Saturday, May 19th, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. San Francisco
$85 members/$95 non-members
Asked why she wrote flash fiction, writer Diane Williams said, "I need thrills…quick thrills, …[I need to] get answers fast and get relief." The hallmarks of flash fiction are brevity, conciseness, suggestion, and surprise. Coming in at under 1500 words, and sometimes as short as a few pithy sentences, it not only gives us quick thrills but also sudden, often profound insights into the human drama. "In this class we’ll read some of the very best flash fiction written in the past 20 years," says instructor David Booth. "We’ll ask many questions about the form: what about this story makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up? How can I create moments of surprise and sudden shifts in the reader’s perception? How do plot, character, setting, and dialogue work in a story that fits on a postcard? We’ll develop our own recipes for flash fiction—our own original concoctions. Come to the Writing Salon with your sleeves rolled up: we’ll read some wonderful stories and write a few of our own!"
David Booth has led many fiction workshops at the Writing Salon and San Francisco State University. He currently teaches fiction in the MFA writing program at the University of San Francisco. His flash fiction has appeared in a dozen journals, including Switchback, Absomoly, Quick Fiction, The Carriage House Review, and Sudden Stories: A Mammoth Anthology of Miniscule Fiction.