Description
In 1976, Tri-Quarterly issued a volume called Minute Stories, each story no more than two pages long. Now, a half-century later, the form has developed into what is variously referred to as “the short-short,” “flash fiction,” “sudden fiction,” “kitchen fiction,” or, in the case of Kawabata, “palm-of-the-hand stories.” McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Quarterly West, American Short Fiction, PANK Magazine and a profusion of other literary magazines—print, as well as online—now devote entire issues to the form, and there are anthologies galore. In this reading- and writing-intensive course, we will consider the form (does it have one?) and its history (ditto). Required texts: Jerome Stern, ed., Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories; Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities; and Julio Cortázar, Cronopios and Famas. In addition, we will read excerpts from Eduardo Galeano’s The Book of Embraces and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, as well as work by writers—classic to contemporary—from