HippoCamp Minis: CRAFT – 5 CNF Writing Topics in a Flash (2026)

When we write creative nonfiction, there’s the story we want to tell and then there’s the story beneath the story. That’s where subtext comes in. Subtext is the underlying meaning that gives our writing depth and texture, the unspoken clues and suggestions that allow our readers to connect the dots. In this flash session, we will explore how writers can use word choice, detail, blank space and other tools to strengthen themes, connotation and nuance. You will learn to:

• create layers using word choice, detail and blank space
• strengthen themes, connotation and nuance
• find balance between clarity and subtlety

About the Speaker: Wendy Fontaine is the flash editor at Hippocampus Magazine. Her work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pithead Chapel, Hippocampus Magazine, Longridge Review, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Reads, Sweet Lit and Yemassee. She has received nonfiction prizes from Identity Theory, Hunger Mountain and Tiferet Journal, as well as nominations to the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies. A native New Englander, she currently resides in southern California with her daughter and husband.

Editors are said to have a keen eye, but what happens when you want to use their skills before you submit your work?

In this talk focused on editing for writers, Hippocampus contributor Marissa Gallerani will share her tips and tricks to polishing your pieces before submission. The session will:

• review the importance of editing and explore how editing can improve a piece
• provide tangible tips that writers can implement with their own work
• define different editing strategies for fiction and non-fiction pieces alike
• share how to be your own best editor when no one else is around

Attendees will leave feeling more confident about their own editing skills, and with practical tips to use for their short and longform writing.

About the Speaker: Marissa Gallerani is a queer and disabled writer, living and working in Providence, RI. She holds a MFA from the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University, and has had featured publications in Hippocampus, Write or Die, and The Harvard Review Online, among others. She has taught at Salve Regina University, the New England Institute of Technology, Write or Die, and has courses forthcoming this year with Elegant Literature.

Marissa writes The Chaotic Reader newsletter on Substack, where she details the life of a working writer by interviewing authors, and analyzes literature through the lens of political science. A book club dropout who loves fantasy the most, she will read anything and knows that reading books and buying books are two separate hobbies.

Writing poses numerous challenges for people with ADHD, and much of the problem stems from trying to follow advice that’s intended for neurotypical people. In this flash session you’ll learn to:

• understand how conventional wisdom and writing advice can hinder rather than help neurodivergent writers
• work with your ADHD brain instead of against it
• recognize the roadblocks ADHD builds and overcome or work around them
• harness those aspects of ADHD that boost creativity

About the Speaker: B.K. (Kate) Jackson is an author; a developmental editor and certified book coach; and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, SurvivorLit, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA.

Kate is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship, and founder and editor of Severance (severancemag.com), a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She’s revising a memoir about maternal abandonment and family secrets. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. Find her at www.bkjacksonwriter.com and creativelyadhd.substack.com.

When writers hit the wall, or otherwise burn out, they may stare at the blinking cursor, give up, and walk away. What if you took yourself on a (focused) field trip, instead? This session is aimed at delving into the physical archives, items, and places of your story. Hippocampus Magazine interviewer Leslie Lindsay shares tips from her research in writing a blended memoir about her Kentucky-born great-grandmother, Cora Bell. These tips, insights, and ‘prompts using props,’ will help you get deeper into your character, your story, and allow your intuition to surface. This session will:

• cover what to research in person using found objects, maps, photographs. (hint: you’ll get into story/character if you leave your desk and go out into the world)
• offer tips on allowing the subconscious to ‘do its thing’
• explore how certain ‘found objects’ can act as a touchpoint on your writing desk, and/or show up as a motif in your work

Attendees will leave with ideas to revise existing (or create new!) material or deepen current work, including historical fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poetry.

About the speaker: Leslie A. Lindsay is the author of Speaking of Apraxia: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech. She has contributed to the anthology, Becoming Real: Women Reclaim the Power of the Imagined Through Speculative Nonfiction. Leslie’s essays, reviews, poetry, photography, and interviews have appeared in The Millions, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, LitHub, and On the Seawall, among others. She holds a BSN from the University of Missouri-Columbia, is a former Mayo Clinic child/adolescent psychiatric RN,and an alumna of Kenyon Writer’s Workshop. Her work has been supported by Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center and  nominated for Best American Short Fiction.

What if the skills that make you a better writer could also make medicine more compassionate? Narrative medicine trains healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers, educators, and others to read and respond to the stories that surround illness and healing,   often using the very tools you already bring to creative nonfiction. In this session, Renée K. Nicholson explores where narrative medicine and creative nonfiction meet, and why that intersection matters. This session will:

• introduce narrative medicine and examine how close reading and reflective writing function as tools for witness and understanding
• explore how creative nonfiction writers are uniquely positioned to contribute to this growing field
• consider how narrative medicine’s core questions can deepen and expand your own work on the page

About the Speaker: Renée K. Nicholson is a writer working across poetry, essays, fiction, and criticism. She holds a BA from Butler University, an MFA from West Virginia University, and a certificate in narrative medicine from Columbia University. The author of six books, including the poetry collection FEVERDREAM, the memoir-in-essays FIERCE AND DELICATE and a début novel under contract, her work has appeared in over 100 publications, among them The Gettysburg Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and River Teeth. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and a 2026 Artist-in-Residence at the Château d’Orquevaux in France, she left academia in 2024 to write full time and lives in Morgantown, West Virginia.