A short story by Rye author Bronwen Griffiths has won a prestigious prize for flash fiction. Her 285 word feature We should wear beige came top in the annual awards organized by Mslexia magazine.
The story is about an edict that - as the title says - all women should wear beige. "It was inspired by how women's rights have been rolled back around the world. Just look at how the Taliban are imposing strict rules on women. Look at what Trump is saying."
She says the story is quite typical of her work, though winning the award was a big shock. "A lot of my writing is about women's rights, it's something I really worry about. It sometimes feels everything we fought for as women is being eroded, which is why this story is a quite dark. It came from a combination of things swirling round in my mind."
Judge Mary-Jane Holmes praised the story, describing it as breath-taking. "The combination of what might seem like small banal irritations becomes something menacing and ultimately horrific. Here the surface elements of the story connect with much deeper universal concerns and with so few words."
As well as writing, Bronwen is heavily involved in Herstory, the lottery funded initiative that's gathering the stories of working women in Rye. Her novel, A Bird in the House was published in 2014. Here Casts No Shadow was published in 2018. Her two published collections of flash fiction, Not Here, Not Us, Stories of Syria and Listen with Mother, a Memoir, came out in 2016 and 2019.
