I currently am teaching an online course on Flash Fiction and Flash Memoir for Story Circle Network. This subject is close to my heart since flash is one of my favorite modes of writing. For the course, I have read a lot of short-shorts both fiction and memoir and have been reminded of just how…
Category: Flash Memoir
Repost: The Healing Power of Touch
I have a strong memory of spending a lot of time when I was a little girl snuggled up in bed next to my mother, her skin warm and her smell comforting. In that memory, my mother is always reading and her arm is around me so that I am nestled next to her. I…
Flash Memoir: Miss Inez Inglish and Her Overgrown Yard
Miss Inez English lived on Pine Street, right around the corner from our house on 9th in my little rural Texas town. Her one-story wooden house, white with green shutters, was set far back from the road, and was obscured by a front and back lawn covered with overgrown bushes and low-hanging trees, which cast…
Flash Memoir: An Afternoon with Mr. Morgan
Mr. Morgan was a retired Episcopal priest who lived a few houses up from my family on East 9th Street in my hometown of Bonham, Texas. He and his wife, Anna, must have been in their 70’s when I was young. They both had white hair, and they walked with the stoop that comes with…
Flash Memoir: The End of an Era
“Yes, we’ll go to the State Fair next Saturday,” my father said. “We’ll take the family and drive to Dallas.” The words were right – the ones I wanted to hear – but my father’s tone was flat. I could tell he didn’t really want to go. He was reluctantly agreeing to the trip only…
Flash Memoir: The Unexpected Joy of Cooking
Food is love. Not exactly. Not in my family when I was growing up, at least. I saw that principle applied in other families where dinner time centered on a meal lovingly prepared by a mother who might have gone out and picked fresh vegetables from her own garden, or used canned vegetables from that…
Flash Memoir Prompt: Nils and the Farm next to the Fjord
In the spring of 1975 when I was 22, my boyfriend Nick and I decided we would go to Europe after I graduated from college in June. (He was already finished with school and up for an adventure). The goal was to go for a year and the original plan (or at least the one…
Flash Memoir: November 22, 1963
I remember exactly where I was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. I was in my 4th grade class at Bailey Inglish Elementary School in Bonham, Texas, which is 70 miles from Dallas. I can’t remember exactly how we received the news, though I think it was over the loud-speaker. That seems insensitive…
Interview with Ohio U. Professor Dinty W. Moore, Editor and Award-Winning Author
As guest editor this week for SheWrites, I am pleased to introduce Dinty W. Moore, professor, writer and editor. Dinty was kind enough to take the time for an interview related to Flash NonFiction. Dinty is the editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash NonFiction coming out in September, 2012. Visit rosemetalpress.com…
Critical Components of Flash Fiction and Flash Nonfiction
Flash fiction and flash nonfiction differ clearly in content, but many of the needs are the same given the conciseness of the form. In an excerpt from The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction, Nathan Leslie in his article, “The “V” Word,” states, “By focusing on language, scene, voice, and character, my students…
20 Minutes a Day 