Beauty and Compression: The Art of the Micro Story: Join Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman, two masters of the form, for a reading from their new micro collections and a lively discussion of this very dynamic genre. With Q&A. This program is hybrid: attend in person in the Mayer Room (no registration required) or register in advance for a Zoom invitation here.

MEG POKRASS is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies of flash including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; and hundreds of literary journals including New England Review, Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review, New England Review, Split Lip and Passages North. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in late 2024. Meg is the Founding Editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series.

JEFF FRIEDMAN’s tenth collection, Ashes in Paradise, was recently published by Madhat Press. Friedman’s poems and prose pieces have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Poetry International, Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Fiction International, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom and The New Republic, and Best Microfiction 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards and prizes. His new book Broken Signals will be published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024.

View a video trailer for Broken Signals here.