Our judges are setting and judging challenges based on pictures on artist’s mugs pictured on the front page. Read more about the contest and the great prizes.

Diane Simmons

Sara Hills
Sara Hills, who is judging The Throw-Down challenge in November, is a pushcart-nominated writer from the Sonoran Desert. Her stories have been featured or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Cheap Pop, X-R-A-Y Literary, Cease Cows, New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Frog, Janus Literary and others. Her story Lions in the Amazon was recently selected for Wigleaf top 50 stories of 2021. She’s also been included in the BIFFY50, shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, her debut flash fiction collection The Evolution of Birds was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in July, 2021. Sara lives with her family and an enormous fluff-dog in Warwickshire, England and tweets from @sarahillswrites.

Karen Jones

Electra Rhodes

Sage Tyrtle
Sage Tyrtle is judging The Throw Down in February. Her work has been featured in Pithead Chapel, Cheap Pop,Mayday, and Bending Genres among others. She started writing on an IBMXT in 1986, had an online journal in 1995, a podcast in 2005, and hasn’t owned a smartphone since 2014. She hopes she’s still an early adopter, but this time of an analog-based life.

Susmita Bhattacharya
Susmita Bhattacharya, who is judging the March Throw Down challenge, is an Indian-born British writer. Her novel, The Normal State of Mind, was published in 2015 by Parthian (UK) and Bee Books (India) in 2016 and was long listed for the Words to Screen Prize, Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) Film Festival in 2018. Her collection of short stories, Table Manners, was published by Dahlia Publishing in 2018 and won The Dorset Award in 2019.She teaches contemporary fiction at Winchester University and also facilitates the Mayflower Young Writers workshops, a SO:Write project based in Southampton. She lives in Winchester.
