Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing

This Saturday, November 4th, I’ll be hosting a workshop for this festival.

Brevity As a State, Not a Destination: an Inquiry Into Flash Fiction with Christopher Bowen

Have you heard of the shortest novel? Hemingway is often attributed to writing it. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” How can we, as writers, see the pitches, climaxes, and emotional arcs of our storylines more concretely? How does editing out unnecessary words change its emotional effect? Attention is worth something to a reader. It’s what makes us writers of emotional and verbal storytelling. In this workshop, we’ll begin by discussing the affects and intentions our writing has emotionally on the reader and, after a small session, how best to edit out what isn’t needed for clarity and profundity.