What would it mean for a short story to become even shorter—perhaps a page or even a sentence in length? How do you tell a full, rich, complete story within a compressed framework without leaving anything out? How can you continue to use detail, imagery, characterization, time, plot, and all the other tools of the storyteller as you craft your own micro narratives? In this course, students will read short stories, works of flash fiction, and even prose poetry, as a way of understanding how to develop their own skills of compressed storytelling. Students should expect to read the work of contemporary writers, meet a weekly journal requirement, share and workshop their own stories, and generate a portfolio by the end of the semester.  

Linnea Ogden – Lick-Wilmerding High School
Linnea Ogden has taught English at Lick-Wilmerding High School since 2010. Though she has worked with all grade levels, she currently teaches 9th grade, 12th grade seminars in contemporary poetry and hybrid genre texts, and creative writing courses focused on short stories, memoir, and poetry. Before coming to LWHS, Linnea worked for a small letterpress print shop, got her MFA in Poetry from Brown, and taught a summer flash fiction course as part of Brown’s Summer Studies Program. She serves as an assistant editor with Lost Roads Press, and her writing can be found in literary journals and online.