In December 2023, we launched our annual Flash Fiction competitions, which closed at the end of March. The competitions were open to students in Years 7 to 13, who were tasked with writing a short story of no more than 100 words in French and/or Spanish.

We had an incredible response, with entries coming in from all areas across the country! In total, we received over 1200 submissions across the two languages!

We would like to thank everyone who entered the competition and commend you all for your hard work and creativity in writing a piece of fiction in a different language. This is a challenging exercise, and a significant achievement – congratulations all!

We are delighted to be able to announce the winners, runners up, and highly commended entries for each language below. We will be publishing the stories over the summer so you can read them for yourselves.

French

In the Years 7-9 category, the winner is James Best. The runners-up are Zaynab Chaudhry and Simeon Molloy.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Neela Alagar, Nicholas Bailey, Prayaan Sharma, Hassan Chaudhry, Grace Cao, Helene Leonard, Antoine Carmody-Portier, Bo Celeste Lawson, Vishnu Vardhan, Beemu Padmanaban, and Louis Koller.

In the Years 10-11 category, the winner is Tony Shi. The runner up is Vaishni Jeyananthan.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Mia Wildgoose, Nia Mohlala, Ritisha Agarwal, Capree Chong, Eshaal Riaz, DingDing Zhou, Daisy Apfel, Darwin Armstrong Farr, Lucy Nguyen, and Katya Hanbury.

In the Years 12-13 category, the winner is Hannah Gleeson. The runner ups are Zac Henderson-Lea and Ashley Woo.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Nigelle Niyodusenga, Massimo Mitchell, Rain Kaur, Grace Dobson, Harriet Palfreyman, Aaron Butters, Eleanor McQuinn, Caitlin Graeff, Sally Codling, and Jovian Yan.

The French judging panel were very impressed with this year’s submitted stories, and commented the following about all the entries:

We are thrilled to share our excitement about the entries for the 2024 Flash Fiction competition. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to the competition!

We were impressed by the variety in your stories and by how much emotion and detail could be packed into just 100 words. Your stories made us laugh, gasp, reflect, and sometimes even tear up. We read tales that spanned from light-hearted daily occurrences to epic medieval duels and forbidden werewolf romances, from futuristic visions of 2050 to unexpected encounters with demon snowmen and talking ants. We encountered characters from all walks of life and visited settings that ranged from the familiar to the extraordinary. Along the way, we met a crocodile in the Thames, a sentient piece of bread, and many other memorable figures that made your stories so engaging.

We truly enjoyed reading your stories and want to commend each of you for your creativity and effort. Thank you for making this competition such a wonderful experience, and congratulations to all of you.

Spanish

In the Years 7-9 category, the winner is Sayuri Bansal. The runners up are Chloe Crowther and Donatella Ferrito Innamorato.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Keira Moyes, Zara Amjad, Avy Abdulrazzaq, Ayomide Adesola, Chloe Lei, Amelie Thompson, Harry Clogger, Zeynep Yesilirmak, and Keira De Castro.

In the Years 10-11 category, the winner is Charlotte Jory. The runners up are DingDing Zhou and Xander McComb.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Sophie Lonsdale, Siri Krznaric, Tiana Majumder, Atharv Kokate, Chloe Skelton, Anonymous, River Lee, Kumar Banerji Ballester, Annabel Hogan, and Jonathan Visan-Gherghe.

In the Years 12-13 category, the winner is Isobel Gurnett. The runners up are Daniel Enrique Ascencio Lopez and Aidan Brooke.

The judges also identified the following entrants as highly commended: Maria-Magdalena Covasa, Nihika Koranne, Noor Ullah, Oliver John, Rabia Chowdhury, Sadie Greenwood, Anonymous, Sophie Welberry-Smith, Valentino Ordonez Imafidon, and Velislava Koleva.

Our Spanish judging panel in particular have been extremely impressed with this year’s entries, and have commented the following about all the stories they read:

As always, we were captivated by the creativity of the many entries and thrilled to see a lot of very promising stories. It was a hard job choosing from so many markedly different pieces, some of which were humorous or haunting, serious or silly, but all entertaining. This year, there were quite a few that engaged intertextually with other works in English and Spanish literature as well as classical literature and myth and it was particularly good to see how your wider reading has been channelled into your own imaginative responses to the sources.

Huge congratulations everyone – you should be very proud of your achievement!