Short Short Story Workshop

This workshop explores the tricky art of writing and editing the short short story (flash fiction), or stories around 1,000 words. Writers of short short fiction face the unique challenge of creating something fragmentary, but complete; something brief, but satisfying; little moments that hint at a whole world. This short short fiction workshop will focus on various approaches writers can take to write complete and complex stories in 1,000 words or fewer.

Short Short Story Workshop Goals

  • To identify and read exemplary works of short short fiction as a foundational study to creating your own;
  • To generate new drafts of work with a focus on short short fiction;
  • To provide critical feedback on work so you can revise and make it as strong as it can be;
  • To help you further strengthen your knowledge of form and to provide you with the environment to better understand your individual voice so you can apply this to future works;
  • To help you learn and improve on the techniques of writing and self-editing so that you are aware of your preferred forms and boundaries and be able to consider how you might push your preferred forms into your best craft.

Contributing Faculty

Rae BryantRae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals (Patasola Press). Her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, McSweeney’s, DIAGRAM, StoryQuarterly, Huffington Post, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications. Her digital intermedia has exhibited in New York, DC, Baltimore and Florence, Italy. She has won prizes and fellowships from Johns Hopkins, Aspen Writers Foundation, VCCA and Whidbey Writers and has been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, The &NOW Award, Lorian Hemingway, and multiple times for the Pushcart award. Rae earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach new media, technology for writers and creative writing and is founding editor and designer of Eckleburg. She also teaches and lectures in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa, The Eckleburg Workshops and American University where she is currently in the MFA program. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

Meg PokrassMeg Pokrass is the author of five flash fiction collections, an award-winning collection of prose poetry, and a novella-in-flash from the Rose Metal Press. A new novella in flash “The Smell of Good Luck” will be published in 2019 by Flash: The International Short Short Story Press and a new collection of microfiction, “The Sadness of Night Bugs” forthcoming from Pelekinesis Press.

Sommer SchaferSommer Schafer is a writer and teacher living in Northern California. She is a senior editor of The Forge Literary Magazine. Visit her at sommerschafer.com.