Flash Fiction: Short, Quick, and to the Point (in-person seminar)

Instructor: Warren Rochelle
$60 Members | $65 Nonmembers
Sunday, 5/1/22 | 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Before signing up for this in-person seminar, please read the following statement about requirements to enroll:

All students must be fully vaccinated, provide WriterHouse staff with proof of vaccination, be willing to wear a mask at all times during class, and be prepared to transition to a virtual platform in the event of significant Covid-19 upticks or inclement weather. No refunds will be issued if it is necessary to transition to an online format.

Quick, name the parts of a short story. Ready, go:

Beginning, middle, end, climax, resolution. Conflict, crisis, resolution.

Don’t forget: Setting, character, theme …

Now, include all of this in just 300 words. This is harder than you think!

After reading and discussing some examples of flash fiction, we will experiment with some different lengths, from 6-word love stories to the 300-word short story. Students will write, share, and discuss their work. The goal of the seminar is to produce a draft short story of 300 words.

Warren Rochelle lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has just retired from teaching English at the University of Mary Washington. His short fiction and poetry have been published in such journals and anthologies as Icarus, North Carolina Literary Review, Forbidden Lines, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Collective Fallout, Queer Fish 2, Empty Oaks, Quantum Fairy Tales, Migration, The Silver Gryphon, Jaelle Her Book, Colonnades, and Graffiti, as well as the Asheville Poetry Review, GW Magazine, Crucible, The Charlotte Poetry Review, and Romance and Beyond. He had also published a critical work on Ursula K. LeGuin and academic criticism of speculative fiction in various journals.

His short story, “The Golden Boy,” was a finalist for the 2004 Spectrum Award for Short Fiction. His short story “Mirrors,” was published in Under A Green Rose, a queering romance anthology, from Cuil Press. “The Latest Thing,” a flash fiction story, was published in the Queer Sci Fi anthology, Innovation in 2020.

Rochelle is also the author of four novels: The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010), all published by Golden Gryphon Press, and The Werewolf and His Boy, published by Samhain Publishing in September 2016. The Werewolf and His Boy was re-released from JMS Books in August 2020. The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories was published by JMS Books in late September 2020.

He is presently working on a novella continuing one of the stories in his collection. He wanted to know what happened next.

Registration for this seminar is closed.