Short-Form Creative Writing

H. K. Hummel is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA. She is the author of the poetry collections, Lessons in Breathing Underwater, Boytreebird, and Handmade Boats. Stephanie Lenox is an instructional editor for Chemeketa Press at Chemeketa Community College, USA. She is the author of the poetry collections, The Business, Congress of Strange People, and The Heart That Lies Outside the Body.

Although this book is a writing guide and anthology for the short form, Hummel and Lenox include sections on key concepts that are relevant to any class in writing fiction--for example, image, voice, style. The authors address thematic and stylistic concerns of brevity in recurring chapter features such as ‘One-Sentence Workshop,’ which allow students to try out aspects of short-form technique. The opening chapter includes an in-depth history of the short form, a rare offering in such ‘flash’ textbooks … The authors include work by writers as varied as Charles Baudelaire, Terry Tempest Williams, and Ocean Vuong, and the result is a thoughtfully produced volume offering variety in theme and approach, national origin, cultural background, and time period … Summing Up: Recommended.

• Preface1. A Long History of the Short Form2. Picture This3. Voice, Character, and Narrator4. Moving Through Time and Space5. The Microcosmic Sentence6. How to Leap: Ah-ha Moments and Associative Logic7. Translucent Design8. Beg, Borrow, and Steal9. Finding the Funny10. Misfit Pleasures11. Not So Fast! Strategic RevisionConclusion: The Beautiful LightningAnthologyAuthor biosGenre index