Fiction. The stories in this book are all 350 words or less, give or take a few words. "There may be a difference between flash fiction and prose poems, but I believe the researchers still haven't found the genes that differentiate them"--Denise Duhamel. Bret Lott describes sudden stories, otherwise known as flash fiction, as "a moment stripped of everything to reveal truly, deeply, a matter of life and death." SUDDEN STORIES includes work by Molly Giles, Aimee Bender, Virgil Suarez, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Melanie Rae Thon.