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Originally aired 11/16 at 1 & 7pm on WSKG Radio

Somewhere between the short story and the prose poem, there’s a new literary genre taking hold, and one of the foremost showcases for it is produced in our region. The showcase is called ‘The Vestal Review,’ and the genre is variously known as short shorts, or sudden fiction, or micro fiction, or… flash fiction. It does, more often than not, come on you in a flash.

Writer and Vestal Review co-editor Mark Budman will be Tom Milligan’s guest on the next edition of ‘Off the Page,’ WSKG’s forum for writers from our region, airing live at 1 pm Tuesday, Nov. 16, and repeating at 7 that evening.

“Flash Fiction” is most easily described as short short stories… very short stories, in most cases literally less than 500-600 words. And if there’s a temptation to take them lightly because of their brevity, it’s a temptation one ought to resist.

Recall, perhaps, the story of the famous author who was asked how much time he required to prepare for a speaking engagement. “If you want me to speak for two hours, give me a couple of days,” he’s said to have said. “If you want me to speak for five minutes, give me at least a couple of weeks.” It takes time and careful labor, and it requires an eye and an ear very like a poet’s, to make us feel something real in 600 words.

The best of flash fiction has what all good fiction has: memorable characters, achingly difficult conflict, and poignant resolution, seasoned with a careful, loving control of the language. The best of it, in other words, can break your heart, as all good writing can.

Listeners will be treated to several samples of the genre read by some of the familiar voices from the WSKG staff during the course of the hour, interspersed into the conversation with writer and editor Mark Budman.

Mark Budman himself is an interesting story: a native of Russia and an engineer by training, he’s developed an expert eye and ear in the both the practice and assessment of writing in English. His longer fiction has been published by Mississippi Review and Virginia Quarterly Review, and he’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by none other than Andrei Codrescu’s “Exquisite Corpse” magazine.

And though the stories he brings us in his magazine may take but a couple of minutes to read, one shouldn’t be surprised to find their resonance lingering in one’s mind… and heart… for a great deal longer than that.

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