Kathy Fish

Announcing Soon…

Nancy and I will be once again traveling to the land of Pura Vida in 2022! Creative Breakthrough: Restore, Renew, and Recommit to Your Art in Costa Rica February 4th – 10th, 2022 Registrations & Details Coming Soon! Sign up HERE to get early notification and access! Yes, send more information please!

Time to reconnect…

Hi friends! It’s been awhile! Are you feeling ready to reconnect and recommit to your writing? To commune with your fellow artists again? Maybe you need a change of scenery, a new perspective. We’ve found just the place for you! Nancy and I will soon be announcing our exciting new adventure for February, 2022. These retreats sell out quickly! Sign up HERE if you’d like early access / info /…

Beauty in Brevity: My Appearance on The Artist’s Statement Podcast with Davin Malasarn

So honored to be invited to chat with writer friend Davin Malasarn on his new podcast, “The Artist Statement” through the Grantham Foundation! I follow the esteemed Colm Tóibín, who was featured in the inaugural episode. We talked about all things writing and flash fiction and I read a few of my stories, two newer ones and a couple older pieces. Many thanks to Davin and everyone involved! It was…

Join me at the Flash Fiction Festival, February 27th & 28th!

Register Here! Friends, I’m hugely excited to take part in this year’s Flash Fiction Festival, co-sponsored by Hoot Review and A Novel Idea, to be held online Saturday and Sunday, February 27th & 28th! My workshop will run from 10:00 – 11:30 EST on Saturday, thus kicking off the whole weekend of awesome workshops, panels, and readings. I’d love for you to join me! Go HERE for all session…

Introducing “The Art of Flash Fiction”

The Art of Flash Fiction For the past several months, I have been writing short craft essays on flash fiction toward the goal of compiling them into a guidebook/workbook. Seeing so many writers feeling stuck or needing inspiration right now, I’ve decided to offer them in monthly installments (along with a writing prompt). I announced this on Twitter and sent out the first newsletter on January…

“Bear Walks into a Bar” is awarded the Copper Nickel Editors’ Prize

As the year to end all years winds to a close, I’m so honored and grateful to have been awarded the Copper Nickel Editors’ Prize in prose for my story, “Bear Walks into a Bar.” Here is an excerpt:

New Skillshare Workshop with Roxane Gay & Kathy Fish: “Write Memorable, Powerful Essays”

This workshop runs from July 13th – August 10th. Here are the details:

In this workshop you’ll use personal experiences as the foundation for powerful, affecting, and expressive essays. Learn how to connect your experience to universal truths that will resonate with readers; how to find your hook; and how to add juicy, expressive details that bring your story to life. This workshop is great for…

“Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” in The Norton Reader, 15th Edition

I’m very proud to announce that my flash/essay/hybrid piece, “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” is featured in the newest edition of The Norton Reader released today.

I find myself in astonishing company, with works by: Claudia Rankine, David Shields, George Orwell, Rebecca Solnit, Roxane Gay, Maya Angelou, Leslie Jamison, Stephen King, David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Chimamanda Adiche, Viet…

Two New Stories Published…

I’m happy to have had two new stories published this week! This is work I’m very proud of:

W. Todd Kaneko is stepping down as co-editor of the glorious journal, Waxwing Magazine, with issue XXI just released on Monday. I am deeply honored to have a place in the Music section of the issue with my Joni Mitchell-inspired piece, “Unfettered and Alive.”

Do read the whole issue. It’s overflowing with…

A Few Good Things…

How are you doing? Are you writing? Reading? I’m finding both of these things very difficult right now. I call it “pandemic brain.” I’m kind of scattered in the best of times, but now…? But I keep finding things to be grateful for. It’s warmed up here in Colorado at last. One relative in Iowa who’s been in the hospital for Covid-19 for going on four weeks is finally showing some improvement. And…

Well, friends, I had wanted to offer you all something profound for this last prompt.But as it often does– more so lately–life got in the way. I developed an ocular migraine which made it impossible to read or write. It left me exhausted. Tapped out. Drained. I sat in my tiny basement office with the window facing my backyard and watched the snow fall heavily, weighing down the branches of the…

Read the strangely beautiful “The Two-Headed Calf” by Laura Gilpin, generally considered a poem, but it feels like a microfiction to me:

    The Two-Headed Calf

  Tomorrow, when the farm boys find this

freak of nature, they will wrap his body

in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother.…

I’ve been struck lately by how many events have had to be cancelled due to lockdown. We humans LOVE to plan for things. The anticipation is often just as fun as the event itself. At any rate, the old saying, that God laughs at your plans, seems particularly apt these days.

For Day 26, your prompt is to write a flash about plans gone horribly awry.There’s a lot of tension and conflict to exploit…

Day 24 Prompt: What’s Said and Unsaid

Jo and Laurie have a conversation.

Powerful dialogue. It’s one of the most importantcraft tools in the writerly toolkit. Yet writers are often stymied when confronted with the task of writing good dialogue, so they simply leave it out. Dialogue can be direct or summarized, but the best, most potent, revelatory, tension-filled dialogue ought to be given directly. Why deny your reader the pleasure?

From Wikipedia: “The uncanny is the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious. It may describe incidents where a familiar thing or event is encountered in an unsettling, eerie, or taboo context.”

As to the use of the uncanny in fiction:

“There’s a power and weight to this type of fiction, which fascinates by presenting a dark mystery beyond our…

This is a prompt I used in one of my Fast Flash Reunion Extravaganzas (this summer will be my 5th anniversary of teaching Fast Flash!).

Songs are hugely evocative. You know those songs you hear the first few notes of and are instantly and vividly transported to another time in your life? Here, I want you to find 3 songs from 3 different decades of your life. If you’re still in your…