Students celebrate their writing at the first-ever Flash Fiction Slam

On Friday, five students from various majors performed their original short stories at TMU’s first Flash Fiction Slam, held in the Powell Library. The event was hosted by Dr. Bob Dickson, chair of the communication department and associate professor of communication, and consisted of contributions by Tiffany Lucero, Peter Bakhmutskiy, Janie Dean, Bruno Araiza and Emma McKinney.

McKinney won the slam with her piece “BJ,” a poignant story about a robot’s functions and feelings, and received a cash prize of $75. Lucero took second place, receiving $50, with “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” a short piece that explored themes of loss and loyalty. The results were determined by the audience who voted for their two favorites by ballot after the stories were read.

The Flash Fiction Slam was the first creative writing event where an online student joined a local competition—McKinney, who won, studies creative writing online and heard about the slam through her professor, Dickson.

“We live in the San Ferando Valley, but we’re both online,” said Katherine, McKinney’s sister who came to watch the performance.

The process of preparing, performing, and then getting to sit back and hear from other students is hard to come by as an online student, and the Flash Fiction Slam was the perfect opportunity to find other likeminded writers.

“I think it’s a great experience, it’s great practice,” Katherine said. “I’m used to hearing Emma’s writing, but it’s so nice to hear other writers.”

For Lucero, majoring in cinema and digital arts, writing stories has been a part of her life for years—and entering a flash fiction competition was both new and at the same time familiar ground. Also the runner-up in the FA ’24 annual Poetry Slam, Lucero remarked that she gained the confidence from that success to submit her work for the Flash Fiction Slam.

“I wanted to write something more like a story because I do want to be a screenwriter,” Lucero said. “So I was hoping maybe I could see how far I could go here. I wasn’t even really sure if I could make a submission. But I tried to do one as quick as I could, I went back to an old prompt that I had left unfinished, and I took advantage of the flash fiction slam to finish it.”

The rushed nature of her submission led Lucero to feel that her submission wasn’t her “best work.” At the same time, she remarked, she was simply glad she could submit something.

“For me, I want to make sure I keep writing, even if I know it’s bad, because then I can get better,” Lucero said. “And I’m glad people really like my story. I’m trying not to be rigid on this perfectionist point of view, but also I know my capabilities… and I want to keep going and expanding on that.”

For Lucero, the fact that people liked her work now is encouraging, because the hope is that with more time and effort, her writing will only get better.

“I really hope there’s more events like this,” Lucero said. “There are a lot of good writers as well as good artists in general around campus, and I don’t think we see a lot of art on the campus side other than theater and some of the cinema stuff. We need more of it, and so it’s really nice when we can have events like these.”

Abigail Garwood, an interdisciplinary student in the audience, agreed with Lucero about the value of getting to see other students’ work and the opportunity to share with one another.

“I think it’s really cool because you get to see the creativity of the people around you and you’d never know about it otherwise,” Garwood said. “I think for a lot of folks, if they’re not in your major or in your classes, you might never hear them.”

Speaking to the art form of flash fiction, Garwood observed that it presents a unique challenge to tell a story with a significant punch within the limit of 750 words.

“You can say a lot with a few words, especially in a story,” Garwood said, commenting on McKinney’s winning piece. “I’ve never really felt emotionally attached to a robot before, but I could feel like how much it would hurt to be replaced and not even know.”

The variety of pieces stood out to Garwood as a benefit to the event. Some were in the fantasy genre, others historical fiction or more satirical in nature.

“The main guidelines are that it needs to be pretty short… and then that it needs to be fiction,” Garwood noted. “That opens so many possibilities. You could do historical fiction. You could write a really moving, emotional piece or you could write a little short, funny thing. There’s just so many wonderful routes you can go.”

Garwood hopes to come again to the Flash Fiction Slam.

“I hope maybe to even contribute—I think that’d be fun,” she said. “I have a short story that I thought about submitting, but I forgot. I would love to maybe do it in the future and to hear more.”

Lucero joined Garwood in her desire to see more students participate.

“I know that the only reason why there has been so little this year is because it’s such a new thing, it’s like foreign territory,” Lucero said.

To Lucero, students can only benefit from submitting their pieces and getting the chance to share them. Not only is it fun, it also helps students grow and stretch themselves in a friendly environment.

“It’s really nice to have these things happening at school because the real world is kind of harsh,” Lucero said. “But it’s really nice to push yourself harder on building skills like these. And it’s prepping you for the real world too. I really hope that more people will be able to participate in events like this.”