Water Runs through Me, Water Stays with Me: A Flash Fiction Master Class with Catalina Florescu (via Zoom)

Inspired by routines that we learn since childhood, as well as by other sources, this series on flash fiction multimedia writing will have prompts meant to show and inspire the deep connections that we have with this fundamental element: water. Despite where we are in the world, our language at birth, our gender, race, sex, status quo, etc., we are all touched by water, and we all touch water. We are actively and passively engaging with it. We have water inside of us. We hear it when we turn on a faucet or when we drink it. We are mesmerized by the vastness of a sea/an ocean or the rain droplets. Our roots are in the water just as much as they are in the other elements from our nature. We are fluid despite wearing a suit, a flowery dress, and the like. We are constantly moving, thus tracing our own course through life. We leave behind sediments, or they revisit us to shake our foundations. The examples could literally go on and on and on. Thus, the prompts will be a mix between creating stories out of nothing but our memories to water; creative reactions to other people’s poems on water; a cinematic (however rudimentary) component to water and our reactions during an entire 24 hours cycle; a reflection on parts of the world where there is no potable water, or where the resources are scarce; a hypothetical interview with an undersea animal who can barely breathe underwater because of the plastic pollution; a collage made out of words related to water and some ready found objects; a Google translation of the word “water” into at least 10 different languages (of choice), followed by their sonorous representations in each of these languages and our reaction(s) to how the noun sounds; etc. The goal is to immerse ourselves into water in a literal and figurative way, and to see the benefits of such a complex, layered endeavor. The connection that we have with water is just as fundamental as the one with have with land, parents, ancestry, and legacy.

Dr. Catalina Florescu was born in Romania and has been living in the States since 1998. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with an emphasis on Medical Humanities, a degree she received from Purdue University. She is the author and editor of 12 books, 9 in English, and 3 in Romanian. She published critical books on health and education, motherhood and gender rights, immigration and linguistic identities, as well as plays, poems, flash stories and a memoir. She teaches at Pace University and at Stevens Institute of Technology. She is the mother of a young adult son. She is a person with a hidden disability. http://www.catalinaflorescu.com/