This event is now open for registration and closes on August 12, 2026.
How do you write in response to the world in real time? Join writer Cate McGowan for a 90-minute virtual workshop on flash fiction and urgency: how we tap into fear, noise, dread, anger, and absurdity, and turn all of that pressure into prose.
This event is part craft conversation, part generative writing session, part Q&A. Cate will discuss writing flash fiction in response to today’s climate — how we turn politics, headlines, and private fears into narratives — and guide participants through a generative writing session built from what won’t leave us alone. You’ll have space to write, and, if you want, share your work in a supportive space. There will also be a dedicated Q&A to ask Cate questions about writing and publishing today.
You’ll leave with a draft, or the beginning of one, and a clearer sense of how to write inside this moment. This workshop is open to all writers, regardless of experience or publication history.
Registration costs $20. You can register here through Stripe. The event Zoom link will be sent in your confirmation email. A recording of the event will be distributed to all registrants, so we encourage you to sign up even if you’re unable to attend the night of the event.
Date: Thursday, August 13, 2026
Time: 7 PM ET / 4 PM PT
Location: Zoom
See you there!
Who we are
Cate McGowan (she/her) is the author of Sacrificial Steel (Driftwood Press, 2025), winner of the Driftwood Editors’ Pick Poetry Prize; Writing Is Revision (Brill, 2025); the novel These Lowly Objects; and the story collection True Places Never Are, winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and a finalist for the Lascaux Prize. Her work appears in Flash Fiction International (W. W. Norton), Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, North American Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Trampset, and elsewhere. She writes across genres, often drawn to desire, grief, anger, and the pressure they put on language. A Georgia native, she teaches writing and literature in Florida, where she lives with her husband and pets.
Rebecca Paredes (she/her) is the editor-in-chief of Glossy Planet and your facilitator for this event. She is a writer from Southern California by way of Lake Elsinore, where the IHOP is located next to the graveyard. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Epiphany Magazine, Barren Magazine, Hunger Mountain Review, and other publications. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Texas Tech University and is currently working on a novel inspired by her hometown and Mexican magic.