Saturday, January 17

10am - noon

The Art of Brevity

Grant Faulkner

The Art of Brevity

Have you ever learned how to write shorter?

In flash stories—fiction and nonfiction—the whole is a part and the part is a whole. The form forces the writer to question each word, to reckon with Flaubert’s mot juste, and move a story by hints and implications. Flash stories are built through gaps as much as the connective tissue of words, so what’s left out of a story is often more important than what’s included.

In this talk, Grant Faulkner, co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute, co-founder of 100 Word Story, and the author of The Art of Brevity—will discuss how a different type of creativity emerges within a hard compositional limit, exploring the many different forms that short shorts can take.

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Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of Memoir Nation (and also co-host of the Memoir Nation podcast), the co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute, the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author. He was also Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for 12 years.

 He has published several books, The Art of Brevity, Pep Talks for Writers, Brave the Page, Fissures, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, and Nothing Short of 100 .

 His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in 2026 with the University of New Mexico Press.

Join us in person at
Sequoia Yacht Club
(click for MAP)
441 Seaport Court
Redwood City, CA 94063