Online | Nonfiction | Workshop

6-Week Generative Nonfiction Workshop: Writing & Revising Linked Flash Essays

In this fun, generative six-week course, participants will read, write, workshop, and revise a variety of flash essays and/or flash hybrid works, looking to projects like Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House and Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs for inspiration. This class, open to writers with all levels of experience, will focus on linked flash, or works of very short writing that are connected thematically and/or are part of one larger project or conceit.

During each class meeting, we will read and discuss published authors’ linked flash works, engage in small-group workshops, and work on generative in-class prompts. At the end of the course, participants will be able to turn in an optional portfolio of works to the instructor for written feedback.

Writers will choose an obsession or theme and will generate a series of formally diverse flash essays, leaving with a number of drafts and prompts for future exploration.

Class meetings will be held over video chat, using Zoom accessed from your private class page. While you can use Zoom from your browser, we recommend downloading the desktop client so you have access to all platform features. The Zoom calls will have automated transcription enabled. Please let us know ([email protected]) if you have any questions or concerns about accessibility. 

Check out this page for details about payment plans and discount opportunities.  

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

- An understanding of the elements of projects that incorporate a number of short and short-short essays

- Strategies for writing on similar themes but in varied short forms

- Strategies for workshopping short-short essays with peer writers

- 10% discount on all future Catapult classes

COURSE EXPECTATIONS:

Participants will generate one flash essay per week for on-the-spot workshops, and will read for each week. In this workshop, we will have a smaller reading load (3-5 500-1000 word essays each week) with the expectation of weekly writing. In these workshops, I find that small group workshops, with a portfolio submission at the end, is the best way to keep generating short shorts (vs. turning in every few weeks).

COURSE SKELETON:

Week 1: Elements of Flash/Choosing our Obsession

Week 2: Compression in Flash

Week 3: Formal Experimentation

Week 4: Research in Flash

Week 5: Hybrid Genres

Week 6: Revision and Ordering

Krys Malcolm Belc

Krys Malcolm Belc is the author of The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood. His essays have been featured in Granta, Guernica, Brevity, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Krys lives in Philadelphia with his partner and their four young children. Photo credit Mark Likosky.Photo credit Mark Likosky.

Testimonials

"Krys Malcolm Belc's singular memoir-in-essays traces how his experiences conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding a child helped to clarify his gender identity . . . 'motherhood' doesn't describe Belc's own experience of pregnancy and parenting. The Natural Mother of the Child attempts to bridge that gap, offering an alternative interpretation of what it means to grow a family."

Keely Weiss Harper's Bazaar, A Best LGBT Book of the Year

"Belc's illustrated memoir-in-essays delves into what the experience of giving birth taught him about the rigidness of medical and legal systems and the deftness of those determined to exist beyond binaries. It's a powerful, necessary book--one that every single obstetrician should be assigned in medical school."

Evette Dionne Bitch

"I was thrilled to receive this acceptance, and doubly so when I realized you were the editor. The genesis for this piece came from your workshop in the Lit Cleveland Flash Nonfiction Festival, which I thought was by far the most valuable session (though the others were also good!)."

former student

"Thank you so much for your class earlier this month. It was really wonderful. I just wanted to send along that I pitched the essay [and it] just published today! This essay wouldn't have been possible without your craft intensive, which really encouraged me to experiment with form and pursue the ‘tasting notes’ aspect of the essay. It's one of the things I'm most proud of writing this year. So just, a huge thank you. Wishing you and your loved ones tons of good things for the new year!"

former student