# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Los Angeles Review of Books is gathering this May to honor Mike Davis's legacy-a wide open party to combat isolation and to celebrate his optimism of the spirit. Beginning with walking tours of the radical history of Silverlake, these tours will be led by writers and activists who carry the spirit of Mike Davis. The tours will begin and end at The Black Cat, where one of the first organized demonstrations of gay rights took place, and where we will raise our glasses to remember Mike Davis. We invite activists, students, poets and dreamers to share soapbox toasts to Mike Davis (with or without alcohol). This raucous event will be the beginning of a longer project that continues in the spirit of Mike's imagination.

Author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Planet of Slums, and much more, Mike Davis passed away in October 2022. His work was dedicated to exposing the social, political, and economic frictions of the world, and in particular those of Los Angeles. In Set The Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, Davis's movement history of Los Angeles co-authored with Jon Wiener, there are beautiful chapters about community in the city, about the Watts Renaissance and Wattstax and the free papers and coffeehouses. There are glorious pictures of young activists together-marching, protesting, and hanging out.

In the city that Mike both raged against and loved, we're having a party in his honor. We want to bring alive his vision of being together, densely, such that we might both live well and protect green spaces outside the city walls.

Davis's work made a shared history of hope and solidarity visible, even in the face of destruction and suffering. Often, the histories of pirate radio stations, the bike collectives, writing workshops, theater groups, art centers, and poetry readings are handed down only orally. We want to use this moment to launch a repository for representations of radical histories and places, resting on the foundation that Davis laid. In his own words in The Guardian in 2022, that's where the people's power lies in Los Angeles:

"What keeps us going, ultimately, is our love for each other, and our refusal to bow our heads, to accept the verdict, however all-powerful it seems. It's what ordinary people have to do. You have to love each other. You have to defend each other. You have to fight."

It's only together that we build the ark.

RSVP today with details on walking tours to come.

This event is free and open to the public.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Los Angeles Review of Books is a magazine and nonprofit dedicated to rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts.

# data[].attributes.body
Our goal last session was to try to write as many Dribbles as life allowed:

1. How did this effort go?
2. How often were you able to write?
3. What were your challenges to write?
4. Did you notice anything about your writing sessions?

# data[].attributes.body
A video tutorial on how to navigate this Padlet Page

# data[].attributes.body
The workshop is scheduled for alternating Saturdays, 4/15, 4/29, 5/13, 5/27, and 6/10/23, from 10:00 AM-12:00 PM PT, on Zoom.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms. Founded in 2011, Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done. Zoom is a publicly traded company headquartered in San Jose, CA.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The first time I heard the word drabble, I was on Tumblr.

It wasn't totally surprising; this is back when I was very actively writing fan-fiction, and my mutuals were all fans of the shows and books I was into. If you're a part of the fic community, you'll know that sometimes people will write to you and request work based on a prompt, theme, or even something as vague as "angst with a happy ending."

When a writer I really admired announced that they were doing a 30-day drabble challenge, I was confused. They were kind enough to explain to me that they were challenging themselves to write a 100-word story every day that month.

Simply put, a drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

While all micro fiction (and nonfiction!) focuses on brevity, an author is really challenged by the drabble. Not only do you have to tell a story, but you have to do it quickly, barely letting the reader get their feet wet before they're back on the shore. It requires a lot of skill, patience, and-in my experience-editing to get a drabble of high quality out of a story idea.

The term itself is said to come from Monty Python's 1971 Big Red Book, which describes a game called Drabble where players compete to write a novel. In the 1980s, the Birmingham University SF society is credited for setting the story's length at 100 words.

The following have come out of the drabble:

Dribble: A story of 55 words

Double drabble: A story of 200 words

Trabble: A story of 300 words

Pentadrabble: A story of 500 words

The term drabble is used more loosely now than it has been in the past; for many writers, it means a very short story, regardless of length, or a story that they've written very quickly and don't take seriously. However, many still take the drabble form seriously, like 100 word story, the online literary journal dedicated to showcasing the best drabbles out there.

Click to continue.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The first time I heard the word drabble, I was on Tumblr. It wasn't totally surprising; this is back when I was very actively writing fan-fiction, and my mutuals were all fans of the shows and books I was into.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Drabble story telling - writing 100-word flash-fiction - is said to have been conceived by Rob Meades, David B. Wake and the UK Science Fiction Society at Birmingham University in the early 1980s.

The style of writing was inspired by Monty Python in their Big Red Book (1971), which describes a word game. The participants gathered around a fire, sipping brandy and partaking of pleasant conversation with friends and challenge each other to write a novel. The first to finish wins.

The first game of "Drabble" occurred much earlier and was played at the beginning of the last century. The winner was Mary Shelley with Frankenstein and Polidori, who didn't actually finish during that stormy weekend, came second with The Vampyre.

In order to make the game possible in the real world, the members of the UK SF Society agreed that 100-words would suffice. However, they we're students so probably didn't have a fire, and certainly wouldn't be able to afford brandy, though I'm sure there was plenty of "pleasant conversation with friends".

Those first games run by the Society became so popular that on April Fool's Day 1988, Rob and David, with Roger Robinson of Beccon Publications, published a book of drabbles, entitled "The Drabble Project", containing one hundred stories, each of exactly one hundred words, and costing one hundred shillings - it was largely SF based and won the British National Science Fiction Convention award in the category of Best Short Text.

They went on to publish two more Drabble books, each with a limited run of just 1000 copies each:

The Drabble Project (1988)

Drabble II: Double Century (1990)

Drabble Who? (1993)

The three books contain stories written by such notable authors as: Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian W. Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Stephen Baxter, Bruce Sterling, and Isaac Asimov.

Rob Meades website contains some great examples by Terry Pratchett, Ray Girvan, Mike Ibeji, Alice Kohler, David Langford, and James Steel.

Throughout much of the 1990's and 2000's Drabble writing seems to have all but vanished from the public eye until;

2011 - Wilfrid Laurier University launch a literary competition called 100 Words Centennial Drabble Contest.

2012 - Book Hippo (formerly Indie Book Bargains), began running a Daily Drabble feature in their newsletter.

March 2013 - Michael Brookes introduces the Elite: Dangerous community to the Drabble, kickstarting the Abraka Drabble weekly contest.

July 2013 - Drablr.com launches.

Since then we've seen numerous Drabble books published by various authors ( a few of our own drablrs have released books too) and on 9th - 15th November, 2015, Michael Brookes will be running the Festival of Drabbles; a week long celebration of drabbles and the art of drabble writing including some of the finest drabblists in the world.

Thirty years after the "invention" of the Drabble, the art of 100-word flash-fiction writing is still going strong.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Drabble story telling - writing 100-word flash-fiction - is said to have been conceived by Rob Meades, David B. Wake and the UK Science Fiction Society at Birmingham University in the early 1980s. The style of writing was inspired by Monty Python in their Big Red Book (1971), which describes a word game.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Drabble flash fiction story-telling has been around since the 1980's, but the resurgence that started in 2013 has seen them take off in a big way. Mix that in with the rise of self-publishing and I guess it was inevitable that we'd start seeing drabble book compilations appear.

There's a few drabble books around but on this page I'd like to showcase those books released by our very own drablrs.

If you own an Amazon Kindle then please support our authors by following the links* below and go buy their drabble books.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Drabble flash fiction story-telling has been around since the 1980's, but the resurgence that started in 2013 has seen them take off in a big way. Mix that in with the rise of self-publishing and I guess it was inevitable that we'd start seeing drabble book compilations appear.

# data[].attributes.body
This week we worked with the Drablle form...using 100 words to tell a story whether it is fiction or non-fiction. I challenge you to try to freewrite journal daily as well as as a Dribble and drabble when you can...bring the Drabbles to our next session and we will build on this concept in the fourth session.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is a site to find Drabbles and to publish Drabbles...a lovely Drabble Community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Drablr: streaming Drabbles 100 words at a time. Follow your favourite authors, and discover more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Year of Picture Prompts: Over 160 Images to Inspire Writing (Published 2017)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These short, accessible, image-driven posts feature photographs and illustrations from The Times, and invite a variety of written or spoken responses.