WRITE ON: Secrets To Crafting Better Stories

by Kathy Flann, Virtual Voice (Narrator)

STAY THIRSTY PRESS PROUDLY WRITE ON.Does your story refuse to begin, refuse to end, or refuse to fulfill its potential? WRITE ON provides guidance for rethinking your approach to writing fiction and nonfiction. With decades of experience teaching at the college level and at over 35 writing conferences, award-winning author Kathy Flann provides illuminating insights and suggestions that every new writer needs, with topics Characters Reign Supreme; The Ticking Clock; Suspense vs. Confusion; Moments That Communicate Real Emotion; The Craft of Dialogue; Betraying the Reader; Importance of Voice in Memoir; and, Should Writers Teach. Perfect for those seeking to become successful, published authors.Kathy Flann’s first short story collection, Smoky Ordinary, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. A second collection, Get a Grip, received the George Garrett Fiction Prize and was published by Texas Review Press. Get a Grip won the short story category of The Best Book Awards, The International Book Award, and the National Indie Excellence Award. Her short stories have appeared in more than 25 journals and anthologies, such as Shenandoah, The North American Review, Blackbird, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and New Stories from the South. A new humor book is forthcoming in 2021 from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.For five years, Flann served as a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of creative writing at the University of Cumbria in England. During that time, she also created mini-courses for the BBC's Get Writing website and served on the board of the National Association of Writers in Education. After a move to Baltimore, Maryland, she taught creative writing at Goucher College for many years and later at Johns Hopkins University.Flann has taught at writing conferences, and she has given around 40 readings of her own work at bookstores and festivals in just the past few years. Her advice column for aspiring writers appears regularly in Stay Thirsty Magazine. In addition, she wrote a column about teaching writing for the UK’s Writing in Education for many years. She’s been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin a Nef in France, and she has received grants from the Maryland Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts.

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Published November 22, 2025

About the author

Kathy Flann's stories and essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The North American Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and other publications. A short story collection, Smoky Ordinary, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. A collection of short stories, Get a Grip, was recipient of the George Garrett Fiction Prize, and was published by Texas Review Press. She is also the author of Write On: Secrets to Crafting Better Stories.

For five years, Flann taught creative writing at the University of Cumbria in England, where she created mini-courses for the BBC's Get Writing website and served on the board of the National Association of Writers in Education.

She's been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin a Nef in France. She has received grants from the Maryland Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, and also received a Baker Artist Award for the Literary Arts.

She loves dogs.