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Short form prose thrives in fast times, as evidenced by the hundreds of journals and websites publishing shorter and shorter work. In this three-hour in-person class we’ll look at some common misconceptions about flashy writing, delve briefly into the history of short-form prose, and introduce a half dozen established flash forms—templates you can tuck into your toolkit for future brief fictions and essays. We’ll read and analyze a number of published models, learning to “steal like an artist,” and by reading as writers, we’ll wring a prompt or two out of each model to jump-start your own short pieces. Fiction writers, prose poets, and concise nonfiction writers: all are welcome.

LUKE WHISNANT is the author of six books and chapbooks, including In the Debris Field, which won First Prize in the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction International Novella-in-Flash competition, and the novel Watching TV with the Red Chinese, made into an independent film in 2012. His most recent novel, The Connor Project, came out in 2022. His stories, poems, and essays have been published in more than 50 different journals and anthologies, with three appearances in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and three of his stories have made the Best American Short Stories “Distinguished Stories List.” He is Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University, where he taught for four decades, winning the English Department’s Excellence in Teaching Award three times.