Micro Writing Class Series

In this ninety-minute class, we’ll take a deep dive into two unique and often experimental vantage points—first person plural and second person—and explore how and what these points of view can bring to a very short story. We’ll read some published examples of both and use those to launch and inspire our own work in a series of guided exercises.

Sarah Freligh is the author of eight books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling Prize from the University of Indianapolis; Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize, and the recently released short stories Other Emergencies. Her work has been anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), Best Microfiction and Best Small Fiction. Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation.

In this class, you’ll explore the difference between a refrain and a redundancy. A refrain can function as a lyrical anchor or reflect a character fixation, while a redundancy flattens narrative, character, and language. You’ll learn how to write through language-level refrain and content and image-level echo. But why, you may be asking yourself, if I only have so many words to spare, would I ever consider repeating myself? This class seeks to answer exactly that and then some. Think musical chorus, think shape, think backbone, think memory, think haunting.

Allison Field Bell holds a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Utah and an MFA in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. She is originally from Northern California, and she is the founder and lead instructor of Field Works Writing (fieldworkswriting.com). She is the author of two full-length collections: Bodies of Other Women (fiction, Red Hen Press, forthcoming 2028) and All That Blue (poetry, Finishing Line Press, 2026). Allison has also published three chapbooks: Stitch (flash fiction, Chestnut Review Chapbooks, forthcoming in the fall of 2026), Edge of the Sea (nonfiction, CutBank Books, 2025), and Without Woman or Body (poetry, Finishing Line Press, 2025). Find her at allisonfieldbell.com.

Whether she knew it or not, Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy not only surrounded the preservations and exquisite reporting of Black American Culture, but also one of the most treasurable parts of that culture: language. 

It is pivotal to understand how to properly use grammatically-correct, standard language but culturally it is just as important, if not more, to preserve the recipes of our regional languages and slang. After all, it is part of history. Like food, language has a different dynamic in how it is said, spelled, and wielded from home to home, region to region. At its core, it represents the music of our ancestors, people that may never be personally known but continue to thrive in the features and favors that are inherited. Speech, an undeniable part of that inheritance. What does it mean to say the words of our ancestors, today?

In this class, we will be taking 5 phrases/words from our oldest relative that we may recall, and placing it within a modern day setting, with modern-day characters.  Words that are spelled how they sound instead of how they should. Definitions that may have more than one depending upon the context, on the infliction of the expression. Words that would have been on the receiving end of the strictest English teacher’s death stare (Student: Can I go to the restroom? Teacher: I don’t know, can you?). In this class, we are rebelling and fully leaning into the creative part of creative writing. We know the rules. Now? Let’s break them beautifully. 

Exodus Oktavia Brownlow is a writer, editor, fashion designer and sewist native to Blackhawk, Ms. She is a graduate of Mississippi Valley State University with a BA in English, and Mississippi University for Women with an MFA in Creative Writing. She is an associate editor at Fractured Lit and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Loveliest Review. Her debut collection of short stories, When It Gets Cold In The South, is being published by Screen Door Press, The University of Kentucky Press, in 2027!