Sure size matters when you’re talking about flash nonfiction—parameters range between 250 and 750 words—but word count is just one element and not the most critical of this concise and popular form. Bernard Cooper, master of writing short nonfiction says the form requires “an alertness to details, a quickening of the senses, a focusing of the literary lens … until one has magnified some small aspect of what it means to be human.”

Each session in this four-session workshop will feature a different approach to writing a flash nonfiction. During our first hour, we’ll review a theme, read and discuss a brief essay relating to the use of that theme. Our second hour we’ll try our hand at writing a flash essay of our own, with review and response from workshop participants. Our guiding text (not required) will be The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction.