Lita Kurth: Writing in Flashes for Memoir and Fiction

Whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, or long-form memoir, a quick, intense glimpse based on personal experience can energize your prose. But how can you translate your personal experiences onto the page in fresh ways? This workshop with fiction writer, memoirist, and professor Lita Kurth (co-founder of San Jose’s Flash Fiction Forum) will explore how flash writing provides various forms to jump-start your nonfiction and fiction projects. Through examples, prompts, and in-class writing exercises, you’ll learn different flash approaches to storytelling and leave with some wonderful “bits” to use in current or new writing projects.

This will be an interactive workshop, including time to write and share with the group. The last half-hour will be devoted to your questions about where you might publish and perform flash pieces, how to find a writing community, and how to deal with discouragement, loss of confidence, or writing envy. Plus whatever else you’d like to ask Lita!

Lita Kurth is the author of the books WRITING MEMOIR IN FLASHES, ONE CREATIVE WRITING PROMPT A DAY, and many short memoir and fiction stories. She co-founded the long-running spoken word venue Flash Fiction Forum in San Jose, California, and teaches creative writing at De Anza College as well as her own creative writing workshops.

Join us on Thursday, August 28th, 5:30-7:00pm PT, to explore flash memoir ideas! You can register here to save your seat.

If you enjoy this free introduction to Lita and her teaching style, you can join her for a Zoom memoir class through CreatorSchoolCA.com in October, or for Introduction to Creative Writing-EWRT 30 at De Anza College in January 2027.

If you missed last month’s free workshop on Writing Place Across Genre with Lisa Watanabe McFerrin, you can watch the recording here. (The handouts and book recommendations from this workshop are also available through that link.)

Enjoy, and happy writing!

Shirin