The Los Ange­les Review announces an online flash fic­tion work­shop.

A mem­ber of the edi­to­r­i­al staff for Mat­ter Press’s Jour­nal of Com­pressed Cre­ative Arts dis­cuss­es what he’s look­ing for in a sub­mis­sion.

My plan was to write a sort of struc­tured mini-essay, care­ful­ly laid out. But I chanced upon a few mat­ter-full para­graphs writ­ten by Flan­nery O’Connor

The best flash fic­tion I ever wrote–at least it con­tained some of my best stuff–there’s about a mil­lion drafts of it in this draw­er here, I couldn’t fin­ish it. I found that I was fak­ing things all the time, dodg­ing issues and let­ting my char­ac­ters dodge them. 

Mat­ter Press is pro­vid­ing com­pres­sion state­ments from flash fic­tion writ­ers.

Writ­ing and read­ing flash fic­tion for me ignit­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties of very sparse nar­ra­tive, more sparse and stripped down than I would have thought. 

The Jour­nal of Com­pressed Cre­ative Arts is cur­rent­ly accept­ing prose fic­tion and cre­ative non­fic­tion sub­mis­sions at this time. Our read­ing peri­od ends on August 15, 2011.

I will break these cat­e­gories down in the hopes that prospec­tive MFA stu­dents know what to expect and expe­ri­enced stu­dents will be more judg­men­tal of the “help” they give. 

Offi­cial news of an upcom­ing con­test, The 2011 MAR Fine­line Com­pe­ti­tion for Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Any­thing In Between. Win­ner receives $1000.

Jim Har­ring­ton pro­vides a work-in-progress com­pre­hen­sive list of mar­kets for flash fic­tion.