Mark your calendar for our 100-Word Microstory Contest — a free online writing competition for a variety of age groups. You don’t have to be an Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad — or even have participated in a flash writing contest before — to join in the fun. Just create a story in 100 words or less that uses one of two specific writing prompts. We will announce the writing prompts here on Monday, July 15, 2024, at 9 a.m. CDT.

Mark your calendar for our 100-Word Microstory Contest — a free online writing competition for a variety of age groups. You don’t have to be an Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad — or even have participated in a flash writing contest before — to join in the fun. Just create a story in 100 words or less that uses one of two specific writing prompts. We will announce the writing prompts here on Monday, July 15, 2024, at 9 a.m. CDT.

Anthony Varallo and Jared Joseph will read from their new fiction, What Did You Do Today? and Danny the Ambulance. Anthony Varallo will read from What Did You Do Today?, winner of the 2023 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. “There are few authors working in the flash form today who write with as much grace and mastery as Tony Varallo. Filled with humor and warmth, these beautiful and elegantly crafted stories give us powerful glimpses into the complex inner worlds of parents and...

Are you curious about the role of small presses in our contemporary literary landscape? Do you have questions about how they operate, who they’re for, and what they have to offer that the Big 5 don’t? (Hint: ongoing editorial relationships, collaborative marketing and design, and an affinity for the innovative and unusual.) Two editors and publishers from Rescue Press — Caryl Pagel and Daniel Khalastchi — will talk small press definitions, aesthetics, communities, and priorities alongside one of...