Memoir in Small Doses: The Art of Flash Nonfiction

The workshop will focus on flash memoir – a thriving literary genre focused on highly concise true stories that flash like lightning in a reader’s mind. The form makes use of concise language, focused imagery, and metaphor, as well as “magnification” and “heat,” to create a full literary experience in an extremely small space.

You might write flash nonfiction as a challenge, hoping to perfect a polished gem of prose within 500-750 words, or you might use it as a finger exercise, like a pianist working to stay nimble, or a painter experimenting with color and light. Alternately, flash is a great way to improve your writing skills as you endeavor to craft longer work – full-length essays or a book-length memoir.  Fiction writers benefit from flash practice as well.

We will explore some basics of the genre and then review student examples with an eye toward improving our flash skills and understanding of what makes the genre so appealing. The workshop is designed to be useful to writers at all levels.

Dinty W. Moore is author of the memoirs Between Panic & Desire, and To Hell With It, the writing guides The Story Cure, Crafting the Personal Essay, and The Mindful Writer, among many other books. He has published essays and stories in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. Moore is founding editor of Brevity, the journal of flash nonfiction and co-editor of The Best of Brevity: Twenty Years of Groundbreaking Flash Nonfiction. He teaches master classes and workshops across the United States as well as in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico.