This course explores techniques for building evocative settings, compelling characters, suspenseful narratives, and (un)believable worlds through the study of flash fiction. Because flash fiction is a narrative microcosm, it provides the ideal medium through which to study the mechanics of story, sentence by sentence. Flash fiction is also an excellent exercise in precision and economy. It’s an exercise in understanding the spine of a story. In this course, we’ll study the fundamentals of story through flash fiction and generate new work.

About the teacher:

Jessica Alexander has taught creative writing workshops at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Franklin and Marshall College, Porchlight Literary Arts Center, The Fairweather Project, and The Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among other places. Her novella, None of This Is an Invitation (co-written with Katie Jean Shinkle) was published by Astrophil Press in summer 2023. Her story collection, Dear Enemy, was the winning manuscript in the 2016 Subito Prose Contest. Her collaborative memoir (co-written with Vi Khi Nao) That Woman Could Be You came out with BlazeVox in April 2022. Her novel, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers is forthcoming from Clash Books in 2026.