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And the results are in!

Huge congratulations to our winning and highly commended authors (listed alphabetically by story title):

  • First Prize: ‘Frost Fair’ by Josie Turner
  • Second Prize: ‘The Attempts of Arlo, Age 9, to Create a Shooting Star After Learning They Are Just Rocks Moving Very Fast’ by Leila Murton Poole
  • Third Prize: ‘Sex, Sighs and Masking Tape’ by Chris Cottom
  • Highly Commended: ‘Everyone Said It Was Pointless Trying to Date a Girl Obsessed With Marine Arthropods but I Had to Find out for Myself’ by Rebecca Field
  • Highly Commended: ‘Granny’s Biggest Handicraft Project to Date’ by Anne Howkins
  • Highly Commended: ‘I imagine the Sun Changing Its Mind’ by Sarah Barnett
  • Highly Commended: ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ by Sherry Morris
  • Highly Commended: ‘Pearls on His Kurta’ by Sudha Balagopal
  • Highly Commended: ‘Stars and Stripes, 1945’ by James Montgomery
  • Highly Commended: ‘When We Were Young’ by Suzanne Hicks

The winning and highly commended stories can be read here and will appear in the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology.

Thank you again to our four judges: Sara Chansarkar, Jan Kaneen, David Rhymes and Alison Wassell.

Congratulations again to all our prize-winning and highly commended authors, and to all those who were shortlisted. And, a big thank you to everyone who entered this year’s competition and trusted us with their stories.

After reading scads of brilliant stories on the theme of AIR, EARTH, WATER AND FIRE, editors Karen Jones and Sara Hills have finalised their selections for the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day anthology and for the third annual Editors' Choice Awards.

Below is the list of the stories that will appear in this year's anthology, alongside the 2024 Microfiction Competition winners (yet to be announced).  We will be contacting everyone on the list via email, so you should hear from us soon if you haven't already, but in the meantime, congratulations to all the authors listed below.

Special congratulations to our two Editors' Choice Award Winners:

  • Sara Hills chose 'White Noise' by Rosaleen Lynch
  • Karen Jones chose 'Containers for Smoky Memories' by Lisa Ferranti

Thank you so much to everybody who submitted their stories for consideration for this year's anthology. It was an honour to read each and every piece.  Thank you for sharing your work with us!  If you didn't make the anthology this time, don't forget that there are still opportunities to join us in celebrating National Flash Fiction Day, including FlashFlood and The Write-In.

We hope that you will all join us for the launch of the anthology on National Flash Fiction Day later this year!

2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Line Up

  • Air Bubbles by Slawka G. Scarso
  • Arctic Convoys by Angi Holden
  • Baste, Bind, Burn by Nan Wigington
  • Big Guy by Frances Gapper
  • Blown Apart by Kim Steutermann Rogers
  • Containers for Smoky Memories by Lisa Ferranti
  • Cyrtanthus Ventricosus by Sonora Hills
  • Dragon Girl by Stephanie Carty
  • Elements of Goodbye by Karen Crawford
  • English Towns Flooded After Heavy Rainfall by Hetty Mosforth
  • Fifth Element in Paternity Confusion Shocker by Adam Trodd
  • From Tiny Acorns by Helen Chambers
  • Gaia is Going Through the Menopause by Alison Woodhouse
  • Hollowware by Ali McGrane
  • Hybrid by Michelle Walshe
  • Hypoxia by Jo Gatford
  • Incineration is Not Obliteration by Anne Howkins
  • In Memory of Empedocles by Tina M Edwards
  • In Search of Dara Amongst the Lost Cillini of County Mayo by Helen Kennedy
  • It May Be a Biblical Site, but if the Rain Doesn’t Come, No one Will Be Singing by Emma Phillips
  • Mr Porter Rakes Leaves in the Park by Cheryl Markosky
  • My Father the Elementalist by Steven Patchett
  • My Husband Was a Snow-capped Mountain by Anita Goodfellow
  • My Son is a Gull, a Black Iris by Angela Joynes
  • My Son is a Sieve by Melissa Flores Anderson
  • Namazu the Earthshaker by Andy Lavender
  • Off a Duck’s Back by Jupiter Jones
  • Passing Places by Sharon Telfer
  • Puppy Love and Biblioclasm by Edward Barnfield
  • Pyre by Jenna Muiderman
  • Quintessence by Marie Gethins
  • Rain Dancing by Maria Thomas
  • Reasons to Rescue Strangers by Judy Darley
  • Something New to Worry About by Andrea Marcusa
  • Stepping Stones by Slawka G. Scarso
  • Still Life by Anne Daly
  • Stone Nest by Catherine Ogston
  • Swiftly, Swiftly Over Ice by Linda M. Bayley
  • Tally by Marissa Hoffmann
  • The Dawning by Audrey Niven
  • The Digging of Small Holes by Debra A. Daniel
  • The Elephant by Sharon D. Sheltzer
  • The Heaviness of Sleep by Talia Nash
  • The Jigsaw Puzzle by Sumitra Singam
  • The Marriage Mandala by Eleonora Balsano
  • The Night Ledger by Elizabeth Fletcher
  • The Outside Lane by Jude Higgins
  • The Piano in the Room by Sarah Leavesley
  • They Sold the Sky by Kate Axeford
  • Tiny Sparks Everywhere by Jennifer Brutschy
  • Today and Tomorrow by Karen Whitelaw
  • Waiting for the Earth to Put On Its Breaks by Sally Reiser Simon
  • When Finley Davey Said He'd Turn Into a Cicada by Emma Phillips
  • When the Kingfisher Dives by Eleanor Luke
  • White Noise by Rosaleen Lynch

This year, we were thrilled to receive 419 entries to the National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction Competition.

Our judges, Sara Chansarkar, Jan Kaneen, David Rhymes and Alison Wassell had the difficult job of whittling down the stories to a shortlist of 30. This was no easy task and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work and for the speed and conscientiousness with which they carried out the judging.

It isn’t easy to tell a story in a 100 words, yet we were blown away by the variety of themes, subjects and styles we saw in the submissions. Thank you to everyone who sent in their work; we appreciated the chance to read your flash.

If you see your flash below, feel free to tell everyone, but as judging is still in place please do not reveal your title.

Now, without further delay, our 30 shortlisted stories are:

  • A Last Look Inside My Mother’s Purse
  • A Woman of:
  • Above the water line
  • After Looking Through My Ex-Husband’s Trash
  • Baba Yaga Encounters her Ex outside Lidl
  • Cupidity
  • Drifting
  • Entanglement
  • Everyone Said It Was Pointless Trying to Date a Girl Obsessed With Marine Arthropods But I Had to Find Out for Myself
  • Fourteen Days After You’re Gone
  • From her Kitchen Garden Olha Ostapivna Waits and Watches the Sky
  • Frost Fair
  • Granny’s Biggest Handicraft Project to Date
  • Here is My Body
  • I imagine the sun changing its mind
  • ‘Language!’
  • Mom Was a Joyful Drunk
  • On Becoming a Mother
  • Our Ghost
  • Pandora’s Box
  • Paradise by the Dashboard Light
  • Pearls on His Kurta
  • Sex, Sighs and Masking Tape
  • Stars and Stripes, 1945
  • The Attempts of Arlo, Age 9, To Create a Shooting Star After Learning They Are Just Rocks Moving Very Fast
  • The Matter with Clouds
  • The separation of sunsets
  • Thursday
  • What if I Never Actually Liked the Eagles
  • When we were young

There's still time to submit to the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology and the 2024 Microfiction Competition, but be quick our submission window closes tonight at 11:59pm GMT!

For the 2024 Anthology, we're looking for flash up to 500 words on the theme is – AIR, EARTH, WATER AND FIRE.  Your work will be read by editors Karen Jones and Sara Hills.  Selected work will be published in our 2024 print/ebook anthology and be considered for our Editors' Choice Awards which come with a £50 prize.  You can read our submission details here.

For our Microfiction Competition, we're looking for flash of up to 100 words.  There is no theme.  Your work will be read by judges Sara Chansarkar, Jan Kaneen, David Rhymes and Alison Wassell.  Winners and runners-up will receive cash prizes and be published online and in our print/ebook anthology.  Full submission details can be found here.

Each project accepts submissions from writers anywhere in the world.

Our Anthology and Microfiction Competition teams look forward to reading your work!

 

This is just a friendly reminder that National Flash Fiction Day Anthology and the 2024 Microfiction Competition projects are only open for submissions for one more day.   Submissions close at 23:59 GMT on 15 February 2024.

For the 2024 Anthology, we're looking for flash up to 500 words on the theme is – AIR, EARTH, WATER AND FIRE.  Your work will be read by editors Karen Jones and Sara Hills.  Selected work will be published in our 2024 print/ebook anthology and be considered for our Editors' Choice Awards which come with a £50 prize.  You can read our submission details here.

For our Microfiction Competition, we're looking for flash of up to 100 words.  There is no theme.  Your work will be read by judges Sara Chansarkar, Jan Kaneen, David Rhymes and Alison Wassell.  Winners and runners-up will receive cash prizes and be published online and in our print/ebook anthology.  Full submission details can be found here.

Each project accepts submissions from writers anywhere in the world.

Our Anthology and Microfiction Competition teams look forward to reading your work!

 

 

Welcome to the seventh and final of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2024.

This week, NFFD's Ingrid Jendrzejewski chats with NFFD's Diane Simmons, the person responsible for administrating the Microfiction Competition year in and year out, about novellas-in-flash, reading techniques, travel, and her experience administrating the competition.

Diane SimmonsIJ: For years, you’ve been the mastermind behind the NFFD interview series, coming up with unique, interesting questions for our annual anthology editors and microfiction competition judges. Thank you for allowing me to turn the tables and put you in the hot seat for once!

Every year, you compile the results of the NFFD Microfiction Competition and liaise with the judges to determine the longlist, shortlist and prizewinners. Has this work led to any insights about writing microfiction or judging competitions? Do you have any advice for those who wish to enter the NFFD Microfiction Competition?

DS: I think my main advice (and it’s a bit boring) is to always read the rules. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve received entries that were over the word count – not just by a few words, but by hundreds! I also find that quite a few entrants use hyphens when they should have used an en or em dash – this can make a story over the word count. I’m always surprised too when people don’t put the title of the story in the document and I have to search around for it in their email or document name. It’s good to see though that the number of people putting their names/addresses/emails on their entries has decreased to almost nil – it’s always really upsetting to have to disqualify people for this.

With regard to the actual micros, I think that because of the short word count, we quite often get submissions that that are just anecdotes or jokes. Entries too can feel rushed – writing micros isn’t easy and it can often take longer to craft a 100-word story than a 1000-word one.

IJ: Your novella in flash A Tricky Dance was just published this January by Alien Buddha Press. Can you tell us a bit about it?

DS: A Tricky Dance is set in 1970s Scotland and follows spirited teenager Elspeth as she navigates the challenges of friendships, family life and ambition, discovering that even in the face of adversity, life can hold endless possibilities. The novella contains some of my favourite (and most successful) flash fictions and I enjoyed weaving them together to make a longer narrative.

IJ: A Tricky Dance is your third novella in flash, alongside An Inheritance and Finding a Way…and a little bird tells me there are others in the works. What do you like about the novella-in-flash form? What is your process for creating them? Has anything changed about how you view novellas-in-flash as you’ve settled into the form?

DS: I think that writing a NIF is just the greatest fun. I love the challenge of it. When I first came across the form, I was under the impression that each story had to stand on its own two feet and that it should be possible to take a flash out of the novella and read it on its own. I now understand that most people think the form can be a little more flexible than that, but I still enjoy the discipline of trying to make each piece independent, though I have relaxed a little.

The creation process has been different for each of my novellas. An Inheritance was the first novella I wrote. I had a story of 2000 words about a pawned brooch that had won a prize way back in 2010. I had done lots of research on pawnbroking for an Open University module and knew I wanted to write more about it, so I cut down my 2000-word story and used that as the final story in the novella, working backwards until I had my starting point. I mostly wrote new stories for the NIF.

With Finding a Way, I didn’t start off intending to write a NIF, but following the death of my daughter Laura, I wanted to put together a collection of flash fictions on the theme of grief. It was suggested to me by Jude Higgins that these stories could all be connected and it evolved into a collection of connected flash fictions. When it was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, I didn’t call it a NIF, but I would do so if I were publishing it today. Most of the stories were written after my daughter’s death, but a few such as ‘Images’ (first published in the NFFD anthology Scraps) pre-dated that time and I changed them to fit the narrative.

With A Tricky Dance I had quite a few published and prize-winning stories set in Scotland featuring teenagers/children and when I saw the Retreat West Novelette competition a few years ago, I decided it might be fun to put them all together. I changed many of the stories, combined stories and wrote new ones to fill in the gaps. I was pleased when the novella got shortlisted by Retreat West and longlisted by Bath NIF competition and continued working on it on and off for a few years until it was accepted by Alien Buddha.

IJ: Perhaps my first memory of you is being blown away by the way you read your flash at a reading for the Worcestershire LitFest & Fringe’s flash fiction anthology, and to this day, it’s a treat to hear you read your work. Do you have any advice for flash writers who want to read or perform their work?

DS: When I was first asked to read at Worcestershire Lit Fest, I was absolutely terrified and nearly turned down the chance. I googled how to do it and asked lots of writers and received a great deal of advice – too much to write down here, but these are the things I try to follow:

  • I think the most important advice is to practise loads. I usually start at least two weeks before I am due to read and I record myself on my phone. When I first started reading stories out loud, I would read to anyone who would listen – it helped take the fear away. Reading to strangers can never be as bad as doing it to people you know.
  • Don’t ever read from the book, tablet or phone – print out your story in large print and annotate when you want to take a pause etc. I also learnt that a good idea was to colour code lines of dialogue according to who is speaking.
  • Speak slowly – more slowly than seems natural. The audience needs time to take it all in especially if you are reading something funny. Allow time for laughter if necessary.
  • Try (although it’s difficult), to look at the audience occasionally while you’re speaking. It’s important to make a connection.
  • Unless you are good at dialogue/accents, if you have a choice, read a story without much dialogue.
  • You can change a story to make it sound better or clearer when it’s read out. I often add a ‘she says’ or similar, to make it clearer who is reading. If you think you are going to stumble over a word, change it.
  • Don’t drink more than one glass of wine before reading (this comes from experience). A good idea is to ask to read early on in the programme. It’s good to get it over with.

IJ: For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve had a caravan and it’s a rare year that we don’t exchange at least a couple logistical NFFD emails whilst you’re on the road. Can you say a bit about what you get out of travel? Does it feed your writing life, or is it something altogether separate?

DS: I’m never happier than when I’m writing in my caravan, preferably with a view of the sea. I find that being in such a small space (and my caravan is VERY small), allows me to concentrate. There are very few chores that need doing and the only other demand on my time is to go out and explore, but as I’m a lazy person, sitting writing with a glass of wine often wins. I do have holidays in the caravan though where I never take out my laptop, but it’s always there just in case.

 

 

We are delighted to announce our Best Small Fictions nominations for the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day season.

Congratulations and good luck to the following:

  • 'Cuttlefish' by Patricia Q. Bidar
  • 'Grapefruit in June' by Kik Lodge
  • 'Then, Now' by Marie Gethins
  • 'Time Takes' by Anne Summerfield
  • 'You Die First' by Andy Lavender

You can read all these stories and more in print or via ebook in Scratching the Sands: 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, available from the National Flash Fiction Day Bookshop.

Congratulations as well to the Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction nominees of our sister projects, FlashFlood and The Write-In.  You can read more about FlashFlood nominees here (BSF) and here (BM) and The Write-In nominees here (BSF) and here (BM).

Welcome to the sixth in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2024.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Alison Wassell, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about everything from titles to short story writing to her advice for those entering the Microfiction Competition....

 

Photo of Alison WassellDS: Thank you for agreeing to be one of the micro fiction judges. Do you have any advice for anyone who has never written a 100-word flash before, but would like to give it a go?

AW: You have a very small canvas, but you can still tell a big story if you make every word count. In flash, and particularly in micro, there is no need to over-explain. What’s not said can be as important as the words on the page. Don’t be afraid to ask the reader to do a bit of work and fill in the gaps for themselves. I’m a big fan of ambiguity, and it doesn’t really bother me if someone interprets my story in a way that’s different from what was in my head when I wrote it.

DS: As well as being a successful flash writer, you also write regularly for The People’s Friend and have had over 50 stories published in their magazine. Do you always know when you start a story which market you are aiming for?

AW: I always start a story for The People’s Friend knowing that that’s where I will be sending it. It’s a niche market, and completely unlike anything else I write. They’re much longer, for one thing. With flash, I write the story first, then think about the best place to submit it.

DS: Is there a flash fiction writer who has influenced your own writing? Or one who you particularly admire?

AW: The list of writers whose work I read and think ‘I wish I’d written that,’ is endless. To name just a few Elizabeth Ingram Wallace, Sara Hills, Jude Higgins, James Montgomery, Cathy Ulrich, Sarah Freligh. I’ve learned, and continue to learn, so much from reading their work. I aspire to one day write as well as they do, but with my own personal style.

DS: Have you always written fiction? If not, can you remember what inspired you to start?

AW: I always loved writing stories as a child, but my adult writing ‘career’ didn’t begin until I was in my mid-forties. I think I initially started writing as a kind of therapy after my parents died unexpectedly, within eighteen months of each other. Most of what I wrote was rubbish, but it felt good to set things down on paper. I went on to do a short course with the Open University called ‘Start Writing Fiction’. I loved it, and the tutor said I should start submitting to journals. I wrote longer stories at first, and had some success, but when I discovered flash I was hooked. I was always told off at school for not writing enough, and now I’d found a form of writing where less was definitely more.

DS: Most people consider titles to be very important, particularly in flash. Do titles come easily to you?

AW: I think the shorter the piece, the more important the title, and not just because it gives you extra words! A title can make or break a story. Occasionally, I think of a great title first, and write a story to fit it. More often, I really struggle. Many of my stories had half a dozen or more titles before I found one I was happy with, and there are more on my laptop waiting for inspiration to strike. The worst thing is when you have had something published, then think of the perfect title for it.

 

Welcome to the fifth in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2024 and we'll be posting weekly interviews over the next couple weeks.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about her writing journey to inspiration to her advice for those entering the Microfiction Competition ....

 

DS: Thank you for agreeing to be a judge for this year’s micro fiction competition. You won the competition in 2023 with your flash ‘All my lovers’ and were Highly Commended in 2021 with ‘Adverb’. You obviously enjoy writing micros. Do you have any advice for entrants to this year’s competition?

Be clear, be visceral. This swatch of 100 words must give the readers enough context to build the entire story in their minds. Don’t leave them guessing the basics—who the narrator is, what’s their situation in life, and why they are telling this story. Finally, be merciless with your words. Write in a way that the readers feel your words poke and prickle under their skin.

DS: It can sometimes feel like writers are under pressure to always be putting words on the page. Are there any other activities, cultural or otherwise, that you feel are helpful to you as a writer? 

As an immigrant from India, I like to observe the similarities and contrasts in cultures. And, it’s not only the American way of life that I seek to understand—having grown up in the north of India, I’ve had limited exposure to the South and the East/West. It’s here in a foreign land that I’ve gotten to know people from different parts of my own country and learn about their rituals/beliefs. Participation in various events/holidays helps me understand people and the way they interact with each other. That indirectly helps my writing.

DS: Did you write as a child or teenager? If so, can you tell us a little about what you wrote?

Unlike many other writers, I started writing much later in life. Although I don’t have a degree or training in language/writing, immigration to the USA spurred in me a desire to write about my experiences. Later, that progressed into fiction.

DS: Do you enjoy performing your work? If so, do you have many opportunities to perform locally?

Other than Zoom and some in-person readings, I have never performed my stories, but I’d like to do that. There are some local opportunities, but more often than not, I hear about them after the event is over. Haven’t been able to catch the opportunities in time.

DS: Do you only write flash or are there any other forms that you enjoy writing?

Besides flash, I have written a few poems. Now, I’m trying my hand at short stories.

 

 

Welcome to the fourth in our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2024 and we'll be posting weekly interviews over the next couple weeks.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with David Rhymes, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about everything from Novella-In-Flash inspiration, life in Spain, and his advice to those entering the Microfiction Competition....

 

DS: Thank you for agreeing to be a micro fiction judge. Writing a hundred-word flash can be challenging. Do you have any advice for entrants to the competition or anything that you particularly like to see in a micro (or not see)?

DR: Thank you for inviting me. I'm really excited and honoured to take part.

Regarding a successful micro, I agree with Tim Craig's comment last year that you need to "get in late, leave early." One way to achieve this might be to jolt the reader awake with your first line –

  • 'I'm a combi boiler, hot at the touch of a button.' (Alison Woodhouse)
  • 'She has heard that you can mould children, like clay' (Gaynor Jones)
  • The GIs puff like bánh bao dumplings and drink until their pockets leak. (Sara Hills)

You only have 100 words, so you are going to need to make everything earn its keep – the title, the diction, the arrangement of words on the page, but also their suggestion and/or implication. The subtext if you like.

I particularly love stories that hint via suggestion at a larger world, invoking or nodding towards currents of history. Sara Hills' "Neil Armstrong Walks on the Moon" is a fabulous example of this. We get glimpses of America in Vietnam, the US space programme, but it comes wrapped inside the story of a mother explaining the world to her son, engaging in a kind of magical or wishful/ironical thinking. So we get the global echo, but also a highly specific portrait of a character-in-time-in-action – all this in just 100 words.

DS: Your novella-in-flash The Last Days of the Union was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2022. Can you tell us a little about the novella and what inspired you to write it?

DR: I was reading around the story of Mathias Rust, the young West German aviator who, in 1987, rented a Cessna sports plane and landed in Red Square, Moscow. He was hoping to speak to Mikhail Gorbachev about peace.

I thought, “What about a historical novella-in-flash, based on the Rust story, in which the main protagonist, hardly features at all?" A "novella with a hole in it" so to speak – a story told with the main character absent, appearing only as a shadow shape, a kind of photo-negative – built only out of other peoples' testimonies.

The story changed shape once I discovered via research that Rust's role in effectuating regime change was much more significant than many histories acknowledge. The latter half of the novella explores this possibility, tracing how Gorbachev used the failure of national defences as an excuse to purge military opponents and move forward with an agenda for change.

DS: Are there any flash fictions that you remember made you laugh out loud? If not, are there any that have made you cry?

DR: I listened recently to a selection of poems by Simon Armitage on Audible and several made me splutter – "Hop in, Dennis" (about giving Dutch footballer Dennis Bergkamp a lift as a hitchhiker) for example – the bit about the wine gums, and also odd lines like, "a contortion of red and white, like Santa Claus in a badger trap." A lot of the poems in his "Seeing Stars" collection read like flash, but I think these boundaries are permeable– I find the debate about what's actually this and what's actually that a bit superfluous.

Crying. Hmmm. I can be very moved, but teary? Not all that often in truth. The last flash I can remember that really made me cry (like really cry) was "Handover notes" by Victoria Richards. This is still one of my all-time favourite pieces.

DS: Do you have a favourite author (of flash or any other form)?

DR: Yes. Hundreds. Too many to list.

DS: You live in Navarra, Spain. Do you have a favourite spot to visit in Spain? If so, what makes it special to you?

I've been living here in Navarra for over twenty years now, so it's as much my homeland really as anywhere else in the world. It's a place of huge contrasts, with the Pyrenees to the north, the hilly middle or mixed zone where I live and the flat south, la Ribera, watered by the Ebro. My village is a little way south of Pamplona, in a valley called Valdizarbe. This is a wine and wheat growing area, traversed by the Camino de Santiago (Way of St James.) At one end of the valley is the market town of Puente la Reina (pilgrims will know this place). The main street of the town leads down to a famous medieval bridge and this short stroll is possibly my favourite in the whole of Spain. There is a special quality to the light in early summer, the coolness of the shade, the bustle of the little shops and terraces as you approach the bridge - certainly that’s where I’ve felt happiest to be alive, just doing my shopping, drinking a vermouth, eating pintxos of a Saturday morning.