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Online Class – Ballet in a Phone Booth: The Art of Writing Flash Prose with Gwen E. Kirby
January 22, 2024 All day
Online class: 5 weeks
1/22 – 2/26
Class begins: Monday, January 22
Weekly Live Virtual Meetings: Tuesdays, 7 PM (EST)
Sliding scale registration fee: $50 to $250
Flash prose is sometimes praised for being the perfect art in an era of short attention spans—but the truth is that a great piece of flash arrests as well as lingers, staying with a reader for a lifetime. In this class, we will learn, in the words of writer Russell Baker, to do “ballet in a phone booth.” We’ll talk about how to implement setting, plot, dialogue, and characterization in limited space; how to break narrative rules and take risks; and what stories should and should not be confined to 1,000 words or fewer. Students will write their own flash fiction and nonfiction, read each other’s work, and receive feedback from the instructor. By reading published and peer fiction, nonfiction, and prose poetry, we’ll explore the bite-sized world of flash and make some sparks of our own!
A rockstar of our 2022 Kickass Festival, Gwen E. Kirby is the author of the debut collection Shit Cassandra Saw. She has an MFA from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. Her stories appear in One Story, Tin House, Guernica, Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Currently, she is the associate director of programs and finance for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference at the University of the South, where she also teaches creative writing.
Adirondack Center For Writing
518-354-1261
info@adirondackcenterforwriting.org