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FICT 89 — Flash Fiction Workshop: Lightning on the Page

Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Christine Sneed
Duration: 6 weeks
Location: Online
Date(s): Jul 15—Aug 19
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Wednesdays
 
Class Meeting Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Tuition: $655
   
Refund Deadline: Jul 17
 
Unit(s): 1
   
Enrollment Limit: 18
  
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
 
Quarter: Summer
Day: Wednesdays
Duration: 6 weeks
Time: 6:00—8:30 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jul 15—Aug 19
Unit(s): 1
Location: Online
 
Tuition: $655
 
Refund Deadline: Jul 17
 
Instructor(s): Christine Sneed
 
Enrollment Limit: 18
 
Recording Available: Yes
 
Status: Registration opens May 18, 8:30 am (PT)
 
Flash fiction is efficient, nimble, and exhilarating, a form powered by what George Saunders calls “a line-by-line energy.” In this course, we’ll explore how vivid language, unconventional structures, and compression can create stories that make a lasting impression despite (or because of) their brevity. We will read flash fiction by writers such as Tommy Orange, Charles Johnson, Angela Pneuman, and Kathy Fish to see how intensity, voice, and precision operate at the sentence level. Through weekly assignments and supportive workshops, you will draft and revise 3–5 flash pieces. Designed for writers new to flash as well as those returning to the form, the course welcomes novelists seeking a playful reset, poets curious about narrative, and anyone eager to experiment with words and images on the page.

CHRISTINE SNEED
Author

Christine Sneed is the author of six books, including Little Known Facts, The Virginity of Famous Men, and Paris, He Said. She's received the Grace Paley Prize, a Society of Midland Authors Award, and the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, among other honors. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, Ploughshares, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She is faculty director of Northwestern's School of Professional Studies' graduate writing program.

Textbooks for this course:

(Required) Tara L. Masih (editor), The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (ISBN 978-0978984861)
(Required) Sean Singer, Today in the Taxi (ISBN 978-1946482693)
(Required) Kathleen Rooney, Where Are the Snows: Poems (ISBN 978-1680032925)