For High School Students / Flash Fiction: How to Tell a Compelling Story in 1,000 Words or Less

This class has been cancelled.

Saturdays, July 9 – 30 (4 weeks) / 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

For High School Students Only

Flash fiction is a deceptively difficult, yet popular format for short fiction. It’s fun to read and it’s even more fun to write. This course will help you to pare down the elements of fiction—plot, characters, dialogue, pacing—to the barest of its bones. Flash is often about what is missing from the story, as well as what is told. It requires you to look at your fiction with a poet’s eye, because every word, every gesture, every action matters. In this course you will learn about pacing flash fiction—how to start and end your flash, and what to put in the middle. Also, and most important, you will learn how to write stories that matter to your readers, no matter how short or long. We will read and discuss contemporary flash, as well as student work. Students should finish the workshop with 3 to 5 successful flash pieces of their own.

Dawn S. Davies has an MFA from Florida International University. Her essay collection, Mothers of Sparta, received the 2015 FIU UGS Provost Award for Best Creative Project. She was recently featured in the Ploughshares column, “The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week.” She had a notable essay in Best American Essays 2015, and a Pushcart Prize special mention for nonfiction in 2015. She has a special interest in both the unreliable narrator and humor writing. Her work can be found in The Missouri Review, Fourth Genre, River Styx, Brain, Child, Hippocampus, Cease, Cows, Saw Palm, Ninth Letter, Green Mountains Review, Chautauqua, and elsewhere. www.dawnsdavies.com