Louisa Ballhaus is the entertainment editor at SheKnows and a longtime culture writer from NYC with a background in film & TV and mental health. Follow her on SheKnows for latest news on royal family, reality TV, relationship rumors, and more.
Before joining the SheKnows team, Louisa worked on HBO Max's <em>Search Party</em>, wrote for <a href="https://www.bustle.com/profile/louisa-ballhaus-17872561" target=" blank" rel="noopener">Bustle</a>, <a href="https://betches.com/author/10211571861385379facebook-com/" target=" blank" rel="noopener">Betches</a>, Merry Jane, and Body Politic, and served as poetry editor at <em>2 Bridges Review</em>. Her nonfiction appears in <em><a href="https://www.woodhallpress.com/fast-funny-women" target=" blank" rel="noopener">Fast Funny Women</a>,</em> and she studied English & Film
In the second episode of the Writer s Digest Presents podcast, we talk about flash fiction and short stories, including interviews with Gina Barreca about flash nonfiction, Ran Walker about flash fiction (especially dribbles and drabbles), and the workshop experience at MFAs.
6 Essentials for Writing Flash Fiction and Nonfiction
Author and editor Gina Barreca gives her top 6 tips for writing striking flash fiction and short short nonfiction.
Author:
Mar 7, 2021
All good writing reflects and illuminates life; flash fiction and nonfiction hold up a compact mirror.
While it’s delicious to believe short-forms of writing are merely grab-and-go exercises, great flash fiction and nonfiction creative works sliding in under the 1000-word wire are, in reality, not any easier to write than 10-page essays, 30-page stories, or 400-page novels.
The good news is that publishing opportunities for flash fiction and nonfiction are growing to meet the appetite of an increasingly large audience. For many writers figuring out how to write effectively within the confines of a reduced word-count, though, the process can feel like stuffing a size-10 foot into a size-8 shoe, wedging a full-size person into a clown car, or at the very least, holding your breath to get tha
Ms. Magazine. Gina’s new book is
Fast Funny Women, a collection of 75 flash nonfiction essays. Author of ten books and editor of eleven others, her works have been translated into several languages.
Gina has appeared on CNN, PBS, the BBC, 20/20, 48 Hours, the Today Show, NPR, and Oprah as an expert on women, humor, and cultural politics. One of the first women to graduate from Dartmouth College in its early years of coeducation, she was the first woman to be named Alumni scholar by that college; her papers have been requested by Dartmouth’s special collections library. She was a Reynolds’s Fellow at New Hall (now Murray Edwards) College at Cambridge University and received her Ph.D. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.