The Long and Short of It: Flash Fiction - Electra Rhodes
with Jupiter Jones
Monday 4 March, Zoom, 7.30pm
Tickets: £Free/Pay What You Can
This MK Lit Fest series, sponsored by the Open University, asks authors how they know which ideas or stories best suit which fictional form - flash fiction, short story, novella or novel.
Flash fiction will be under the spotlight for this first conversation on literary form. A flash is a complete story told in just a few hundred words. It has everything it needs and nothing it doesn’t.
Although very short stories have been around for centuries (Aesop’s fables, for example), flash fiction has flourished in the last few decades. With a growing international fanbase, flash is now widely written and published. There are festivals, writing groups, competitions, and online literary journals creating momentum and offering opportunities for emerging and established writers alike. Acclaimed flash fiction writer, Electra Rhodes, will be in conversation with Jupiter Jones a PhD candidate at the Open University, discussing the paradoxical freedom of a restricted word count, and how that stimulates creative experimentation.
About Electra Rhodes
Electra Rhodes is an archaeologist who lives in Hertfordshire. She began writing at the start of lockdown and has since had a couple of hundred pieces of fiction and creative non-fiction published in a range of anthologies, journals, and competition placings, had a short story commissioned and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and presented workshops on a range of writing related topics at a dozen festivals. She’s held creative writing awards and fellowships with West Midlands Room 204, The Sherman Theatre, The British Guild of Travel Writers, and, most recently, with The London Library, where she’s been working on an interdisciplinary biography of the British Landscape. A short story on land rights is forthcoming in Dark Mountain 25, in April 2024, and she’s currently under contract for three things she can’t tell you about, yet.
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About Jupiter Jones
Jupiter Jones lives in Wales and writes short and flash fictions, which have been published by Aesthetica, Amphibia, Fish, Reflex Press, Ad Hoc Fiction, Mslexia, Parthian Books and rejected by many others. She is the author of three novellas-in-flash, The Death and Life of Mrs Parker, Lovelace Flats, and Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell, and is currently working on a PhD at the Open University on the role of (dis)connectivity in the novella-in-flash.
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About English and Creative Writing at the Open University
English and Creative Writing at the Open University enables students to anticipate life the better by reading critically, writing effectively and thinking creatively. Each programme is designed to support aspiration, taking students forwards in life. Studying with the OU will open professional avenues, further career prospects, deepen insights and knowledge – enjoyably. The Department's programmes strive to be rigorous while honing the pleasures of reading and writing.
The Contemporary Cultures of Writing research group is interested in all forms of creative and academic writing, and its outlook is interdisciplinary. Membership comprises novelists, poets, dramatists and life writers, as well as academics and practitioners in Literature, Linguistics, English Language, and Translation Studies. The focus is on writing practices, their cultural contexts and impacts, and activities include seminars, conferences, collaborative work, and publications.
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