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 five books, including, most recently, the novel The Need, a nominee for the 2019 National Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019, and a TIME Magazine Top 10 Book of 2019. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her book of flash fiction And Yet They Were Happy was named a notable collection by The Story Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and the Italo Calvino Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Tin House, and on Selected Shorts. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College.