This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.

Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction, Lyrical Essay, and more

In this class, we’ll experiment with Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction, Lyrical Essay, and many other forms of prose writing to give you an understanding of what drives you as a writer. Do you write to crystalize a feeling? Are you more inclined to tell a story? Or do you write to make an argument?

We’ll start by reading examples of each genre and defining the characteristics of poems, stories, and essays. Once we have those definitions in place, we’ll complicate them. What happens to a poem when you take away the line breaks? How can you tell a full story in just fifty words? What happens when you take associative leaps in an essay? All of these hybrid forms hold inherent contradictions, but they are useful and fruitful, allowing us to make surprising turns and connections in our own writing. Ultimately, all this genre bending will help us convey feeling, argument, and image. We will write short prose, using our weekly readings as models, and offer generous, thoughtful critique of our hybrid creations. Writers of all genres and experience levels are welcome.