The Art of the Short Story

Curious about creative writing and don’t know where to start? Seasoned story writer looking to shake off the rust or gain new perspectives? Just love stories and think it looks fun and challenging to make one? Come write with Ty at Shelf Life Books!

This 4-week class will closely read professionally published short stories, discuss craft questions about setting, character, and point of view, and generate a short story draft using a variety of generative exercises and exploratory prompts. Participants can also have their story critiqued in a supportive and empathetic workshop if they so choose. 

Four Tuesday night sessions: 9/8, 9/15, 9/22, and 9/29. 6-8 pm, upstairs.

Come sit around the table, make friends, and share in one of humanity’s oldest and most powerful methods of meaning-making. Leave with a draft, a revision plan, and a little momentum and community on your creative journey.

Ty Phelps’ work can be found at Poets.org, Poet Lore, Streetlight, Zizzle, and elsewhere. He won the 2022 Nancy Ludmerer Flash Fiction Fellowship and Virginia Commonwealth University’s 2019 Catherine and Joan Byrne Poetry Prize. He holds an MFA from VCU, and served as the 2021–22 Cabell First Novelist Award Fellow and as the 2023–24 Writer-in-Residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. He is a co-founder of the Flying South Reading Series, assists with Richmond Poetry Fest, and is currently finishing a fantasy novel and a short story collection. He is the Program Director for James River Writers, and plays drums for two Richmond bands: Jojo & the Kick Its, and Summer School.