with musical guest Nick Busheff
and host with the most Paul Beckman!
It’s going to be a great evening of flash fiction! Come be dazzled, get signed books from the performers, and see what all the hype is about. Would love to see you there! xoxo
*This is a brand new workshop designed for the Bending Genres Weekend Workshop series (and it will also be the last online workshop I will be running until the end of the year). Join us for a wild weekend of writing and absurdity!
Register at Bending Genres Monthly Workshops
While realism in fiction has its place, some truths can be clumsy when faced head-on. When you cannot take the front door into your material because it’s too raw, painful, blunt or overdone—then you must find the back door. Absurdism (and the surreal) is that back door, a less obvious way into the material where The Big Truth can be revealed. Deceptively silly, absurdism can create faster pathways to emotional resonance by keeping the audience off guard, unprepared, and more receptive. Sometimes the old ways just don’t work. Sometimes we must speak in new tongues. In this workshop, we will examine how, by going into the absurd, we can and often do arrive at an unexpectedly more poignant truth(s).
I’d love to work with you!
Do you have a large, book-length idea that you’ve been wanting to bring to fruition? Do you love the intensity of FlashNano or NaNoWriMo? Then get ready: In 10 days we will create a literal “flash flood” and you will leave the workshop with the bones (at least) of a flash novel.
What’s a flash novel? With the scope and complexity of a novel, and the size and ingenuity of flash fiction, the flash novel is a new type of book, a breakout genre that can deliver a sophisticated reading experience in a compact space. In this workshop will envision, draft, collage and create the momentum for that large-scale idea you have been wanting to tackle.
Christopher Allen and Helen Rye of Smokelong Quarterly picking me up in the Flash Cab on location at the Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol, UK. “The Bad Thing” was first published by Connotation Press and will be re-published in the Best Small Fictions 2019 Anthology out later this year.
