Online Flash Fiction Writing Workshop with Alexander Ortega

Are you a fiction writer wanting to share work at readings or diversify and enrich your portfolio? So often, we hear fiction readings of excerpts from novels or even short stories. But super-short flash fiction (aka micro fiction) offers us fertile ground in which to cultivate complete stories to spellbind our audience in, well, a flash. This class will explore flash fiction as a rebellious form with plenty of whimsy. Not only will writers learn and practice flash technique, but its lessons in brevity, constraints, editing, and cutting will avail effective takeaways for other literary forms and genres. With snappy readings and a toolbox of generative approaches at our disposal, each workshop will include a discussion of reading material, prompts, and writing time to conduct experiments in fiction. Writers will have the beginnings of a flash portfolio and resources for revision and publication by the end of the month.

Alexander Ortega is a Salt Lake City–based fiction writer. He explores the interstices between the real and the absurd to fabricate his own dimensions on the page. Ortega’s work has been published in Quarterly West, Moss literary journal, and an anthology called EVERGREEN: Grim Tales & Verses from the Gloomy Northwest. Ortega was also a 2022 Summer Fishtrap Fellow. His lyric short story, “Maroons,” was a finalist for Iowa Review’s 2022 short fiction contest.