Scroll down to see details of all the workshops on our trio of Flash Fiction Festival Online Saturdays: October 26th, November 30th and January 11th. Three on each day.
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Kathy Fish
Revision Strategies: Quick Tips & A Deeper Dive
We’ve all been there. There’s a submission call or contest deadline in one hour and you’ve got nothing! In this session, I’ll share my proven tips for taking that untenable draft you’d set aside and quickly polishing it into something you’re proud to send out. And for when you have more time on your hands, I’ll provide tools for mining your draft to uncover the deeper, more resonant story you meant to tell all along.
Kathy Fish has published five collections of short fiction, most recently Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Washington Square Review, and numerous other journals, textbooks, and anthologies. Fish’s “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild,” was selected for Best American Non-required Reading 2018 and the current edition of The Norton Reader. Her newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, provides monthly craft articles and writing prompts. Subscribe here: https://artofflashfiction.substack.com.
Ekphrastic Writing prompts for the three competitions, October 26th, November 30th and January 11th with Jude Higgins
As in past online festivals, Jude uses terminology from the UK reality show ‘The Great British Bake Off’ to introduce writing challenges on each of the trio of festival days. Using visual prompt,s she will get you to write a ‘signature’, t’echnical’ and ‘showstopper’ writing challenges. There are prizes each time of books from adhocfiction, free entries to Bath Flash Fiction Award and publication online and in the festival anthology. Diane Simmons (see details below) will judge each competition. Entries, drafted on the day, have to be submitted a week after each day.
Jude Higgins
Yoga for Writers with Sudha Balagopal, October 26th, October 30th and January 11th
We’re delighted that once again Sudha is offering her invaluable 15 min sessions offering yoga stretches for writers. A refreshing interlude in a long festival online day. She offered these sessions for us all through the pandemic and since.
Sudha Balagopal
The Historical and the Fantastical in the Novella-in-Flash, October 26th
A discussion, readings and a Q & A, chaired by Jude with Diane Simmons and Karen Jones. Diane will read and talk about her new historical NIF, William Pritchard & Co, and Karen will talk about and read from her Ekphrastic NIF based on paintings by Andrea Kowch. Both NIFS were published by Arroyo Seco Press recently.
We’re delighted that once again, Diane is judging each of the three festival contests. Writing challenges set by Jude on each day.
Karen Jones
Alison Woodhouse
Reading as Writers: With Alison Woodhouse :January 11th
Great flash fiction leaves a very strong impression but the danger is we simply inhale it and move on. How often do you bring your critical faculties to the reading experience, analysing what the writer has done, in order to improve our own writing of flash stories? Do you keep notes (a reading journal) about the flash that pops up daily on your screens? Ask yourself what draws you to a particular story and why? Is it exciting language, playful or clever structure, metaphor and symbolism, character and story, or (usually) a mixture of these? Often I find I’m hit by an emotional response and then I go back to see how the writer has achieved that in terms of craft, rather than topic. In this class we will read a selection of flash with an analytical eye, looking under the hood if you like, in order to deepen our appreciation of the stories we’ve studied. There will also be some writing exercises to see if we can bring some of what we learn into our own stories and a chance to share your work.
Alison Woodhouse is a writer and teacher. Her flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and anthologised, including In the Kitchen (Dahlia Press), With One Eye on the Cows (Ad Hoc Fiction), Leicester Writes 2018 & 2020 (Dahlia Press), The Real Jazz Baby (Reflex Press), A Girl’s Guide to Fishing (Reflex Press), National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies and Life on the Margins (Scottish Arts Trust Story Awards). She has won a number of story competitions including Flash 500, Hastings, HISSAC (flash & short story), NFFD micro, Biffy50, Farnham, Ad Hoc Fiction and Limnisa and been placed in many others. In 2019 she was awarded an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. She is currently studying for a Ph.D on the Polyphonic Novel. Her debut novella-in-flash The House on the Corner was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in October, 2020. Her flash fiction collection, Family Frames was published by V.Press in September, 2021. Twitter: @AJWoodhouse
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Science and Flash with Ingrid Jendrzjewski, October 26th
CP Snow once claimed there was a gulf of mutual incomprehension between literary intellectuals and scientists. In this friendly, playful session, we’ll challenge this notion of ‘two cultures’ by looking at ways we can bridge this science/art divide when we write flash. Through discussion and writing exercises, we’ll investigate questions like:
* What are some ways we can weave scientific themes into our flash (regardless of technical background)?
* How can thinking like a scientist help us hone our prose?
* How have science and technology opened up new modes of storytelling, and how can we take advantage of this as flash writers?
I’ll also share some editing and idea generating tricks that I picked up when studying physics, information theory, and machine learning — techniques anyone can apply to their own writing.
No specialist knowledge or background is required or assumed, and you don’t even need an interest in science to join in the fun. Scientists and non-scientists alike are warmly welcome!
Ingrid Jendrzejewski is a co-director of National Flash Fiction Day. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief of FlashBack Fiction, and a flash editor at JMWW, and has served as both non-fiction editor and editor-in-chief of the Evansville Review. She has published over 100 shortform pieces and has won multiple flash fiction competitions, including the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Her short collection Things I Dream About When I’m Not Sleeping was a runner up for BFFA’s first Novella-in-Flash competition. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Vestal Review’s VERA Award, and multiple times for Best Small Fictions..
Stephanie Carty
The Writer Self in Flash Fiction: with Stephanie Carty, November 30th
This workshop will be based on Stephanie Carty’s new workbook The Writing Mirror. It will focus on the insights you can gain about yourself by analysing your flash-length work. For this workshop, please bring print-outs of several of your pieces or have electronic means to access them – they can be in draft or completed form. You will be guided through tasks that hold a specialist lens to your work to see what is reflected back.
Stephanie Carty is a clinical psychologist, writer and trainer in the UK. Her novella-in-flash Three Sisters of Stone won a Saboteur Award and her short fiction collection The Peculiarities of Yearning won best collection in Eyelands Book Prize. Her first writers’ workbook on the psychology of character Inside Fictional Minds is published by Ad Hoc Fiction and her new workbook The Writing Mirror is now available on Amazon.
Judy Darley
Writing on Water with Judy Darley, October 26th
Dive deeper into your writing with author Judy Darley
How do you write about water? Does it trickle? Surge? Roar?
Is it hungry? Playful? Volatile? Reflective? Tranquil?
Whether you write about a raindrop or an ocean, you can harness water as a powerful writing muse.
Judy Darley will ease you into the theme of water with a brief reading, followed by creative prompts, generative writing exercises, examples, time to write and the opportunity to share your writing if you wish
Judy Darley is a flash fiction writer, journalist and occasional poet from Bristol, UK. Her fiction has been described as ‘shimmeringly strange’, possibly because she can’t stop writing about the fallibilities of the human mind and often uses fairy tale tropes to do so. Her words have been published and performed on BBC radio and harbor walls, as well as in bookshops, museums, cafés, caves, pubs, a disused church and an artist’s studio. Judy is the author of three fiction collections: The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Find Judy at http://www.skylightrain.com; https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.
Anika Carpenter
Art & Flash: with Anika Carpenter
Time spent pondering contemporary art can inspire all kinds of wonderful and unexpected story ideas. In this ekphrastic workshop, you’ll be introduced to the life and work of one contemporary artist and three of their artworks. Each work will be accompanied by optional prompts inspired by the piece.
Anika Carpenter is a flash fiction author and artist based in Brighton, UK. You can find her stories in Ellipsis Zine, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Janus Literary and others.
When she’s not writing, she’s running The Flash Cabin. Where you’ll find monthly online Art & Flash sessions, and more! When she’s not doing that, she hosts the Writer’s HQ Brighton Writing Retreats.
Website: www.anikacarpenter.com Twitter: @StillSquirrel
Unapologetically Fabulous Writing and Reading with Audrey Niven, November 30th
A group coaching session to debunk some of the myths we cherish about who can write, how to share our writing, and why we should all feel unapologetically fabulous every time we put words on a page.
Audrey Niven is a Scottish writer and creative coach based in London. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards, and are published in multiple anthologies including Oxford, Bath, Reflex and NFFD. She established the Propelling Pencil Charity Flash Competition and Journal where she is Editor in Charge. She reads for various competitions and in 2022 judged the Mslexia Flash Competition. She should be working on her novel. @NivenAudrey
Sarah Freligh
Hopperaerobics! A Ninety-Minute Excursion into the Museum of Narrative, January 11th with Sarah Freligh
The paintings of Edward Hopper –more than 800 works altogether — often center on the small moments where stories brew instead of unfold—leaving it to the writer to shape those moments into narrative. In this ninety-minute class, we’ll look at how some writers have done just that and then jumpstart our own new work with guided prompts based on Hopper’s art.
The paintings of Edward Hopper –more than 800 works altogether — often center on the small moments where stories brew instead of unfold—leaving it to the writer to shape those moments into narrative. In this ninety-minute class, we’ll look at how some writers have done just that and then jumpstart our own new work with guided prompts based on Hopper’s art.
The paintings of Edward Hopper –more than 800 works altogether — often center on the small moments where stories brew instead of unfold—leaving it to the writer to shape those moments into narrative. In this ninety-minute class, we’ll look at how some writers have done just that and then jumpstart our own new work with guided prompts based on Hopper’s art.
Sarah Freligh is the author of six books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis, and the recently-released A Brief Natural History of Women, from Harbor Editions. Her novella-in-flash Hereafter was the winner of the 2024 Bath Novella in Flash Contest and is forthcoming in 2024 from Ad Hoc Fiction. Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.\
