“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

This six-word story, supposedly written by Ernest Hemingway, is often used to demonstrate how a whole story can be embedded in a small moment—in this case, a classified ad. In our one-time workshop, we’ll look at a number of pieces of flash fiction in order to uncover the deeper stories embedded within. Then, after considering a number of possible opening lines for our own works of flash fiction, we’ll dive in. Time will be allowed for necessary pre-writing (daydreaming, sketching, thinking and re-thinking) and drafting a 500-750 word story. Students should have some prior experience in writing short fiction, although experience in writing flash fiction is not required.