SHALLA Magazine - we love Shalla

Pamelyn Casto is a teacher and writer (and student) of flash fiction and haibun. Her stories and poetry have appeared in several publications, the most recent in Mslexia Magazine, flashquake, Wild Strawberries, and Mindprints. She's been a Pushcart nominee and has written articles on flash fiction for Riding the Meridian, Writing World, Net Author's E2K, Whim's Place, and Kavitayan. She's also been interviewed on writing flash fiction in Mslexia Magazine (a fine print publication in England), S.P.A.W.N, Jobs in Hell, and at Long Ridge Writer's Group. She's also co-written feature-length articles for Writer's Digest (and their other publications) on writing flash fiction (as well as articles on other topics for other publications). Pam has been working on her book on writing flash fiction for a couple of years now and hopes to see it completed one day soon.

Pam: Exhausted but excited. I am finishing up the research and writing of a 7,500-word article on... what else? Flash fiction.

The article, if all goes well, is to be included in a four-volume work on contemporary American fiction which will be published in England and distributed throughout the U.S. and Canada.

I've been heavy into the research for the article for well over a year now and just now have it almost ready to send off to the editor. But actually that means I'm quite well, thank you. It's always satisfying to see the end of a major project on a topic we love. This topic has been most fascinating (and difficult) to research and I'm pleased with the resulting article. But what a daunting task it has been!

Pam: Oh my, Shalla. You've just asked me to do the impossible. Flash fiction really can't be defined to anyone's satisfaction. That's because it's so protean, so varied, and pursues so many different strategies and achieves so many different effects. Length can help identify it but it's of little use in helping to define it.

To keep it simple as possible, let's say that flash fiction is a very short story. Length is usually under 1,000 words but can sometimes be up to 2,000 words. (The shortest I've seen have been stories using only six words!) It all depends on what editors and publishers ask for and what limits they want to set.

Plus, flash fiction isn't the only name such writing goes by. It's also sometimes called sudden, fast, skinny, postcard, short-short, quick, minute, zip, or micro fiction. It also travels by such names as smoke-long stories, palm-of-the- hand stories, and has even been called "flush" fiction in honor of Edgar Allan Poe's recommendation that short stories are to be read in a single "sitting."

I realize I sound a bit vague but flash fiction defies definition at this point. And actually, that’s a good thing. As Charles Baxter says in Sudden Fiction: International, "this form is not about to be summarized by any one person's ideas about it." He also says about the stories "as a form they are open, and exist in a state of potential." It’s no easy task to define potential. Many fine flash fiction pieces work on their own terms as they borrow and invent from various genres.

Pam: Another tough question! It mostly depends again on what types of stories editors/ publishers ask for.

Flash fiction can be mainstream or commercial pieces, or literary pieces. Each type has its own tough- to-define requirements. For instance, some editors/publishers still like stories with a twist ending (ala O. Henry). Others look for stories with a clear beginning, middle, end (a plot). Still others look for stories that make demands on the reader's imagination. Or look for language pieces or unusual strategies for telling a story. Or look for plotless stories. Or stories that fall more into the category of prose poetry.

Some flash fiction can be read quickly while other flash fiction forces readers to slow down and read a story in the way they might read good poetry. Some pieces are list stories, or mood, or tone stories. Some are written using one, two, or three long sentences extended over two or three pages.

See why flash fiction is so difficult to define? It's so protean, always changing shapes. I guess the easiest answer to this question would be to say a flash fiction piece is successful if a reader, editor, publisher is glad she or he got to read it.

Pam: Haibun is also difficult to define—many attempts at definitions of haibun are not quite satisfying. Haibun does include haiku poetry so I'm glad you brought that up. It makes for a nice segue into the topic of haibun. Briefly and simply, haibun usually concerns a journey (often a spiritual journey, and can also concern a literal journey, or even a journey in one's mind). It's usually constructed with poetic prose paragraphs and haiku poems. Haibun can be composed of a single paragraph with a single haiku poem, or can be much longer work with several haibun paragraphs working with several haiku poems. (And haiku isn’t the only form of poetry used in haibun, but it is the most common form.)

Pam: I guess the best answer to this would be if a reader or editor is moved by the piece then it's a success. If the prose works in concert with the haiku, then it's a successful piece.

Another thing about haibun is that while it's still written as Basho wrote it long ago, it's also undergoing various changes as other writers take up writing in this style. Some modern pieces are highly experimental or hybrid pieces (such as some of the fascinating American haibun by Sheila Murphy and reading some of Jack Kerouac’s haibun in his Trip Trap… is quite a trip.) It's always interesting to see what various writers do with an older established form.

I'll quote Bruce Ross here where he says in How To Haiku, "If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience."

Pam: How about we take a look at a sample of Basho's haibun. He's renowned for the form and his work still has much to teach us moderns about writing these kinds of pieces A sample of Basho's classic Narrow Road to the Interior can
be viewed online at:

Pam: I teach it online once or twice a year (depending on what else I have going on). I usually limit participants to ten or so in order to devote as much attention to the course and participants as possible.

If a class is much larger than that, I can't give as much personal attention as I'd like so I keep it at ten. In the fast-paced four- week online course I begin by giving participants copies of a feature-length article I wrote on the history of haibun for Haiku 2000 (an anthology edited by Gerald England, in England, which includes various types of work-- haiku poems, haibun pieces, articles on various forms, etc.)

We also read a lot of haibun and read a lot about haibun. We do a lot of haibun analysis as well. And, of course, we write and critique our own haibun pieces. The four-week course is very interactive and we all work together in a closed-to-the- public online workshop. For some of the reading material I've arranged with some acclaimed authors of haibun to use their pieces for our analyses and for our enlightenment. Details on the haibun course can be viewed at

Pam: I'll state clearly that it's not for the faint of heart. It's a super active online course and runs for four weeks. I limit participants to ten (so I can devote my full attention to their work) and we do lots of reading, analyzing, writing, critiquing, and theory discussion. I also provide exercises and a lot of flash fiction markets, too. I totally immerse participants in the world of flash fiction. This course, like my haibun course, is very interactive. I'm right in the middle of teaching a course as we speak-- two more weeks to go.

The next one I'll teach will begin on Monday, August 13, 2007. Details on the flash fiction course can be viewed at

(The course fills quickly and has for the four or five years I’ve been teaching it. (I teach it a couple of times a year.)

Shalla: Lastly, any books, newsletters, blogs, etc/ on writing successful flash fiction and haibun you would recommend?

Pam: Well, I do recommend my Flash Fiction Flash newsletter. It's free, published monthly, and is sent through a distribution list via email.

Each month it includes flash literature markets, contests, and publishing announcements (for short-short stories, prose poetry, creative nonfiction, haibun, flash memoirs, flash plays-- all work 1, 500 words or fewer).

John Young writes a Featured Market column for the newsletter each month and he goes into specifics about what a particular editor or publisher is looking for. His monthly Featured Market article is always very helpful. Your readers can subscribe to the free newsletter by sending a blank email message to FlashFictionFlash-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If your readers are looking for a good critique workshop for flash fiction, I recommend my FlashFiction-W. It has a waiting list but I add new members whenever there's a spot open. (I limit the number of workshop participants to 70 or so.) To get on the waiting list for that group, send an email message to listserv@listserv.uta.edu and in *both* the subject header and in the body of the message write only this: Subscribe FlashFiction-W joejones@whatever.net Joe Jones (using your own email address and name, of course). That workshop has been going strong for nearly ten years now and we always have fine writers and critiquers willing to work with the group. Sometimes there are as many as fifty messages per day... all on topic. (I run a very tight ship.)

Your readers might also be interested in another article I wrote on flash fiction that's online at Writing World:

As far as book go, as far as reading some good flash/ sudden fiction, and reading good pieces can be the best “how to” manual of all, I'd recommend any of the Sudden Fiction anthologies (Sudden Fiction American, Continued, International, all edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas).

These editors also have a new one out, released earlier this year, titled New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. And I’d highly recommend Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka). And the newly released Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories (edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard). Oh, and one more: Micro Fiction: An Anthology of *Really* Short Stories (edited by Jerome Stern). And Sudden Fiction: The Mammoth Book of Miniscule Fiction (edited by Dinty W. Moore). There are so many excellent anthologies out there! And some great
author collections of flash fiction as well.

Pam: Thank you, Shalla, for inviting me. I'm honored and I've enjoyed telling your readers about flash fiction. You’ve been a pleasure to work with and I love what you’re doing with Shalla Magazine. Now back to work for me on my article and on my current flash fiction course! (And back to work on my “how to write flash fiction” book, which I hope I’ll be able to send off for publishing consideration one day soon.)

Shalla DeGuzman's short stories have appeared in Poetic Diversity, the Mosaic Literary Journal, the Mad Hatters Review; her articles in The Scriptorium and L.A. Freepress; her skits at the Stella Adler Theatre.

Shalla, a former writer and producer of a health and fitness cable show, is currently writing a new novel. She is President of The ShallaDeGuzman Writers Group; the Senior Editor of SHALLA Magazine where she interviews literary agents, publishers, editors, and authors; and the Publisher for SHALLA Publishing.

News!

Shalla has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

SHALLA Magazine, which features short stories and excerpts from top, award-winning writers, now sold at www.amazon.com!

For more on Shalla: www.shalladeguzman.com