What if everything you've been told about flash is wrong? Today's writing industry often emphasizes the importance of flash taking place in a single, emotional moment — but what if flash stories could contain multitudes? What if flash fiction could be as spacious and as stretching as the short story or even the novel itself? In this session, join author Terena Elizabeth Bell as she dismisses the "cannots" and looks at flash's "cans." Once called the short-short or short-short story, amazing flash fiction expands and contracts — just like the universe each story is meant to hold. Join us at the place where flash's only true constraint is word length.

Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit, 2022), was named one of the “best books of the century (so far)” by New York Society Library. The title story was a New York Foundation for the Arts grant winner and another from the collection has been optioned to become a feature film. Fiction has won grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Center for the Arts, as well as been shortlisted for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival international writing prize. Short stories, poetry, and journalism work have appeared in more than 100 publications internationally, including The Atlantic, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Playboy, and The Guardian.