Registration is rolling until April 26 at 11:59PM EST. No application is required (except for financial aid— Applications for financial aid are due April 21 at 5PM EST).
$250 w/financial aid available to residents of Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)
4 week class: Fridays 6-8PM EST, May 3, 2024- May 24, 2024
What does it take to pack an entire narrative into just 250 to 1,000 words? How can a singularly brief, fragmented, and/or vignette-driven form encapsulate all the fundamental storytelling components of character, setting, conflict, voice, and more in only one to three pages? And what can you do to make sure your short-short pieces stand out as unique?
In this class we’ll explore the varied traditions, practices, and inner-workings of multiple short-short fiction forms (including flash, sudden, micro, sequenced vignettes, etc.) through assigned craft readings, a wide range of published stories, in-class and at-home generative exercises, and in-depth peer workshops. Beyond creating standalone pieces, concentrating on perfecting short-short forms is a great way to master the perfect fiction sentence, and is especially useful for focusing on pivotal parts of larger projects.
Our primary focus will be working with every element required for creating engrossing, memorable, and especially impactful pieces of flash fiction. We’ll go over the best writing practices and methods for generating and editing flash, and students will write, revise, and prepare to pitch for the possible publication of at least two original pieces. We’ll also be studying the work of contemporary and canonical authors from all over the world as well as lit journals that regularly publish exemplary flash.
R.S. Powers’s stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Baffler, Wigleaf, Orca, Glimmer Train, Sou'wester, Grist, Juked, JMWW, World Literature Today, X-R-A-Y, Bending Genres, Speculative Nonfiction, THE BOILER, The Hunger, the podcast Micro, Able Muse, and other journals. They are a professor of writing at the University of Delaware.