Flash Fiction with Venita Blackburn
Date(s): Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Piper Writers House, 450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281 (view map)
Type(s): Presentation, Workshop
Genre and Form(s): Fiction
About the Class
The purpose of all written stories is simple; they must cull the core of humanity in ways other mediums cannot. Language is a living mirror that requires the musculature of imagination to sustain the image. Short-short stories aim to reach the emotional and thematic depths of our species under extreme conditions: compression. This course will explore classic and contemporary flash fiction and engage in the techniques through exercise and discussion. The best literature pulls against itself and is one of contradicting functions, a Janus head that sees the past, the future, and still exists in the present. Flash/sudden/micro fiction attacks an idea with the goal of pushing the forces of good narrative and characterization into the tightest of spaces, where a traditional story is a seed and the short-short story is the oil.
