The Weight of the Moon

The moon fell from the sky last Tuesday. I rolled her into the shed and gave her some water. Thank you, she said. Don’t you…

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FLASH FICTION: The Semester Goes By in a Flash

There are twelve students in each flash fiction workshop I teach at Emerson College in Boston. What is very different about this class in contrast…

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Flash Fiction Exercise: An Appropriated Form, the List

Through exercise, through activity, direct the writer’s eye and mind: the entire world as structure. Not Freytag, not three act, not two realist characters, enter…

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A Flash Fiction Model

When I teach flash fiction I like to guide my students by using great stories already written as models. I do this through a series…

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Using Flash to Teach Reading Like a Writer

On Top Chef, Wolfgang Puck had the contestants cook an omelet. A plain one, just egg and butter and cream. Salt and pepper. There isn’t…

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A Lydia Davis Story

This burrito and I have something in common: we are each almost keeping it together.

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Jellyfish of the Island of Palau

Once we were sea monsters, once we were sirens. We electrocuted whole boats, sucked the flesh off the still-living. We were a Force to be…

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