The Concept

Iota: the conference of short prose, August 22-25, 2013

Iota celebrates and inspires an economy of words in a largesse of place. Spend this time with skilled faculty and a community of writers focused on short forms. Iota’s emphasis is generative: create new work while you’re here. Write in the morning, attend workshops and community discussions in the afternoon. The learning continues after the workshops, as Iota’s classrooms encompass the great, natural beauty of Maine’s Bold Coast and Campobello Island.

Iota pushes the boundaries between prose and verse. What makes a piece a prose poem and not an essay? What keeps a short story from being written in verse? Many writers linger near the borders that separate these forms. Iota crosses borders too, as the conference is located on Passamaquoddy Bay, which lies between the US and Canada. Come put a foot on each shore.

"The miniature is mysterious," writes Lia Purpura. In a world in which heft rules the day, Iota serves as a celebration of the small, the brief, the miniature. Short essays, flash fiction, short stories, personal narratives, and poems - short forms are worthy of a long weekend. Our faculty will guide participants through the crafting of short forms. Is a micro essay really a prose poem? Is a prose poem really a piece of flash fiction? Prepare to challenge your own assumptions.

"The short personal essay-pensee, epiphany-which keeps exposition to a minimum, and puts a high premium on compression, association, and rhythmic precision, is kin to both prose-poem and lyric poem," writes renowned essayist and Iota faculty member Sven Birkerts.

Iota is co-sponsored by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.

To apply to Iota: the Conference of Short Prose, click here.