Grackle artwork by Nina Costa. This class is not online, it will be held in the Grackle Studio.
What, beyond a catchy first line and curiosity about plot, keeps a reader enthralled with a story?
In this three-class series, we will explore examples of flash fiction, short stories and even novels to mine them for craft elements that keep the reader turning pages. We’ll go beyond the usual technique discussions to see how writers exploit their narrative tools to keep the reader engrossed. We’ll then apply some of these techniques in short generative writing exercises that we’ll share and discuss in real time. Our first class will focus on flash fiction that we will read in class. The following two classes will have some pre-reading work, but all writing exercises will be conducted in class. Come ready to write playfully and engage in some productive on-the-spot creative observations on your own work as well as that of others to discover the potential that lies in our literary experiments.
Tayyba Maya Kanwal is Fiction Editor at Gulf Coast Journal. Her prose appears in Witness Magazine, Meridian, Juxtaprose, Quarterly West and other journals and has been anthologized by The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review. She received the 2022 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Fiction, was designated Witness Magazine’s 2022 Literary Awards runner-up and CRAFT 2021 Fiction Elements Contest finalist and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a candidate for an MFA at the University of Houston and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow.