit... #flashfiction

Screenshot of the Meet the Judges page from the Bridport Prize with a black and white photograph of a woman with very short hair grinning, and the following text: "Tania Hershman
Flash Fiction Judge
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Tania Hershman is a queer writer of odd things, the author of three collections of short stories and flash fiction, four books of poetry and two hybrid books. Tania’s creative-non-fiction hybrid book on Time is forthcoming from Guillemot Press. Tania is editor of Fuel: An Anthology of First-Prize-Winning Flash Fictions Raising Funds to Fight Fuel Poverty, offers monthly writing prompts/provocations/exercises through Unbox Your Words – Give Yourself Permission to Play on Substack, and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. 

www.taniahershman.com

Instagram: @tania_hershman_writes

“What I am always looking for is a voice that grabs me right from the first words so that I have no choice but to carry on reading. This might be a character, or a narrator, but what I want is freshness of language. No need for long fancy words or complicated plots, just write what only you can write in the way you want to write it. And send me the pieces you think only you might love, that might be “too strange” or “not quite enough…” There are no rules!” Tania Hershman, Flash Fiction Judge

What I wish someone had told me when I was starting out:

That everyone does it differently, this writing thing. That there definitely isn’t “one way” to write, and that each writer probably has more than one way. You find what works for you, and no-one else can tell you what you “should” or “shouldn’t” do. There are no rules!

When I’m stuck, this is what helps me move forward:

I don’t ever think of myself as “stuck”, I call it a “creative pause”, and for me that really is how it feels. I don’t write every day, sometimes a few weeks will go by. I let it be, I don’t feel bad about it. I feed myself – by reading, watching TV, films, going for a walk. "

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