FLASH FICTION AND SUPER SHORT STORIES: WHERE TO BEGIN?

A creative writing workshop with award-winning short fiction writer
Erica Plouffe Lazure

2 places left
as of 2 July

Sunday, 7 July from 14:00 - 17:00
at the Munich Readery

Fee: 40€*

Want to write stories but don’t know how to begin?
Already writing and looking for more sources of inspiration?
This workshop is for you!

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Photo by Jeremy Bishop
American newspaperman Phil Graham once said that journalism is the first rough draft of history, but what about fiction? Back in the heyday of print journalism, long before social media, community newspapers teemed with tidbits ripe for fiction—classified advertisements, obituaries, horoscopes, features, advice columns, and comics. In this workshop, fiction writer (and former journalist) Erica Plouffe Lazure will show you how to use these newspaper sections as prompts for writing flash fiction or short stories. In class, participants will read and discuss several “ripped from the headlines” model stories, and collaboratively generate at least three story ideas.

Participants will also be introduced to several online news archives and will be encouraged to start a story in the workshop. If you’d like to share what you’ve written and get immediate feedback, you are welcome to do so, but there is no pressure to share your writing.

This workshop is for anyone. No previous creative writing experience necessary. Teenagers also welcome. The workshop will be in English, but you are welcome to join regardless of your mother tongue.

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Erica Plouffe Lazure’s short story collection, Proof of Me, was awarded the 2022 New American Press fiction prize. She is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks: Sugar Mountain (Ad Hoc Press, 2020) and Heard Around Town (Arcadia, 2015), and her fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, the Greensboro Review, American Short Fiction, Carve Magazine, and elsewhere.

A former newspaper reporter, Lazure is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, East Carolina University, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. When she isn’t writing fiction or teaching English, Erica enjoys cooking, drawing, playing music, and plotting out her next adventure. She teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, and can be found online at ericaplouffelazure.com.


*Reduced rate available for students supporting themselves and in hardship cases.

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