Put your prose through a pressure cooker in this two-day deep dive into short form fiction.
What makes a successful story? How do we accomplish that in 500 words? 1000 words? This “boot camp” style intensive will consist of a broad introductory overview of the form (with close readings by Grace Paley, Venita Blackburn, Peter Orner, Rumaan Alam and others) paired with generative prompts to get you experimenting with the possibilities of flash, writing short pieces of your own, and sharing and receiving feedback on your drafts in real time. Whether you’ve been away from the page for a while or are looking for fresh inspiration, flash can be an exciting and accessible point of reentry. Compression forces us to take risks and to be merciless; it demands selectivity and precision. Less is more. As we whittle down our stories to their essentials, we will discuss elements of craft: structure and point of view, character, voice, plot, dialogue and word choice. By honing these skills in miniature, we will become better equipped to apply them to everything else we write. Flash, micro, nano, postcard fiction – these names are a misnomer, as they imply work that is fleeting, ephemeral.Through this class we’ll demonstrate over and over again that the (very) short form can generate lasting and unshakable stories, packing more power than its word count might have you believe.
Class will meet online on September 28 and 29.
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Online programs:An access link will be emailed to you after purchase.
Sara Lippmann is the author of the story collections Doll Palace and Jerks. Her debut novel, LECH, is out now from Tortoise Books. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, Best Small Fictions, Catapult, Guernica, Epiphany, and elsewhere. She received a BA from Brown and an MFA from The New School, and has been teaching creative writing for over 20 years to people of all ages. Currently, she teaches with Jericho Writers. For many years, she co-hosted the Sunday Salon, a longstanding NYC reading series founded by Nita Noveno. Raised outside of Philadelphia, she lives with her husband and children in Brooklyn.
Flash Fiction with Sara Lippmann
Advanced Fiction with Sara Lippmann
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