Flash Essays as Fireworks

In our May issue of Brevity , fresh this week, Leslie Jill Patterson uses examples from Brenda Miller, Jenny Boully, Erin Murphy and other flash writers to explore how micro-essays are like “a single bloom that bursts then swells into meaning, unfolding while we read.”



Extending on her fireworks metaphor, Patterson writes:




Lately… I’m attracted to flash essays that act like ghosts —firework shells that contain multiple peonies that burst in layers, each subsequent flare seeming to appear from nowhere. How, I ask myself, do writers generate ghost narratives—a turn we didn’t see coming, an unexpected destination?




You can read more of Patterson’s analysis of essay endings that burst and swell and see examples of the effect here: Ghost: The Flash Ending That Appears from Nowhere