Heroes and Villains Face Off as Flash Fiction Competition Returns to Lincoln Book Festival

Cartoon style imahe showing a superhero character and a burglar with the title text Heroes and Villains.

It’s goodies against baddies when Lincoln Book Festival’s popular flash fiction competition makes a stirring comeback for 2025.

The festival’s annual creative writing contest invites budding authors to produce their own ultra short stories of exactly 50 words – no more, no less – on a given theme or genre. This year’s theme has been revealed as ‘heroes and villains’, drawing inspiration from milestones in British history and literature.

This year people across Great Britain celebrate the heroism of the men and women who fought for our freedom during World War Two, marking 80 years since VE Day. And 2025 also sees the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, herself a heroine of women’s writing and author of some of literature’s most memorable protagonists.

Prizes of £30 in book vouchers are up for grabs for the best short story (as selected by a panel of judges) submitted to the Lincoln Book Festival Flash Fiction Competition 2025 by writers in three age categories. Categories are Primary (Reception to Year 6); Secondary (Year 7 to Year 11); and Adult (Year 12 upwards – no upper age limit). The closing date for submissions is midnight on 31st August 2025. Winners and highly commended runners-up will also have their stories published on the festival website with the opportunity to read them aloud to audiences during this year’s festival in October.

School classes in particular are encouraged to take part and resources can be offered for teachers to help set the creative writing challenge for pupils of different ages and abilities (download the free Teachers’ Resource Pack in the links below). The schools with the winning author in the primary and secondary age categories will receive £50 book tokens, in addition to the winner’s individual prize.

Competition prize winner celebration at Lincoln Book Festival

Flash Fiction Competition prize winner celebration at Lincoln Book Festival 2024.

Authors are free to interpret the theme of ‘heroes and villains’ as broadly as they wish. Your story might be a tale of noble deeds and adventure, a showdown between a protagonist and their nemesis, or a subtle story of redemption or descent into darkness of a troubled antihero. Perhaps you’ll craft a fabulous fantasy world, a mysterious whodunnit, or a gripping confrontation packed with tense dialogue.

Ian Richards from the Lincoln Book Festival said: “Some of the greatest stories ever written derive their depth and drama from the moral choices of their characters; readers remember the most heinous baddies and the virtuous underdogs as much as the narrative itself. The challenge in our flash fiction competition is to tell your own evocative story in just 50 words, so make every word matter!”

Lincoln Book Festival 2025 takes place over four days from Thursday 2nd October to Sunday 5th October at venues across the city. The full festival programme of inspiring author events, workshops, performances and family-friendly activities will be published this summer, when tickets will also go on sale. The Lincoln Arts Centre at the University of Lincoln again serves as the festival hub.

Lincoln Book Festival Flash Fiction Competition 2025 entry forms (available as a Word document or editable PDF) and Terms and Conditions can be found at the links below, along with a Teachers’ Resource Pack:

 

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