Mendocino (Zoom): Writing Flash Fiction

WRITING FLASH FICTION
Elizabeth Stix

Sunday, November 20, 3 p.m. Zoom

According to novelist and short story writer Peter Orner, “The difference between a short story and a novel is the difference between a pang in your heart compared to the tragedy of your whole life. It’s all a matter of how you feel the pain.” This is even more true with flash fiction. There’s no strict definition of flash: some say it’s anything under 2,000 words, some say 500 words, others say even shorter than that. While a work of flash fiction contains elements of a short story, in flash these aspects are often compressed or implied. It’s a form that invites playfulness and experimentation. In this workshop, you’ll learn what makes a great flash story pop off the page, and use prompts to create flash stories of your own.

Bay Area native Elizabeth Stix’s short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles TimesSunday magazine, and elsewhere. Her flash fiction is anthologized in Best Microfiction 2019 and won second prize in The Southampton Review Short-short Fiction Contest. Other flash stories have been published in The Racket Journal, The Tusk, The Fabulist, Paper Darts, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (www.elizabethstix.com Twitter: @ElizabethStix)