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Nature is wonderful—Baobab trees are mystifying, marvels of Peru are enchanting, and Nudibranchs are striking. The ocean is terrifying considering how much we do not know. In the words of Walt Whitman, “give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed”. But, given where I live, this is not quite so easy to access. I see many trees dripping with moss from inside my car as I drive and I see pruned wax myrtles swell with bobbing lizards while I walk my dog Neither of these are particularly inspiring to me, having become a part of the early-morning/way-too-late-night generic landscape. They are beautiful, but spark no inspiration. They’re pleasant and colorful—like Mike and Ikes—but ultimately fade to the background. For me, the exception to this rule is birds. Descended from dinosaurs, wickedly smart and completely misunderstood, these feathered heroes (when observed in the world) can’t not inspire. European Great Tits bludgeon bats to death. Nuthatches booby-trap their nests with poison. Lyrebirds can perfectly mimic the sounds of camera shutters and chain saws. They behave particularly, and often bizarrely, and the least flashy are sometimes the most interesting. I have written many short stories and poems about birds, and briefly considered studying ornithology in college. I think the draw, for me, is both the mystique and the opportunities for anthropomorphization. Specific birds remind me of specific people, and for readers, a bird is something often easy to understand as the first layer of a metaphor. There’s a reason that there are state birds (Florida’s is the Northern Mockingbird), and that ancient peoples worshiped them. They’re ancient, but still quirky. They’re hollow humans that can fly—and have personalities often just as defined. PROMPT: Research a bird species and write a poem or short story where the bird is a metaphor for a person in your life or a character’s life. Fiction minimum 400 words; poetry minimum 15 lines. -Zarra Marlowe, Managing Editor

Lately, all of my poetry has depended on prompts and lessons given in class. I think it’s good for a poet or just a writer to get their poetry from a classroom structure, but I also think too much structure can lead to less creativity. I’m guilty of not often taking time out of my personal day to write anything. But when I do find the time, I go to the bookshelf for inspiration. I only own a few poetry books. The one I go to most often is by Nikki Giovanni: “Black Feeling Black Talk Black Judgment.” What I find inspiring in this collection of poems is the speakers that Giovanni brings to light. They are some of the most unapologetic, emotionally vulnerable speakers I’ve ever seen in poetry. It’s something I think Giovanni has mastered in her poetry and I seek to create in my poetry as well. I’m in Junior Poetry and we’ve learned about sound and meter and different forms of poetry such as ekphrastic and ars poetica. Understanding these elements of poetry causes me to look at it differently when I read and write. I can find different intents through the form on the surface or the sound beneath, underlying the contents of the poem. This inspires my poetry because it is the foundation for all poetry. I’m no Poe or Longfellow, I’m nowhere near to mastering these foundations, but I think it’s incredible the power that lies in the confines of poetry. It is one of the more compact forms of writing, but in that short time, short if you don’t count epic poetry, an entire story is delivered, narrator, conflict, resolution, or lack thereof, and the reader can make a connection, one I think can be even stronger than a full-length fiction piece. What inspires me to write poetry most of all are experiences. When I’m lost for an idea, I go back in my mind and find a personal moment I can create a new speaker from. This can become overused as there are only so many prominent experiences one can access, but that’s another thing about being a writer. Experiences can be reshaped, seen through a different lens every time to create the freshest recounting. This also applies to experiences that aren’t personal, something I’ve seen on TV, in the news, or something I’ve watched someone else go through. I think these experiences are just as strong as personal ones and can create the most universality. –Lindsay Yarn, Creative Nonfiction/ Co-Web Editor

In most conversations about what makes a poem a poem, form is discussed. One of the seemingly defining factors of a poem is its line breaks. Whether it be sprawling free verse, or the strict nature of a sestina, a key identifying factor of poetry is its visual appearance. Line breaks are a key poetic tool to manipulate mood and to segment images—they are, in many ways, one of the few things poetry has no other genre does. I’ve always considered myself someone who can express themselves better narratively than abstractly. Because of this, I have struggled with the more nebulous nature of poetry, particularly regarding telling a story within the form. Then, I discovered the prose poem. Prose poems are the Weird Westerns of the writing world. Prose poems dip their French fries in milkshakes, and put Cheetos in their sandwiches. Prose poems pronounce milk “mulk”. The ability to anchor my images within a prose-like structure in many ways enables me to let the images flower naturally, and my idea tend to follow a more natural progression when they aren’t being stuffed into visual tube tops. Don’t get me wrong—poetry is a majestic form, and line breaks are the stakes keeping the vine growing up. Take the stake away, the vine collapses into a bowl of spaghetti. A prose poem is a bowl of spaghetti that you can read. For some reason, surrealism blooms in prose poems. But so does honesty, because the imagery and syntax of poetry bring emotion into the space that swells without form to keep it clean. For a long time, I thought prose poems were not in fact poems, largely because of the aforementioned belief that line breaks are the foundation of poetry. Humans naturally reject things they can’t easily categorize, and prose poems trample on category. Some think they should be considered as a genre of their own—my previous self, included—which is fair. But genre, like so many other things, is only a set of rules meant to be broken. However, the foundation of poetry is music—poems were originally meant to be sung. It is the sound of a poem that makes it a poem, which is why when you remove the line breaks of a poem, you can still tell it is one. It doesn’t matter to me if the prose poem is a poem, or something else entirely. What matters is that they are uniquely dynamic and engaging worms of writing that sometimes kick you in the face and tell you to like it. PROMPT: Take an experience within your life and explore it through a surreal prose poem. Use aliens, mythological figures, or any other fantastic images/language you can think of. Through the fantasy/sci-fi aspects, explore the emotional consequences of this experience. -Zarra Marlowe, Managing Editor

Until my junior year of high school, I hadn’t given poetry a thought, or a chance. I decided that non fiction, was my first love, and felt it was my last. That's the thing, I didn’t understand first loves, or last loves, and I’m not claiming I do now, but I do know that in order to love something, to love it hard, you, have to explore it, make the effort to understand it, and fully accept it for it’s truest form. Writing is no different. I never expected poetry to so quickly grasp me in its arms, and shake some sense in to me. Before poetry I constantly doubted myself as a writer, I didn’t think I was deserving of that title. How did I know I was any good? Poetry on the other hand taught me, that its not always about being good; it’s about feeling. Non fiction allowed me to tell the truth, but only parts of the truth that I wanted to say, fiction allowed me to hide. I was surprised to find out that when writing a poem, every part of me fell on to the paper, and I didn’t know, until I was done, and there was no going back. Not only was I writing poetry, but I was exposed to so many great poets that year, Richard Blanco, Yusef Komunyakaa, Patricia Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye, just to name a few.  Exploring poetry, and realizing that every word counts, made me a better writer when it came to fiction, and non fiction. Thats what I mean, when saying that in order to love something you have to explore it, you have to understand the mechanics, and the rules, and the reasons.  Now I can’t imagine a life with out poetry. Poetry feels like writing in its purest form. Writing that can’t be harmed by too much emotion, and the slow meaningful process of revision. Poetry made me believe in humanity, and empathy more than I ever knew. Poetry is life through metaphors, too beautiful to ever be ugly, but powerful enough to hurt. A writing prompt that I constantly go back to, is one recommended by Patricia Smith: imagine the  person you have had the hardest relationship with is dead, lying on a marble slab in an empty room. It is your job to dress them, describe each item of clothing that you place on their body, describe the room, describe what it feels like to touch that persons body. This prompt will bring up emotions, you may need to feel, and helped me let go of a lot of things I held on to. If you attempt this prompt, don’t over think it, just go with what you feel. You can always revise later, but you can’t revise words you never put down. -Mary Feimi, Co-Editor in Chief

In school, we are tested by our ability to comprehend prompts and answer their questions through essay format. We are graded on our diction, syntax, and if we actually answered the question. Before students even get to college, where it seems term papers are at their peak numbers, we know the five paragraph format like the back of our hands. Sure, we can cut it down to four or three paragraphs and even up the ante with as many paragraphs as the teacher requires. We are not writing for ourselves, but for the teacher and most importantly: the grade. That is what worried me about creative-nonfiction essays. I was tolerant of essays about books I’d read over the summer or what president was my favorite, but writing an essay on an experience that was actually personal to me seemed a little over the top. I was first introduced to the idea of writing creative non-fiction work my freshman year of high school. We read pieces out of miscellaneous collections by well-known writers and also writers that weren’t as known but had stories that needed to be shared. That’s how my teacher hooked me on the idea of writing essays about your own experiences. We all have stories that need to be shared, whether we consider ourselves a writer or not. My teacher allowed us to explore the idea of writing these essays for ourselves instead of feeling as if we had to write about the experiences that would shock or allow happiness for other people. That was a worry of mine. I, along with my fellow classmates, had been writing academic papers for so long that I felt the need to write for my audience. With creative non-fiction, you are your own audience and when you cater to the needs of yourself you will consequentially impart wisdom to your readers. That year, I wrote about everything my thirteen-year-old mind could possibly imagine. Deaths in my family, lost dogs, and self-esteem riddled the pages of my composition books. Now, these topics seem weak to me. I’ve experienced new things, learned from them, and can write about them with stronger diction and tactful syntax. However, one aspect of my creative non-fiction writing that has not changed is how I can learn about myself from these pieces. When writing fiction and even poetry, you can find yourselves in the characters, imagery, etc. When writing creative non-fiction, I have no choice but to find myself in the work because I am the entire piece. Sometimes, the piece doesn’t revolve around me but I am there in the background or on the sidelines. Either way, it is illuminating to step outside of your body and see yourself on that page in a way that you didn’t see yourself in that moment. Presently, I find myself using creative non-fiction outside of the essay format. I dabble in writing strictly about my own experiences from time to time, but I find my experiences expand and grow into something bigger than myself when I input them into my other work. I insert milestones of my life into my poems and place poignant moments of my own into stories. It doesn’t have the same effect as creative non-fiction, where I put myself out on the page and make the reader analyze me. However, it does allow me to flesh out ideas and characters with the one thing I know better than any five-paragraph-format: myself. Prompt: Pick one room of your house randomly. Think about all the events that have happened in that room, no matter if they are monumental or seemingly irrelevant. Choose the event that you weren’t directly involved in but somehow impacted you. Write a creative non-fiction piece about it from your perspective. -Chelsea Ashley, Digital Communications Editor

When I first started writing the only genre I enjoyed was Fiction. I liked making up stories and being placed in worlds greater then our own. I thought Poetry was what you see on the back of milk cartons and what my sister hides under her pillows. Poems about romantic love and heartbreak, both of which I have yet to experience. I continuously tried to write "poems" but I always ended up gagging and throwing away the paper. I was afraid of poetry until I was shown the work of writers like Yusef Komunyakaa, Marilyn Chin, and Billy Collins, new writing that introduced me to words and images I had never thought of before. They also had different points of view and I really loved exploring each writer's likes and dislikes. Reading some contemporary poets helped me understand that poetry is not only about love. After reading and realizing that it isn't something to be afraid of, I started looking for more poets and wanting to learn more about the art form. The first poem I wrote is about Vesuvius and Pompeii and children being caught in the dark smoke. I think the idea was really original, but my execution sounded more like prose then poetry. What I had yet to learn was how to use poetic language. Diction and the way it's placed in poetry is something that I struggled with when I first started. It was something entirely new that I had yet to experiment within my fiction. The specific choices writers make with every word isn't something I learned until I studied poetry. Poetry, although fiction does this too, relies on the word to give context to a specific meaning or tone that leads the reader into believing something that’s going on in the poem. With fiction the writer can rely on a lot more words and actual scenes. Having this type of structure forced upon me was extremely hard because I had yet to think that every single thing in the story can have meaning, even the placement of the word "they." It taught me to go deeper into vivid details. For example, when someone is talking about a paper cut they'll say, "This papercut stings." But using more poetic structure would be "My papercut sizzles like it was placed on a stove." Or something along those lines. Really thinking of how to describe something in a completely unique and descriptive way can give the reader a new view into the mind of the writer and the story. Without these combined genre techniques my imagery would not nearly be as well developed as it is today. What I challenge myself to do is to have an original idea and describe it in a way that no other would. Being different and not fully following the patterns is what I enjoy doing, so I'm hoping to move forward with my ideas. -McKenzie Fox, Social Media Editor

Writer’s festival my junior year I had the wonderful honor of meeting poet Lee-Ann Roripaugh. I not only respected her for her commentary on culture and identity, but I had always admired her for her unique form that her poetry takes, specifically in her novel Dandarians. Dandarians is a unique poetry novel in that if you open it to certain pages you may believe that you’ve bought a novel of very short stories. This form that Roripaugh plays with is considered hybrid writing. Though her writing reads much like poetry in some lines, and even breaks in places as if it was a poem, she often sets up a very vivid setting and sometimes characters throughout the pieces. Though not all her pieces play with this form, Roripaugh is very familiar with it. In her workshop, Cracks: hybrid/mixed genre writing, she said something that particularly stuck with me; “hybrid writing bridges the gap between fiction and poetry, it allows for the two forms to exist in one plane.” For me, a chronically narrative poet, I viewed this as a safe haven of sorts. I love poetry, I love the language of poetry and with work I can create this language, but too often do I find the need to create a concrete place and characters, so much to the point that it begins to sound like fiction. When I read some of Roripaugh’s work along with the examples she brought to the workshop, I connected with the form almost immediately. Hybrid writing allows for a writer to write with all the fluidity and language of a poet, even make the same stylistic choices like line breaks sometimes, but also lets you flesh our characters more, lets you maybe explain more than a regular free-verse poem might. Though I never personally used this form after I connected with it, I think back to it often and think of the possibilities it would afford me if I do ever choose to play with it. An example of this writing can be seen in Roripaugh’s poem entitled “Skywriting.” The outward appearance of this poem is a piece of short fiction with very short paragraphs. But, if you were to read it, it is scattered with beautiful poetic language like “sometimes she coils herself up into a neat, tight spiral of pin curl,/and then, for a moment, she’s a moon-green yoyo…” This poem perfectly exemplifies hybrid writing because it does have poetic language as seen above but it also can be read as a narrative of sorts, following the narrative of a caterpillar, of all things. Hybrid writing is not only a new emerging form that is beginning to get more recognition as edging the boundaries between genre’s, but is also a useful and unique tool for writers to experiment with their writing. -Zac Carter, Art Editor

Terrence Scott won Élan's 30th anniversary writing contest. He was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He currently attends Flagler College, majoring in theater. Previously, he went to Douglas Anderson School of the Arts for creative writing. Poetry is his favorite form of literature and his biggest inspiration in poetry is Jasmine Mans. Currently, what role does art play in your life? Currently, art plays the role of catalyst in my life. It usually is a sort of trampoline that launches me into experiences that nothing else could. In my writing experience at DA, the art I was producing and inhaling worked not only as a means of connection and expression but also as a venue for self validation. A way for me to watch and document my growth and experiences, whether it be in a flash-fiction piece or spoken word poem. Each time I've written anything, it could be observed as a checkpoint in my life. What was your inspiration for your winning piece? The inspiration for my piece stimulated from my middle school experience at a private Christian school. I had learned so much about the spectacular side of biblical stories that I was left with a little bit of curiosity about the darker side. This piece is my exploration of that. What is your process for creating art? My process for writing is obtuse. A templated structure has never really worked for me. Usually, I get my best work after a emotionally, mentally, or physically  provoking event. It could be as simple as stubbing my toe on the edge of the bed or as life changing as a death in the family. Thereafter, [an emotional release happens] on paper. I just let myself say what I want to say. Finally, I revisit the piece after a few days of stepping away from it. Then, I can see things from a different perspective and attack metaphors and syntax and structure in ways that I couldn't while emotionally impaired. Do you have any tips for budding artists? If I could give any tips to young artists, it would simply be to write what you know. For example, in the piece that I was fortunate enough to win the award with, it is obvious that I have no experience with casting plagues onto an entire civilization. However, there are moments and experiences in my life that have similarities to what the people surrounding that event must have felt. This is the key to making certain aspects in writing that you thought were intangible, tangible.

When I was a freshman, I decided to try out the creative writing clubs in an attempt to get involved more at my school and with my art. I ended up at a spoken word club meeting in September, with absolutely no idea about what spoken word might be, other than it’s name. I could predict that this would be out loud writing, people standing before a classroom to deliver their work. I couldn’t predict the way words, in the mouths of experienced juniors and seniors, spun this dance of language, or seemed to physicalize in the air, emotions transferred straight to me. In a single hour-and-half after school meeting, I became dedicated to a new art form. Spoken word is unique in the fact that it can, so immediately, reach an audience. There is something in a performer speaking their own words, a person shivering before you and saying this is my truth, that makes people connect deeply to the words of spoken word artists. This immediacy is also deceptively simple, as those audiences, including myself, realize when we turn to making our own spoken word. A terrific performer can’t make up for shoddy words, and incredible language can’t provide for a scared or over ambitious performer. The form is a unique and delicate balance between the two forces. Spoken word exists where words cannot just sit on a page. Spoken word is necessary for when the truth on the page is so internalized in a person they individually have to speak it. Often, in the transition, the ability to be so true through this medium of words, a spoken word piece flourishes with wordplay, and becomes a celebration of language itself. It blends with music, runs off with pun and double meaning. A spoken word artist has to find some way to realize all of the potential of the genre, and still come on stage and deliver what is most true to themselves. They have to use this truth to drive choices about what song, or crazy movement is used. Spoken word is a vibrant tradition, an intellectual tradition, but still a tradition of gut feelings. It is messy. It is invaluable. Recently, I had to struggle with risk taking in the form for a piece I performed at Douglas Anderson’s Coffee House performance. The piece centered around my personal transitions while working on trail crew in the New Hampshire woods this summer. I wanted to convey the feeling of swinging a double jack, this eight-pound metal head on a wood handle, and using it crushing rocks. The piece really centered around this return to loving the physical body. The motion, the way it forces you to appreciate every single muscle, felt too important to leave out. So I spoke, and swung a pretend double jack. I had to take this risk of looking like a teenager with an air guitar, but I did it. Because, the emotions, and currents of ideas in the piece, called for something big. In the end, I think the motion worked. It showed the movement of manual labor. I reconnected me, every time, with those summer days, which helped me bring the piece to the audience. Spoken word is my release, because it asks the question: What are you most angry/joyful/sad/excited/all around passionate about? Write, speak, and move, from there. -Ana Shaw, Junior Editor-in-Chief

I didn’t walk into Creative Nonfiction at the start of sophomore year expecting to hate the class, but I didn’t expect to love it either. My main concern was that my life didn’t offer enough experiences to write about; inspiration for wild fictional stories is endless, but my own life is finite. I didn’t know what I would write after the second or third essay. What I didn’t realize is that while I have limited experiences, there are unlimited ways to tell those experiences. I can write about my parents’ divorce from the perspective of myself when I broke my arm while they were arguing, or I can write about standing in front of the front door with Mom’s suitcases on the night that we left. Even in those specific moments, there is more to tell; with the broken arm, do I write on the realization of the fact that my parents weren’t “alright,” or do I write on the duality of pain I felt in that instant? I have written none of the experiences that I have described so far, but recognizing the possibilities in that I can write on these things is the most important part. Creative nonfiction opened doors for me in respect to both its secular genre, and in respect to all other genres, because what is more applicable to writing than the truth? Creative nonfiction was the first time that I felt it was okay to write the truth in the same ways I had written stories, and it was the first time that I realized that truth is essential to all writing. My current tactic on writing poetry is drawing from my own life, because there is nothing that I can write better than what I have already experienced. My fiction now includes pieces of me, whether a character is dealing with loss or visiting a setting that I am familiar with. In general, I have felt a lot better about all of my writing since I took Creative Nonfiction class, because it has allowed me to know more about my own writing. I can take a situation familiar to me and alter it in the name of fiction without sacrificing the fact that I know enough about the situation itself to write about it in a pseudo-personal manner. Even more integral to my writing is the fact that creative nonfiction has allowed me to look at my own life experiences from a different perspective and gain from the writing process. I can learn from what I have already gone through in a new way, each time I create a new piece, each time I redraft. The beauty in writing what has already passed is that I can continue to learn from the moment long after it is gone, because in writing, it continues to happen, over and over and over again. -Logan Monds, Social Media Editor

I never thought I would be a poet. When I was beginning my full immersion into writing, and dedicating myself to the craft, I had already made up my mind that I was a fiction writer. I adored fiction because I thought it was the best place to create worlds. It had a more massive scope to build, and I just didn’t associate that with poetry. Prior to my entanglement in poetry, I thought it was basically this fancy, condensed, intellectual beast I wouldn’t ever really be able to tap into. It wasn’t until my junior year, and even more so, my current senior year in creative writing at Douglas Anderson, that I really found out I had a poetic voice. What I learned mostly, from my poetry classes, as well as from constantly reading the work of my peers, is that fiction isn’t the only place for a narrative. Poems can be wombs which birth stories whether it be concrete or not, and even if a poem feels confusing, an emotional narrative is always apparent. The concept of an emotional narrative is something that I hold very dear to me. Within my poetry, I at first felt daunted by trying to get across what I desired to say. In fiction you’re able to have more room to build context, to play around, and lead up, but within poetry the collective piece is attempting to get the reader to feels something and pull them in, in a limited space. Poems of course, don’t have to be short, they can be expansive creatures, though typically, they aren’t as long as a novel. To try and tackle the task for formulating an emotional structure to which my poems flow, I normally start off with creating some type of setting or atmosphere. In a lot of my poems, I’m setting the scene to what I’m going to show. I often use color in my pieces too, to visualize what I want myself and others to feel when they read my poem. I like to think of the type of color I want to show with my words, its softness or sharpness, the depth of the color, and how can I construct the words around it to sound fluid or sharp to enhance that color. Thinking about things like colors, then help me build the narrative I want to be contained inside my poem. Along with the rest of what’s going on I construct the words meaningfully, create line breaks to control the pacing of the piece, and I’ve learned to manipulate structure to do my bidding. Poetry is very flexible. I am in love with traditional looking poems, but also the prose poem. Poems have many designs and costumes to wear, as within prose poems it can mimic the reading style one takes on when reading normal prose, but syntax doesn’t have to be confined to conventional methods. One doesn’t have to build an actual story but have a fluid contemplation in that form. It can stabilize a moment. Regardless though, at the end of the day, the work is still poetry, and it’s working on undressing itself and to give the reader permission, to uncloak themselves too, to their own vulnerabilities to expose some type of truth at the end. I may have started out a fiction writer, but I am an equally strong and dedicated poet. Poetry has aided me in exposing the truths I never wanted to confront ever, because in the smaller space you can only run from our minds so much that eventually you have to take the sword to the dragon. -Kiara Ivey, Layout and Design Editor

I love the word “brevity.” It’s quick and sharp but still flows well. It sounds like someone had the guts to let out what they wanted to say. It’s also the word Scholastic’s Art and Writing contest uses to describe flash fiction, and I’d say that’s accurate. Before I got into my fiction “groove,” I struggled with word count. Regardless of the grade level, fiction pieces were supposed to wrap up at around 1,300 words. Usually, I grumbled through the revision process—why do I have to cut so much out? I’m barely exploring my world or my characters. What a waste. I was stuck in description. I didn’t have a complete grasp on descriptive implication, so I just focused on things I considered interesting. For example, several of my freshman pieces mentioned their protagonists’ eyes. Who cares whether they were “seafoam green” or “warm brandy?” Details like that helped visual their physicality more, but interrupted narrative flow. I think I can chalk this up to my hesitance to go deeper. Until very recently, I avoided exploring my inner fears and insecurities in writing. I was scared of opening still-fresh wounds, so I hid behind flowing, unimportant images. Even when I had my first lesson and portfolio in flash fiction, I still fell back on layered-but-shallow imagery. It didn’t work well, at first. The limit was 1,000 words, and my first draft landed at 989. It was below, but it personally wasn’t enough. I wanted—at the very least—to tell something which I felt didn’t suffer under word count. The result was something I was proud of then, sophomore year, and still see the significance of now. To break my trend of unfocused description (and, conversely, protagonists unwillingly distant from the reader), I limited character interactions to just the protagonist and his forbidden boy band love (go ahead, laugh). This was a significant step for me because I usually had the central character of my pieces interact with everyone mentioned. This limitation emphasized the most immediate, important “relationship” in the story. I also cut out all description that wasn’t observed by the protagonist himself, to ensure that every image developed an aspect of the setting, the conflict, and his character. Ironically, his homoerotic conflict intertwined with insecurity about his boring brown eyes, compared to the colors he sees in his band mates’ own. At the very least, I explored aspects of my own insecurities. I applaud myself. Then sophomore year ended. When I started writing fiction again—in junior year—I felt myself regressing. My images didn’t interrupt anything. In fact, they usually contributed to development. However, all my stories were “safe.” Once again, they lacked personal truth. I look back on them now, and they are well-crafted, but when I compare them to my recent works, I’m not as emotionally affected. That’s why I love flash fiction now. The form still expects masterful handling of craft, but in a way that gets down to an intimate immediacy. As a senior, I’ve written strong pieces that all—unconsciously—fall under 1,000 words. It’s this trend that helped me realize just how important flash fiction is to me. It emphasizes a direct approach, but not one that’s blunt. There’s still plenty of room for descriptive implication and explorations of plot, character, and setting. The brevity is there, and lets me be myself in writing fiction. A prompt, to help others grasp the importance of flash fiction: Explore the inner tension of a character as they carry out a single, pivotal action relating to the conflict. -Seth Gozar, Fiction Editor