Flash Fiction: Create a Moment, Create a World with Helen Phillips (via Zoom)

How can I evoke a world/situation/character/emotion swiftly and potently? This is a question that fiction writers are always asking, but flash fiction brings particular urgency to it. Participants will examine samples of contemporary flash fiction, and then experiment with the form themselves. We will consider questions such as: How can a piece achieve arc and resonance in such a short space? How does one attain the precision of language essential to this form? What can this form offer the reader in lieu of the satisfaction of a longer narrative? How can the lessons learned by trying our hands at flash fiction be applied to longer works? Helen’s former students as well as new students are welcome in this class.

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel The Need, a National Book Award nominee, a New York Times Notable Book, and a TIME Magazine Top 10 Book of 2019. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her debut collection, And Yet They Were Happy, was named a notable collection by The Story Prize and is being re-released in 2023. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and the New York Times, and on Selected Shorts. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College. Her novel Hum is forthcoming in 2024 from Marysue Rucci Books at Simon & Schuster.