Streamed live on Mar 6, 2023 Live From The Bunker Vol. 6 (2023)
Nancy Stohlman has written a novella about the Rapture. Except, is it? Is it about that particular moment in the End Times, or is it more about the people who live in the Now Times? From the sublime to the absurd, Stohlman delivers a look at the Rapture that’s sure to be unlike anything else you’ve ever read about it.
We are just three weeks away and counting! Here’s a throwback of me reading “The Bad Thing”, which is the opening story in After the Rapture, as part of the Smokelong Quarterly FLASH CAB series!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Let’s start the year with a big breath of new inspiration. You deserve it!
(P.S. I won’t be offering online courses again until the fall, so let’s do this!)
Flash Flood: Write a Flash Novel will help you play with and harness that “big” story idea you’ve always wanted to write (fiction or nonfiction), and Beautiful Flash Fiction: Pop Lit and Flash Fusion is a chance to welcome the weird and remember the joy of creative play.
Come play with us!
February 6-10
(5 days, online asynchronous)
SOLD OUT
The world is a constant and incredible source of inspiration–IF we are paying attention. We will engage with unexplored or under explored avenues of potential inspiration including pop culture, music, trends, politics, fashion and more to discover unusual angles and back doors into new ideas.In this 5-day generative class we will actively blur the distinctions between low brow and high brow art, and elevate the mundane to the miraculous.
We will examine the fundamentals of flash fiction, try a variety of approaches to the compressed narrative, and you will generate your own original flash pieces. As always, come with an open mind and expect to play.*This course is open to writers with all levels of experience in the form, whether you are brand new to flash fiction, a writer coming from other genres, or a veteran flasher looking for a dose of inspiration and some writing camaraderie.
“There is something magical about the container of a class like that. Prompts that push the envelope of the known, and encourage thinking in new ways. Classmates who offer positive feedback on your work (no highfalutin literary critiques allowed, only commentary on how the work landed, and/or what the reader thought you did well). Opportunities to read and share works in progress in real time with kindred spirits. And expanding your skill set under the tutelage of a wise, and funny guide. Joyful exploration. My favorite kind.” Sarah Dinan, “Welcome the Weird”:
January 23-Feb 3
(10 days, online asynchronous)
SOLD OUT
Do you have a Big Story Idea brewing, but you don’t know where to begin? Is it a flash novel? Novella? Collection? A regular novel or memoir or a million other things? Sometimes not knowing can stop us from getting started. Sometimes the scope of it feels overwhelming. Is 2023 the year you finally write or finish your book?
Flash Flood: Write a Flash Novel is my signature course designed to help you launch your Big Flash Novel Idea. For 10 days we will envision, draft, collage and create the momentum for that large-scale idea you’ve been wanting to tackle. We’ll begin breaking it apart and making friends with the scope of it, and in that process of discovery you will find momentum, insight, excitement, and sometimes a total pivot–that’s okay! For 10 days we’ll get out of our own way–10 days and a flurry of words and ideas and encouragement and camaraderie–and when it’s over you will have the bones (at least) of a longer project and a much better idea of where to go next.NOTE: This class is the recommended jumping off point for the 12-Week Flash Novel Mastermind
a 12-week incubator to get your manuscript across the finish line
February 13-May 5
Whether your book is fiction or creative non-fiction, if you are a dedicated writer, drawing on the skills of flash fiction, this is the container of inspiration, motivation, community and support you have been wanting to bring your ideas to fruition.
SOLD OUT
I can’t wait to work with you! xo
Well, in a year where I did very little publishing (and lots of creative hoarding!), this was a wonderful end to 2022! Here is my story tripdich “The Heartland: A Three Card Spread” and some of the other wonderful contenders here:
The Art of Tarot: Flash Fiction Winners and Finalists at The Ekphrastic Review
Top Three in Flash Fiction
Shadow Children, by Lisa Molina (flash fiction winner)
Circus, by Bayveen O’Connell
The Heartland: A Three-Card Spread, by Nancy Stohlman
(Click here for poetry finalists and winners!)
Top Three Flash Fiction Finalist
The Heartland: A Three-Card Spread by Nancy Stohlman
The Dollar General
One of the major arcana cards, the run-down Dollar General is the quintessential symbol of The Heartland. The Dollar General is the gathering place, the hearth, the sun around which the neighbors can congregate and bargain hunt together, in community. Notice the halo of light around the yellow Dollar General lettering, the field of monocrops, how the borders of the card are decorated with cows in feedlots. The baby cows in the corners are mirrors of one another, a symbolic reminder that this scene will go on and on, into eternity.
If you have drawn the Dollar General card it means you are the kind of person who can disappear out here, who can live an entire life without making a mark anywhere. You are the sort of person who will die quietly. There will be little said at your funeral. You are just one of many cogs, many thrusts of blood pulsing through the heart of The Heartland, and like the cows, your life is not meant to be individual or unique.
If this card is reversed, you may be trying to leave but Dollar General continues to tempt you back with its low low prices.
The King of Big Gulps
The King of Big Gulps, seen here in his living room, has been your best friend for over 30 years. In this card he’s in a lot of pain. Notice the pack of cigarettes on the table, a symbol of defeat, the brimming Big Gulp at his feet. He is dressed in the traditional garb of the town but his jeans are torn, t-shirt stretched, hair going white, a nod to his maturity and wisdom. Though the King is clearly suffering, clearly at war with his own body, he is surrounded by the same halo of light seen in the Dollar General card.
If you draw the King of Big Gulps, he may have called you six weeks ago to say he was dying. To ask you, as his oldest friend, to throw him a goodbye party. You might have wept together on the phone, separated by miles and decades. You will always remember the King as he was, controlling the lightning and the winds.
Receiving the King of Big Gulps is a message about the enigma of healing—how we heal and how we don’t. Notice the ankle and wrist cuffs, the key around his neck. The King asks us to question our illusions: How do we keep ourselves in our own chains? How can we see the key around our own necks? If you draw this card you may find yourself driving 10 hours across Kansas and Missouri, a place you haven’t seen in 12 years, to find out before it’s too late.
The Three of Corn
Three ears of strong corn grow from a stalk in the centre of a field of equally strong stalks. In the foreground you can see the abandoned town, the forgotten dreams. But the field of corn remains. Long after we’re all gone, the corn remains.
Nancy Stohlman
Nancy Stohlman is the author of six books including After the Rapture, (March 2023), Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, winner of the 2021 Reader Views Gold Award. Her work has been included in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and The Best Small Fictions 2019, as well as adapted for both stage and screen.
Nancy Stohlman 