Prairie Lights

Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month, Grant Faulkner, will talk about his book on writing, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story.  He will be joined in conversation by author Mary Helen Stefaniak. “Absolutely essential reading on the power and craft of very short stories. Worth it for the brilliant analysis of narrative and poetics, worth it for Faulkner’s playfulness and obvious joy on the page, worth it for the string of fascinating quotations at the end. A generous book, packed full, it is bound to be a classic.”–Deb Olin Unferth

Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story and co-host of the podcast Write-minded. He has published two previous books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He’s also the author of short story collections All the Comfort Sin Can Provide,  Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, and he has been anthologized in collections including New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions.  He serves on the National Writing Project’s Writer’s Council, Lit Camp’s Advisory Council, and Aspen Words’ Creative Council.

Mary Helen Stefaniak is the author of The Turk and My Mother, The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, Self-Storage, The World of Pondside, and The Six-Minute Memoir: Fifty-Five Short Essays on Life. She is professor emerita of creative writing at Creighton University, and she teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. Stefaniak lives in Iowa City, Iowa.