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Support the Muse

The Muse Writers Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and your tax-deductible donation will help us continue to grow and serve the Hampton Roads literary community, including offering scholarships and tuition help as well as through our outreach programs to youth, seniors, and the military community.

The Muse Writers Center celebrates creative writing and the literary arts throughout Hampton Roads, Virginia, the nation, and beyond. We offer in-person, online, and hybrid creative writing classes, workshops, and seminars in every genre (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, songwriting, and comic book writing, as well as craft and professional development) for beginning and experienced writers--whether they be adults, children, or teens. In our Norfolk literary center, we house a library and space for writers to work and meet. We host diverse and culturally relevant literary events, readings, open mics, and special events at The Muse, around the region, and online for every audience. We never turn anyone away from a class because of their financial situation and have provided tuition help and scholarships to more than 4,000 people. Our engaging and creative outreach to youth and schools, senior living communities, and the military community is always expanding.  More about us →

Our Students Say

I think the Muse is brilliant and that Norfolk/Hampton Roads is unbelievably fortunate to have this resource. And that I am beyond fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of it, for which I am incredibly grateful for the Muse’s generosity in allowing me to participate in spite of my current state of very limited income.

Coming around the Muse is the most ‘at home’ I’ve felt in a long time. So glad you all are around.

The Muse keeps me afloat, and is the best community I’ve ever found. Thank you.

The Muse is the place where I can open my mind and let my thoughts out, since I can’t do that anywhere else, like in school. It’s more of a creative place where there are other people like me, and I can share my opinions and views and get feedback as well. I have definitely improved my poetry, and also I have started getting into screenwriting, and the classes give me short story ideas. I want a career as a writer; I aspire to be a professional author and poet.

Thanks for creating an outlet and community for something I’ve always wanted to do. I especially appreciate the rigor that The Muse provides. I’m always impressed by the caliber of the instructors and my fellow students. Keep up the good work!

The Muse is an amazing place and the fact that it is available even when I can’t afford to pay speaks to the true support of writing and all creativity. It is a quality place, and I am learning so much.

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            Since 1958

Skagit Valley Writers Supporting Literary Creativity

Skagit Valley Writers is organized for the purpose of supporting literary creativity.

The goal of Skagit Valley Writers is to team with professionals to encourage writers of all genres and backgrounds to create quality literature, to provide education and opportunities for publication, through general meetings, and online services.

Skagit Valley Writers provides opportunities for the membership and the public to participate together in open mic events, outreach, collaborative sales events, and networking.

How to Join or Renew

Joining the Skagit Valley Writers has many benefits open to writers of all genres. We help to promote your finished works. Membership is just $25 per year. Pay online or mail your  Membership dues to: Skagit Valley Writers, P.O. Box 913, Mount Vernon, WA 98273. 

Authors whose work contains graphic sexuality, extreme violence, or gratuitous offensive language will not be considered for membership nor will such works be posted on the website. 

Supporting Literary Creativity

In 1958 six creative writing students from the Skagit Valley College—Molly Dawdle, Marilyn Johnson, Florence Logsdon, Gladys McCune, Junia Palmer, and Pat Talbert—formed a group to share their work, provide each other with constructive critiques, and exchange information about markets.They met once a month at Marilyn Johnson’s home. As word spread, other writers, including several men, joined the group, and they began meeting at the Mount Vernon Library. 

✨ New classes added! $100 off yearlongs and early bird discounts for a limited time! Member registration open now; general opens Friday 🌟

Creative writing classes for everyone.

Tell your story..

Creative Writing Classes and More

Explore the world of creative writing at Hugo House, Seattle’s non-profit literary arts center and home for writers. Whether you prefer the dynamic atmosphere of our in-person classes in Seattle or the flexibility of our online courses, Hugo House offers a diverse array of options to grow your writing skills. You’ll find sliding scale classes, creative writing workshops, writing craft classes, drop-in writing circles, asynchronous online classes, open mics, writing coaches, accountability help, and more. These programs are designed to support new and seasoned writers at all stages of the writing journey.

Meet other writers, finish your novel, complete your screenplay, polish your poetry, and rediscover your love for writing.

Sign up for a class and start writing the story only you can tell.

Registration for Fall 2024 creative writing classes opens on August 13th!

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Learn with us.

Whether you’re struggling to write your first poem or have a few novels under your belt, Hugo House offers classes, workshops, and other programs to help you achieve your writing goals. Our classes are taught by published writers who are also stellar teachers. Our students come from a variety of backgrounds and life experiences. What they all have in common: a love of words.

The Lightning & Its Source

Instructor: Brian Turner. Learn to weave science and the natural world into your poems and lyric essays. From the cosmic to the microscopic, from the physical to the metaphysical, we'll marry research and lyricism in this generative workshop. 

Upcoming Events

Works in progress (virtual), write with hugo house with alma garcía, write with hugo house with jeanine walker, works in progress (in-person), tara campbell reading & workshop – city of dancing gargoyles.

News & Insights

Leadership Transition at Hugo House

Jenne Hsien Patrick, 2023-24 Hugo Fellow Mid-Year Check In

Neena Viel, 2023-24 Hugo Fellow Mid-Year Check In

Celeste Chan, 2023-24 Hugo Fellow Mid-Year Check In

Adelle Dimitui, 2023-24 Hugo Fellow Mid-Year Check In

Featured free resource, open mic events.

Works in Progress is Hugo House’s semi-monthly writing open mic series inclusive of diverse formats. Read your work—poetry, fiction, essays, memoirs, plays, music, comedy, and more—and connect with your literary community.

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Gotham Writers Workshop

Gotham Writers Workshop is a creative home where writers develop their craft and come together in the spirit of discovery and fellowship. We’ve been teaching creative writing and business writing since 1993.

Gotham is now offering Online and Zoom (videoconference) classes.

Join us for a free Open House via Zoom videoconference on April 1 and 2.

• Scriptwriting
• Comedy, Poetry & Song
• Professional Development

The Art of Craft

We teach the craft of writing in a way that’s clear, practical, and inspiring. Explore our wide variety of courses for adults and teens, as well as our One-on-One options. New classes are starting all the time, in NYC, on Zoom, and asynchronously Online.

The Gotham Writers Children’s Lit Conference Sep 28-29

Two sharp stories each month—fiction and nonfiction. Presented with text, audio, and original art.

Enter the experience.

Scholarships for Writers of Color

Scholarships for Writers of Color are available to all people of color who aspire to improve their writing skills, either in the fields of creative writing or elsewhere.

Postcards from Summer Camp Contest

Summer camp is a setting that evokes heightened emotion. With that in mind, we invite you to submit a story about summer camp—with a twist.

How to Get Published

Here you will learn how to navigate the ins-and-outs of the publishing business and you’ll write (and refine) the most important selling tool for your book—the query letter. All under the guidance of an established literary agent.

Fall Classes

Fall classes are now available for enrollment , on Zoom, Online, and in NYC!

Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize

Every year, the Selected Shorts program at Symphony Space hosts the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Contest. The winner will have his or her work performed and recorded live at Symphony Space in NYC.

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Sign up for our email list to receive writing advice, news, and special deals. We promise to send you great content that enlightens and brightens your day.

Expert Teachers, Working Writers

A skilled teacher is the key to an exceptional class. Our teachers have been in the trenches, working daily at the craft of writing. They know the lay of the land. And they are equally adept at the fine art of teaching.

A Wealth of Resources

The tools needed to write are quite simple—pen and paper, or electronic device. But it’s useful to have advice and information within easy reach. We’ve put together all kinds of resources to guide your journey as a writer, including Gotham books.

The Gotham Experience

We believe everyone has a story to tell. And we like to help people tell their stories better. We’ve been practicing this philosophy for more than three decades, and it’s made us the leading private writing school in the world.

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Learn about The Writer's Center

America's oldest poetry magazine

Writing Workshops

The Writer’s Center offers hundreds of writing workshops and classes every year. Workshops cover all genres and all experience levels. Join us in person and online.

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event views navigation, august 2024, september 2024, creating novel characters.

When writing a novel, we must know our primary characters inside and out. We need to understand their desires, motivations, and frustrations, their histories and their futures. This workshop will focus on the development of authentic characters. Participants will examine character as both autonomous and residing within the context of the other novelistic elements, and we will examine the challenge of creating and integrating these various elements into a cohesive and credible whole. Participants will explore the main character(s) in their novels-in-progress.

Intro to the Novel

This workshop will help you understand the process of writing a novel so you can get started putting pen to paper. The workshop will focus on everything from generating ideas to developing characters to establishing point of view. Participants will discuss many elements of fiction (dialogue, scene, etc.) but the emphasis will be on discovering the writing process that works best for each writer.

Crafting Your Life into Story

Following a tried-and-true formula (“Once upon a time . . . . Then, one day . . .”), you will learn how to identify, begin, and structure an autobiographical story, whether fiction or non-fiction. Participants will finish the workshop with the plots of at least three new autobiographical works, a two-page beginning of a new essay, story, novel, or memoir, or a revised beginning of their work-in-progress. Participants should bring either paper and pen or a writing device.Part 1: Learn how to begin and structure your new work. Part 2 (two weeks later): Workshop the drafts (5 pages max.) of your new work.

$40 Pop Up! Getting Ready for Submission Season!

Many literary journals are about to open back up for submissions after their summer breaks, so now is the perfect time for a submission tune-up! For writers who are new […]

Publishing Your Op-ed

This workshop will help you sharpen and develop your viewpoint, learn how to structure an op-ed and and close the deal by making an effective pitch to editors.

How to Plot Like a Pro

You have a great idea for a story. Do you dive in and just begin writing, or start by drafting an outline? Are you a born planner or a writer who loves to discover stories organically (i.e., a pantser)? Understanding how to structure a well-conceived story around a main character and central conflict, while paying attention to pacing, can make the difference between a finished, publishable manuscript and an abandoned work-in-progress. Plotting provides a safety net that never robs the author of the joy of writing, and always reduces revision time. Think you can’t plot? Join us for this course, and we’ll show you how!

Building Suspense in Short Fiction

Creating suspense involves more than leaving questions unanswered; a lot of it has to do with dramatic irony. But hanging questions are a great entryway into building tension, as are using irony, temporality or the movement of time, and narrative delay. In this workshop, students will learn how to build and sustain tension, writing beyond a surprises similar to literary clickbait. Also, we’ll explore how the audience is as much a part of creating suspense as the writer.

Mastering the Three-Act Structure: Crafting Compelling Short Films and Plays

Unlock the secrets of the three-act structure to craft compelling short films and plays. In this three-day workshop, learn how to effectively structure your narrative with a focus on Setup, Confrontation, and Resolution, ensuring your story captures and holds the audience’s attention. Each day will focus on one element of the structure with interactive lessons, practical exercises, and group discussions to deepen your understanding and application of each narrative phase. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have begun to build skill in creating a well-structured short film or play for contests and submissions.

Reading Your Work Out Loud

Spend some time practicing and learning about the art of public speaking. This in-person coaching session will give you the opportunity to bring your voice– and self– to the words you’ve written. You’ll learn how to become a more genuine and effective communicator of your work, which will in turn fuel a more authentic writing process and outcome. You’ll leave the workshop with an experience of camaraderie, community, and a more deeply rooted sense of your creative and expressive self. Please have on hand a number of pieces you’d be comfortable sharing during the meeting. There will be a break; please also bring a snack and water.

Researching and Writing your Family History

Historian/biographer Ken Ackerman shows the nuts and bolts of investigating our family trees, going back generations. He will describe how to use archives, interviews, internet sources, family records, and memories and piece together a multigenerational story. The class is perfect for memoirists, biographers, or people interested to learn where they came from, or how to organize their family knowledge for children or grandchildren.

Landscape Poetry

Drawing inspiration from the natural beauty around us, this workshop offers participants an opportunity to take in nature and turn their observations into powerful and vivid poems. In this course, we’ll study examples of celebrated poems that effectively capture the wonder and beauty of nature. We’ll also discuss techniques such as metaphor, imagery, repetition, and sound as well as cover effective use of line breaks.

The Extreme Novelist

Can’t find the time/energy/inspiration to get your novel written? This popular course, developed by the author of the book by the same name, will help you complete a rough draft in just 8 weeks. Students receive the encouraging guidance of professional writing coach Kathryn Johnson. Each author will commit to an aggressive writing schedule and learn the tricks pros use to create a productive working environment and meet their deadlines, despite life’s distractions. Classes will include accountability and progress reports from each student, troubleshooting discussions, a brief lecture on some aspect of the fiction craft, and the opportunity to submit portions of the work-in-progress to the instructor for individual feedback and guidance. (Note: This is not a work-shopping course. Further information will be sent to registered students, in advance of the first class.)

Writing Song Lyrics

This course starts the participant on the practice of putting words together with music. Writing a song lyric requires matching syllables in words with melody notes to be sung in time over a rhythm. We all practice the results of the lyricist’s trade whenever we sing a song we know, but in this course we’ll look into how those choices are made, and get some practice at generating our own lyrics. There will be 30-45 minutes homework exercises between course meetings, and we will go over everyone’s results before moving on in the text (which is provided). By the end participants will have generated a lyric for a familiar existing song, and at least one lyric which can be set by a composer to produce a complete work.

Is Traditional Publishing Right for You?

Explore all the traditional publishing options available to you to determine if this publishing path is right for you. We begin by discussing our goals for publishing a book, then evaluate our assets. We then look at the traditional publishing paths (Big 5, medium, small press, academic) and discuss what you need to succeed on this path. We also look at resources for finding agents and publishers, which will be essential to landing a traditional book deal. By the end of the class, attendees will know what to expect if they pursue a traditional book publisher.

How to Write Micro Memoir

Write your life story as you lived it, one moment at a time. This interactive workshop teaches writers to distill a moment of change, conflict, contradiction, or mystery to its essence, so that the impact on the writer resonates profoundly with the reader. We will examine inspiring published examples to learn exactly how the writer moved and entertained us. Using the same tools with which we craft fiction, this workshop is an excellent learning environment for both genres. We’ll conclude with a review of where to publish.

Mapping Strategies for Story Structure

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for story structure. Let’s discuss a plan that is right for you. We’ll brainstorm the strengths and weaknesses of your specific story’s destination and the journey along the way. Is there a rich narrative and character arc, a strong point of entry, appropriate placement of flashbacks, a transformative and resonant ending, and will a reader care? We will play with maps, sketches, diagrams, and understand the importance of revising your initial plan as your story takes on a life of its own. Bring your specific idea for a short story, memoir, or novel.

The Survival Power of the Lyric Poem

Throughout the centuries, the lyric has had revelatory power evoked through both beauty and pain. When you’re in the middle of writing a poem that is fully inspired, it isn’t a poem at all, but a light in blindness, a splintered house in a whirlwind, with a gaping door, but you find your way through it. It is only afterwards that it becomes anything like a poem, when you’re telling it to yourself and to someone else. This workshop is open to all levels of poetry writers, all topics, with only one requirement: write from the heart, and nearly everything works, if only from the head, almost nothing works: it takes both.

Sonnet Crash Course

Guided by an award-winning and internationally published author of sonnets, villanelles, and other metrical poems, you’ll first read time-honored sonnets to see how and why they work. Next the class will write a group sonnet, and then — with or without shortcuts — you’ll start one of your own. You’ll leave with at least one new (draft) or improved sonnet, as well as insights about how writing poems in form can unlock deeper meaning and enhance everything you write.

Writing Creative Nonfiction

Over the course, we will be reading and writing in several sub-genres of creative nonfiction, including memoir, essay, literary journalism, and the epistolary form. The class focuses on generating new material, offering feedback to peers, revising pieces, and finally researching markets for the placement of work.

Crafting Fiction: Element by Element

By working through basic craft elements of fiction, participants will build a strong foundation for their writing–be it short stories or novels. This 7-week workshop will explore the elements of fiction one at a time and ask participants to practice these elements through in-class writing exercises. We will also read published fiction–a story per week–to see how experienced writers regularly employ these elements. You’ll leave the workshop prepared to write a wonderful work of fiction.

Writing From The Heart

This workshop is designed to inspire and encourage the participants to write what they have always longed to share. Each week participants will write from a prompt, share what they wrote, and bring to class the following week another piece to share. The class is designed for all writing levels and will explore a variety of genres include in poetry, memoirs, journaling and short stories.

Creative Plant Writing

Do you love plants? Do you like to read and write outside among plants? Together, we’ll explore place-based writing, nature writing, garden writing, narratives, and personal essays, but with a special focus on our personal relationships to plants. Plants are intelligent and diverse organisms that enrich our lives; they can also enerich our writing. In this class, we’ll discuss plant-focused examples of non-fiction writing, play with some prompts, learn relevant plant science and potentially take a brief sunset stroll (depending on weather) to nearby Elm Street Park to discuss and write about trees. The instructor will also bring cool plants to class to discuss. This workshop is for writers of all levels, whether you’re interested in nature journaling or infusing essays/fiction with ecocritical elements. Participants should bring a notebook to write. Your favorite transportable house plant are also encouraged to attend :)

Grant Writing for Nonprofit Administrators

Elevate your grant writing skills to secure essential funding for your arts, education or youth-serving nonprofit. In this two-day workshop, you will learn how to craft compelling and persuasive cases for support that resonate with grant funders. Day one will focus on identifying your organization’s unique strengths and needs, and how to clearly articulate them. Day two will dive into the nuts and bolts of writing a powerful narrative, including crafting impactful statements, presenting data effectively, and demonstrating your nonprofit’s impact.

Poetry for Prose Writers

This generative class will introduce basic poetic techniques and forms, offering concrete tools to take you from paragraph to verse. Each week we’ll read contemporary poets and learn from their use of lyricism and structure. We’ll brainstorm, practice, and play–exploring the sound and symbolism of language to tell our stories in this new (to us) genre! A gentle and tangible approach to poetry, both accessible and fun. Finish the course with six or more new poems in a variety of forms, as well as a new understanding of how to write and publish your work!

Publishing Your Book for Children

Having a children’s book published in today’s tough market may seem like an impossible dream. But, in reality, getting your book idea into shape and into print can hinge on just the right advice from a pro. Do you need an agent? Should you connect with an artist? What about self-publishing? In a DC-area exclusive one-session workshop, nationally-known author Peter Mandel will pass on the insider’s tips writers need to know in order to create a marketable first book and get it into the hands of exactly the right gatekeepers in the publishing world.

Your First (or Next) Novel

Writing a novel takes commitment, but it doesn’t need to be daunting. Learn how to generate a handful of plots to choose from, methods for effectively planning your story, and simple hacks for fine tuning your basic fiction skills. Students will initiate a flexible writing plan that will keep their writing flowing. This is a great half-day session for the beginning long-form fiction writer, or for the more experienced author in need of a quick strategy brush-up.

Advanced Personal Essay

This workshop is for writers who have a good understanding of what a personal essay is, are open to exploring further the many forms a personal essay can take, and are already working seriously in the genre. The focus will be participants’ writing, supplemented with assigned readings. Participants will workshop two essays (or drafts of the same essay, if they prefer). The class is designed for self-contained essays, not book-length memoirs. To be considered for admission, please submit an essay or excerpt of no more than five double-spaced pages to [email protected] by September 9. Note: No meeting on November 2.

Latine Heritage Through a Literary Lens

The Writer’s Center presents an informative and inspiring symposium addressing the subject of Latine heritage in literature and popular culture, offering free creative writing workshops followed by a panel discussion. […]

Turning Memories Into Transformational Stories

How have your ups and downs, wins and losses shaped your life? Whether you want to write privately or wish to publish, identifying the turning points and themes in your life is an important first step in memoir writing. In this workshop, participants will reflect on the transformational seasons in their lives and associate stories and themes to each one. We will explore the dynamics of character development and narrative arc, and learn techniques to capture universal meaning through personal experiences. You will come away with a timeline technique to uncover life themes and storylines, a bank of memories to serve as writing prompts, and tips for starting a memoir journaling practice.

Using Opposites to Attract

Our prime example will be what happens when poetry and science come together in a poem or how other opposites in a piece of writing create interest. We’ll also broaden the discussion to find ways for office workers writing documentation, memos, etc, to reignite their creative energy outside of the office. Proven prompts help spark the passion to write. This will be a positive space in a can’t-fail atmosphere. Your writing will be greeted with support and (often) applause from your workshop colleagues. Leave with a finished poem and a flash fiction piece—and the fun you had writing them. Bring your favorite writing instruments. If you have a poem or paragraph you love that makes you want to write, bring that too.

Getting Started with Creative Writing

A introduction to the fundamentals of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

October 2024

From idea to script: a beginner’s guide to screenwriting.

Discover how to translate your passion for screenwriting into actionable skills. Every week students will build on the foundations of story, structure, character arcs, the do’s and don’ts, industry standards, and the technical side of writing a script until they have a completed short screenplay that will be workshopped during the last weeks of class. We’ll start with one page scripts, build to a three-page script, and finally five to ten page scripts for the final workshop. Please come to class with a few ideas you’d like to use to create a final script.

Recommended, but not required reading: – Crafting Short Screenplays that Connect by Claudia Hunter Johnson – How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King – Story by Robert McKee – On Writing by Stephen King

In Preparation: Watch your favorite films and take notes, make a list of questions, and notice anything that stands out or doesn’t make sense to you. We’ll discuss in class.

The Haunting of Grief

In our six weeks together, we will also explore what remains lingering before, during, and after death: How does society view death, how does a community grieve, and how do we, as a collective, approach such a vulnerable topic? Throughout our time together, we will read poems from Victoria Chang, Eduardo C. Corral, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Ocean Vuong, Susan Nguyen, jj peña, and Yanyi, among others. We will discuss form, white space, imagery, the speaker’s voice, and ultimately, what is at risk in each poem.

5 Great Poets (Who Happen to Be Women)

Learn from 5 great American women poets! One outstanding poet will be featured in each class, and as we examine their work we will write 3 to 4 of our own poems, for a total of 15-20 poems during the course. We will share our work as we write it, and in the last class will workshop a few of the most promising pieces by each student. The poets we will learn from are Ada Limon, Linda Pastan, Natasha Trethewey, Denise Levertov, and Elizabeth Bishop—they will guide us with new and old forms, metaphor, voice, image, subject matter, and more.

Writing About Mental Health Topics in Fiction

Infuse mental health themes into your fiction with accuracy and intention! Examples from popular media will be reviewed so you can learn how to avoid cliches and dig deeper into what shapes people’s various experiences with mental health. Participants will develop a character outline based on psychological concepts and re-write a passage created by the instructor using psychologically-informed content.

Plotting Your Novel

Whether you are an organized planner or a writer who flies by the seat of their pants, a novel still needs structure. In this workshop, participants will study the architecture of a novel and devise plans for plotting their novels. Using the three-act structure as a map, we will explore the basic components of a novel’s plot.

How to Create Backstory and Flashbacks

Every character has a hidden history from before their story starts. Learn how to masterfully weave in details and experiences that enrich your characters and create believable motivation. Novelists, short story authors, and creative nonfiction writers will all benefit from these twin skills. You’ll see your writing grow in sophistication and depth.

Flash Fiction Workshop

What is flash fiction? How can you write it? Let’s use these five weeks to explore some new styles, write at least FIVE new stories, workshop them, and figure out where they go to be published! You’ll leave the workshop with five new stories and some ideas of where to send them! Textbook: Flash Fiction America 2023 (foreward by Danielle Evans).

Writing Vignettes

We will write short vignettes in narrative form, lyric form, and persona. A vignette is an episodic piece of writing describing a person or a moment in time. Generative writing exercises will be shaped by Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, as well as poems by artists Dionne Brand, Sarah Ghazal Ali, and Nikky Finney. Participants will leave with twenty vignettes about pivotal moments or years in history or the writer’s life.

My Life, One Story at a Time

The goal in this ‘Guided Autobiography’ workshop is to capture your life experiences in six short pieces of autobiographical writing (true stories) for those who will survive you—or for yourself later in life. Knowing that you are writing not for publication but to set the record straight (in your own mind, if nothing else) may liberate you, allowing you to frankly explore your life choices and experiences. Write a two-page (500-word max) story to bring to the first session, to read aloud, to introduce yourself to others in the group—about a turning point in your life, or a time when you made a choice that changed your life. The emphasis here is on storytelling— making yourself and important friends and family characters in your stories. There is no “literary critiquing”—so you can relax enough to tell your story frankly, and find your natural voice.

Intermediate Screenwriting Workshop

Discover how to translate your passion for screenwriting into actionable skills. We’ll build on the foundation of the intro class, “A Beginner’s Guide to Screenwriting,” but anyone who has a solid draft of a feature, sitcom, or episodic is welcome to join.

Every week students will build on the base of story, structure, character, and story arcs, the do’s and don’ts, industry standards, and the technical side of writing a script. We’ll spend the six weeks workshopping, so please come to class with a solid draft.

Writing Picture Books

Learn how to write a picture book from a successful author of thirty award-winning books for children. Each session will begin with a short discussion of an aspect of writing for children, including story openings and arcs, characterization, plot/pacing, rhythm/sound, and marketing. Suggested readings, prompts, and feedback on in-class writing will inspire and guide writers in the class. By the end of the workshop, participants should have written and/or revised part or all of a picture book and have a better sense of how to create one in the future. Feedback will be offered on in-class exercises only rather than workshopping writing done outside of class.

The Writer’s Life: Living, Thriving, Succeeding

In this workshop we’ll tackle the tough rarely-discussed issues of creativity, competition, finding your unique voice, success, community and getting paid. Please bring something to take notes on.

Creating Conflict & Tension

Strengthening the conflict in any type of fiction will bump up the tension and turn limp, ordinary fiction into an extraordinary tale that will keep readers turning pages. Whether you choose to write literary fiction, mysteries, family sagas, thrillers, historical fiction, sci-fi or fantasy—you can learn techniques for drawing readers into your tales through action, dialogue, setting details, and plot twists that make your work stand out from the crowd. Join us and leave with ideas to apply to your stories.

Freedom With Forms

Here’s an opportunity to shed any misconception that received forms are constricting. Inspired by Richard Moore’s “The Rule That Liberates,” we will do brief writing exercises that use the enchantment of meter and rhyme to liberate your deeper imagination. After exploring several traditional forms, we will experiment with creating improvised (nonce) forms. Participants may leave with at least one new draft poem and ideas for creating more.

Boot Camp for Writers

Classes begin with a short warm up exercise followed by a prompt for a longer piece. Participants will then focus on specifics like effective beginnings, creative prose, and strong conclusions. Participants will also learn how to avoid common grammatical and usage errors that can distract from their message. This workshop will focus on both craft and technique and is designed for participants of all backgrounds who are looking to take their writing endurance and skills to the next level. Participants will have the start of several narrative pieces by the end of the class.

Applying to Artist Residencies and Fellowships

Time to devise a stellar application for residencies, fellowships and more. With this stratagem, you’ll receive the initial set of skills and generative advice needed to help you navigate the world of competitive retreats and workshops. Learn from an instructor who’s attended more than 15 national and international residencies in the past 5 years, with more awarded. Her transferable skills will help you organize your applications, articulate your creative work and consider what opportunities are right for you. Come with questions and leave with answers and resources.

UnClogging Your Brain

Prompts will spark memories, characters, and places, turning them into poems, scenes, dialogues, and stories. During ‘UnClogging’ you will likely come up with an ‘idea’ that you feel compelled to expand on, or perhaps be re-inspired to continue an unfinished work later. Find new perspective and confidence!

Travel Writing for Fun and Profit

Ever wonder if your taste for interesting travel and off-the-beaten-track destinations could lead to publication — and maybe even a new career? Peter Mandel, a nationally-known adventure travel journalist for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and National Geographic Kids, will deliver the inside scoop on how to shape your own travel experiences into easy-to-compose blogs, posts, and articles that you can publish yourself—or sell to newspapers, magazines and websites. The author of ten books, Mandel will weave in instruction with slides of his most extreme travel assignments: surviving a coup in Ecuador, visiting a ‘city’ of penguins at the South Pole, fishing for piranha on Brazil’s Rio Negro, floating in the Goodyear Blimp, sailing on an Arctic icebreaker, camping in the African bush, and kayaking to the Statue of Liberty.

High-Octane Grammar

In this one-session workshop, Ken Ackerman shares his own secrets to get the most out of wordsmithing, using simple rules of grammar to energize your writing like a fine-tuned engine. This workshop includes a refresher on grammar essentials, strong verbs, and sharp sentences to make your writing sing.

Book Marketing on a Budget!

You’ve written – or are writing your book – now fight for it! In this workshop we’ll focus on dozens of book marketing tips, with a close eye on budgets. From book launches, social media, blogging and podcasting, to writing press releases, creating Amazon Author’s pages, and connecting with publicists, we’ll fill your head, and notebook with ideas; over 30 of them! If you think writing a book is exciting, wait until you feel the thrill of professionally promoting it!

Life Stories Intensive

Whether you want to write a memoir, blog, letter to your granddaughter, or use your own life as the basis for fiction, life story writing requires that we tell where we come from and who we are. Consider other people’s feelings without allowing this to censor your experience or keep you from writing. Learn to identify your story’s essence, the truth it reveals, and to engage the reader through fictional techniques. Participants will leave inspired to begin or improve a work-in-progress.

Persona Poems

Persona poems allow the poet to step into someone else’s shoes, or the shoes of an object, an animal, a force of nature. This workshop will play with persona poems by reading examples in class and then following the prompts provided! Participants can expect to write 3-4 drafts of poems.

Advanced Fiction Workshop

Deep reading and insightful questions are the hallmarks of this course. If you have previous workshop experience and are far along on your fiction journey, this 6-week workshop might be for you. The ideal class consists of writers who craft their own stories, are open to feedback, and read the work of others with a nurturing, supportive, and analytical eye. Participants in Advanced Fiction Workshop come in with a basic understanding of point of view, character, and narrative tension. We explore such questions as: Does your story hook readers in? Do your characters live and breathe? If this kind of active feedback sounds appealing, please apply by submitting the first fifteen pages (double-spaced, 12 pt. font) of a piece of fiction you’ve written to [email protected] by September 30, 2024. NOTE: Please do not register for the course prior to being accepted.

Writing Remarkable Characters in Short Fiction

This two-hour workshop will focus on creating remarkable point-of-view characters in your short fiction. It will include instructor insights, prompts, and time for the participants to write and share their work in a nurturing, generative workshop.

The Final Draft and Publishing

This course helps you workshop one stand alone piece of nonfiction until it’s polished and ready to be submitted to magazines. Focus will be on workshopping throughout the course, with a component on guiding you where and how to send them out, from researching the right journal to pitching editors. Yes your writing is good enough! Believe in it and gently be pushed to taking that next step.

Vulnerability in Personal Storytelling

Each of us has the power to look at our lived experiences to find meaning and wisdom that we can transform however we want: into art, into lifestyle, into legacy. In this workshop, you will learn how to view creative vulnerability as generosity, and how to offer up your humanity through story as a gift to yourself and others. We will address questions such as: How do I write about sensitive topics without doing harm to myself? How do I do my story justice? What techniques can I use? How do I turn a raw journal entry into a piece for publication? You will come away from this workshop with perspective on your unique storyteller type and how grasping it can build courage, as well as best practices for taking care of yourself as you do this. introspective work. On the first day, writers will receive instruction and start a rough draft of a personal story. On the second day, they will share their work and receive feedback.

Is Self-Publishing Right for You?

You have many options for publishing your work. Which one is best for you and your book? In this class we will explore self-publishing, hybrid, and alternative routes to publication: collaborating with a nonprofit and work-for-hire. We will set goals and evaluate the assets we bring to the publishing process to see how those affect available options for publishing. Attendees will walk away knowing what it takes to succeed in these varied and exciting routes to publication.

Show and Tell Intensive

A dynamic workshop on the single most important skill any writer can have. Skilled writers make readers feel and intuit precisely what they want them to by using the technique of showing writing. No other element of craft promises this immediacy and power to bring a work to life. This is how to make a flat passage sing, how to gain your readers’ trust and emotional participation. Through exploration of compelling published examples, exercises, lively discussion, and inspiring instruction, you will learn to elevate your stories to submission-quality prose.

Making Metaphor Work

This class will examine some of the more challenging and unusual metaphors that contemporary poets have used to bring their poems to life. We will discuss how to choose between simile and metaphor, how to control and extend an image, and how to avoid clichés and dead metaphors. There will be time to examine the effectiveness of the similes and metaphors that participants bring to class and to discuss what works and why.

Rock Creek Park: Your Wild Home

Class will start with a ramble through the northern floodplains of Rock Creek Park to observe natural phenomena with naturalist, author, and poet Melanie Choukas-Bradley. After an intermezzo to travel to The Writer’s Center, poet and popular poetry instructor Ann Quinn will lead the class in a poetry workshop in a room filled with art that evokes Rock Creek’s forests. Note: the class will begin at Rock Creek Park. Specific directions will be emailed to registrants.

Book Promotion Through Podcasting

Work with any publicist and they’ll tell you, “Want to get your book and your voice out there? Pay attention to podcasts!” In this workshop we’ll focus on how to prepare your pitch materials, how to get booked on podcasts, how to be a great guest, and even how to create your own podcast.

November 2024

Point of view and narrative voice.

Do the multitude of Point of View options elude you? We will look at everything from the first person point of view to the editorial omniscient, as well as some of the less traditional points of view, to help you choose the best voice to tell your story.

Intermediate Novel Writing: The 8 Cs

Are you serious about writing a novel but struggling? This intermediate course will examine the eight fundamental elements of the novel to help you find the strengths and weaknesses of your work-in-progress. From Concept to Conclusion, we will study the key components of a novel, with generative and evaluative exercises along the way. Written lessons, curated online resources, and targeted exercises (along with instructor and peer feedback) will help guide you as you continue to draft your novel. (Note: This course is a good follow-up to Tammy Greenwood’s Intro to the Novel workshop.)

Introduction to the Craft and Beauty of Poetry

This workshop is for writers looking to begin, or deepen, their exploration of poetry with a focus on craft. Each session is devoted to one aspect of craft—imagery, line, form, voice, etc.—and begins with a chance to share your work aloud (not workshop). Participants learn by discussing great poems, reading short, engaging chapters, and doing fun weekly assignments. One session will be devoted to revision, and one to workshop. Please bring a copy of The Poet’s Companion by Addonizio and Laux to the first class. Note: No meeting November 30.

Natural Meter Crash Course

Have you ever wondered how scanning the lines of your first draft can make for a better poem? Here’s an opportunity to improve your ear for meter—a major element of poetic prosody—and to fine-tune your understanding of how it works. Guided by an internationally published author of sonnets, villanelles, and other metrical poems, this one-day workshop includes scansion of well-known poems, writing exercises, and, if you like, close examination of a poem you’ve drafted prior to class. You’ll leave with new insights about improving the auditory qualities of all your poems and prose.

Novel 101: How to Craft the Story

Fans of fiction delight! If you’ve always wanted to create your own exciting novel then this is the class for you. The class offers the key concepts of plotting and pacing while delving into different genres. Beginners have the opportunity to share their works with the class while also building confidence in their craft. Short homework assignments will encourage practice outside of assigned class hours. Students will leave with an evolved sense of fiction and the tools necessary to continue writing their own story.

The Art of the Rewrite

The best writing is REwriting. In this session, you’ll learn practical ways to put your manuscript on a flab-burning diet so that your copy is tight, trim, and hot — and all without even having to step onto a treadmill.

Writing Picture Books II

You’ve drafted your picture book, what’s the next step? Learn to revise and polish your picture book manuscript before submitting to an agent or publisher. A widely published author and an acclaimed illustrator will lead discussions in pacing, page turns, storyboarding, and visually dramatic storytelling. During this hands-on workshop, writers will be editing their own manuscripts and enhancing their skills as picture book creators.Bring your questions and two double-spaced copies of a picture-book manuscript that you’ve revised. Workshop may most benefit those who have taken Writing Picture Books or another picture book class.

Writing From Memory

Memory is rarely objective truth, but it tells an important story that affects our identities and the legacy we pass down through generations. Work with an award-winning memoirist to understand different types of memory and how life stories are built from them. Examine examples of memoir to learn ways to translate memory fragments into a narrative on the page. Then participate in exercises to unlock distant memories and describe them using all five senses. Participants will come away with the beginning of a new piece and the tools to continue to write from memory.

Writing the Killer Query

If you want your novel to be traditionally published, sooner or later you will need to write a query letter and plot synopsis of your story. Learn how to develop an effective pitch for literary agents, the most effective ways to encapsulate your plot to create an effective showcase for your story, and where to find legitimate agents to represent you and your book. This instructor has submitted and sold dozens of novels to major publishers using these same techniques.

Writing Compelling Historical Fiction

Anyone considering writing a fiction or nonfiction book. It may be particularly helpful for folks who are stuck, at the beginning of the process or who are considering doing National Novel Writing Month in November.

Finding Your Authentic Voice

Look beyond your inner critic and tap into the flow of your limitless creativity, as you discover the powerful impact of your authentic voice. Learn how to identify limiting beliefs, deconstruct doubt, and write compelling pieces to foster a special connection with your readers. In a safe and supportive space, reintroduce your childlike wonder around creativity so you can write freely, reclaim your power, and uncover your true gifts. Unleash your brilliance and honor the impact of your stories, lessons, and innermost thoughts. Walk away feeling empowered with fresh awareness, confidence in your writing, and practical tips to stay inspired and let your art flow freely. Note: No meeting November 30.

Speculative Nonfiction: A New Lens!

This generative class will help you explore the personal stories from the lens of “What if?” We’ll walk the line between nonfiction and fiction, using prompts and exercises to write new drafts of speculative literary nonfiction. Be ready to try prompts and exercises you’ve never tried before, to stretch in new ways, and to examine what it means for a story to be true. Each week, participants will read short works of speculative nonfiction, practice new craft techniques, and generate a new draft! We’ll explore the literary publications that accept and publish this genre of work, learn new editing tools, and finish the class with three or more completed drafts ready to edit and submit!

Structure Your Book!

In just three sessions we explore different ways to structure a novel, memoir, or non-fiction book, through exercises and examples. Starting with your idea, you’ll learn about expectations, different and divergent ways to both generate and organize all those ideas! You’ll leave with a plan and a scaffold for your book!

Public Speaking Fundamentals

As creators and creatives, we long to share our work, yet are often thwarted by fear and uncertainty. Join performance coach and therapist Jennifer Hamady to learn how to alleviate your apprehension and generate fantastic public deliveries. In this interactive workshop, you’ll learn the practical tools to modulate and project your voice, expand your confidence, presence, and impact, and connect authentically with your audience. You may also have the opportunity to practice what you’ve learned; please bring a poem, article, or piece of writing– yours or someone else’s– to work on with the group if time permits.

Wisdom, Joy, Gratitude—giving and receiving through Poetry

Reading and writing poetry is soul-work. Each class will include discussion of inspiring poems, guided free-writes, and sharing. Between classes you will have life-enhancing reading and journal assignments. Our last class will be a formal and friendly workshop to celebrate the gifts we have shared throughout the course. Note: No meeting November 28.

Creative Journaling: Words + Art

Have you ever wanted to create art along with your writing–but felt you lacked skills or direction? Participants begin with personal-writing prompts, which then become the basis for mixed-media art pieces. The co-leaders are an author and an artist who love the process of creative discovery and, through specific strategies, can help you to explore and shape your material. The work created may become part of an ongoing unique memoir, a creative journal, or individual pieces.

Setting Intensive

In this workshop we will learn to use setting as a map, as a structure for storytelling. Setting can be a situation, a tone, a time, an atmosphere, a relationship, and more. It can be as broad as a country, as small as a porch swing. At its best, setting becomes a character in and of itself. In short, setting is the most versatile and under-utilized of all the elements of craft. This interactive and dynamic workshop will give you the means to improve both your fiction and nonfiction stories.

Writing the Body

This generative workshop will have participants review and discuss poems that look at the body in all its glamour and gore, everything you love, hate, worry about, hold close, and pretend not to notice. We’ll then write our own body-inspired poems. Participants can expect to leave with 2-4 new drafts of poems.

Whole-Brain Poetry

“Whole-Brain Poetry” is an opportunity to explore some of the ways poetry interacts with the brain, and to enrich your writing with that knowledge. This includes but goes beyond the use of metaphor. Through writing exercises, close examination of time-honored and recent poems, workshopping of participant poems, and brief reading assignments, we will examine the neurology and psychology of poetry, the relationship between time and memory, how science has influenced well-known poets, how poetry can heal trauma and prevent PTSD, and more. Readings include essays by Frederick Turner, Ruth Padel, Frederick Feirstein, and others.

Storytelling Workshop: Unleash Your Narrative Power

In this workshop, you’ll gain the tools and techniques to craft engaging and powerful stories. Through interactive activities and collaborative exercises, you’ll learn the essentials of story structure, develop compelling characters, and create immersive settings. Our workshop will guide you in plotting your story, writing dynamic scenes, and refining your narrative skills. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced writer, this workshop will provide valuable insights and practical strategies to help you bring your stories to life.

Perspective (aka POV)

Perhaps the most challenging fiction technique is perspective. The Point of View Plan that you choose for your story will often dictate its success. Learn to develop an effective and consistent POV that will enable readers to follow a story’s progress and avoid confusing “head hopping” that often condemns an otherwise good story to rejection. Give your fiction a professional edge and increase your publication chances.

How to Publish

Do you want to get your writing published (in literary journals and as books), but don’t know where to start? Are you already publishing but want to publish in more competitive markets? In this workshop we’ll learn about the business of submitting to editors of literary journals and presses. We’ll also discuss tips for finding appropriate markets for your writing.

DIY Novel Revision

Do you have a finished draft of a novel but don’t know what to do next? This workshop will take you through the revision and editing process step-by-step. From large-picture issues like plot and structure, characterization, etc… to line editing, we will look at what it takes to revise your own novel without the assistance of a professional editor.

December 2024

Finish your novel.

How great would it feel to finish your novel? Have you been working and reworking the beginning of your book but can’t seem to move past a certain point? In this one-day workshop, we’ll talk about the different road-blocks writers face and practical tips for overcoming them. After a discussion about what’s holding you back, you’ll create a loose outline, make a plan for finishing your novel, set deadlines, and learn ways to hold yourself accountable to your goals. You may even find another member of the workshop to be your accountability partner. If you’re ready to finally type “the end,” this class is for you.

How to Write a Lot

You may think you don’t have the time, energy, or inspiration to write because of your hectic lifestyle. Wrong! Learn what Kathryn Johnson’s Extreme Novelists know about organizing their time, establishing a productive writing routine, and getting their stories written. We’ll share methods EN Grads (and many professional writers) use to complete their books in months instead of years, their short stories in mere weeks. Become the dedicated author you’ve always dreamed of being. (Ideal for writers who don’t have 8 weeks to dedicate to the Extreme Novelist course.)

Writing Linked Memoir-Micros

Develop one or more linked micro memoirs (short, short stories of 250 words or less). Lean into the lyrical and use poetic techniques to enhance your writing. Write to guided exercises and prompts to connect your micro memoirs to your larger life themes. Ultimately, a generative workshop with time to write, reflect, and share your work.

Beads on a String: Organizing a Poetry Manuscript

Poets who are putting together their first chapbook or full-length book often agonize over what they can do to make their manuscript grab the attention of an editor or contest judge. But there is no one approach to arranging a sequence of poems that is inherently superior. Instead, it has more to do with gaining some perspective on your own work and identifying the themes, images, and impulses that certain poems share. In this workshop, we will gather advice from a number of successful poets and then take a close look at how a Pulitzer Prize-winning volume was put together.

Write Like the News

Lead with the future — not background — for lead-ership, especially in a crisis. That’s the most important of eight journalism skills that will transform your writing. The others: write your readers’ language, be positive (to be both clear and upbeat), lay out logically, be consistent, be precise, be concise and choose strong verbs. (Plus a Speak Like the News skill: avoid “uptalk?”) Emulate the vivid news examples you’ll see in this workshop, and you’ll strengthen your writing voice with lively, engaging news style. At 7 sharp, we’ll critique TheWallStreetJournal.com, seeing how to communicate your main point in just a few words. To cover as much ground as possible, we’ll have just a few writing exercises and most of them will take less than a minute each.

How—and Where—to Pitch Your Personal Essays

Personal essays are perhaps the genre that has the largest array of publication possibilities—literary journals, newspapers, magazines, alumni publications, and more all publish this form. That’s the good news! The challenge: finding the right publications for your story, along with submission guidelines, pay rates, and style preferences. In this workshop, you’ll learn where to find writer’s guidelines for popular newspaper and magazine essay columns (many with tips from the editor), how to create a submission plan to increase your success, and the pros and cons of submitting essays to newspapers and magazines vs. literary journals. By the end, you’ll have a list of resources and actionable tips to move your submissions forward. Give that essay on your hard drive (or in your journal) a chance to be published.

Troubleshoot Your Fiction

Revision is a dirty word to some writers. But you needn’t fear the challenges of polishing a manuscript before submission and publication. This fast-paced, half-day class focuses on the ten most common mistakes and concerns, often overlooked by authors before they send their story out into the world. Everything you do to your manuscript after the first draft is what makes the difference between a ho-hum story and a powerful tale that lingers in readers’ minds. Join us for a painless look at the major revision issues for fiction.

Creative Spirit: Infusing Your Writing with Energy

Are you struggling to find your voice as a writer? Do you have a story to tell but feel stuck in the creative process? Let’s face it. Writing can be a confusing and challenging process. Whether you are a beginner or have been writing for years, chances are you go through ups and downs—sometimes you have so much to write about that you can hardly get it on the page fast enough, and other days you blankly stare at your computer screen unsure of where to start. No matter your beliefs, spirituality and open-mindedness can play a critical role in the creative process if we allow it and nurture it. In a safe and supportive space, reintroduce your childlike wonder around creativity so you can write freely, authentically reclaim your power, and uncover your true gifts. Unleash your brilliance and honor the impact of your stories, lessons, and innermost thoughts. Tap into a higher source of inspiration, whether viewed as the highest self, inner wisdom, or any other entity. You will walk away with efficient ways to set intentions for different writing projects, stay in the present, trust your process, set healthy boundaries, and follow signs and intuition. You will have the information necessary to create a sacred space and ritual for your writing practice, motivating you to enrich your content and deepen your message.

Writing Characters: A Generative Workshop

Each writer can expect to leave this course with new work and a new or enhanced awareness of essential craft elements of character development that they can use in their current and future works-in-progress.

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Classes & Workshops

Some say good writing can’t be taught. We disagree. While instruction alone won’t make you a great writer, it will take you a long way in that direction. At the heart of our mission is a firm commitment to quality creative writing instruction that encourages you to become more thoughtful and proficient as you explore your passion for the written word.

49 Writers offers workshops and courses for emerging and established writers outside the constraints of university tuition and academic credit. We offer no easy answers or gimmicks. Rather, we aim to deliver student-centered teaching structured around meaningful outcomes. We want you to delve deep into the mysteries of language, discovery, and expression. Good teaching, like good writing, develops through a life-long process of learning that includes evaluating our work, sharing ideas, and stretching ourselves – sometimes beyond our comfort zones.

We offer affordable creative writing classes across genres to writers at all levels—beginning, intermediate, and advanced. Whether you’re just starting out or have already published, you will find a topic on the 49 Writers schedule that meets your needs.

Course topics cover the gamut from craft, to serious revision, to special topics like spiritual writing or the literary uses of humor. We also offer practical training on the path to publication, promotion, social media, and more.

Some classes are offered as single three hour long short courses, while others meeting weekly for an extended period of time. Many of our classes are face to face, and some are taught online.

Our course offerings fit (more or less; we like to stay flexible) into one of three categories:

Elements Courses

These are generally 6 to 8 hours long. Elements courses include cross-genre topics like character, voice, narrative structure, point of view, description, beginnings, revision, and narrative time.

Genre-based Workshops

These typically run 12 to 15 hours. Workshops are by genre, alternating between fundamentals workshops for emerging writers (Fundamentals of Fiction, for example) and workshops exploring advanced techniques (such as Advanced Poetry Techniques). In workshops, students draft and revise within their genres.

Special Topics

These are normally covered in a single session of 2 or 3 hours. While we hope all of our courses are feisty and fun, our special topics courses are intended to be especially so, with an exploratory bent. We strive to balance our course offerings each term with regard to length, type, and genre

Evening and weekend scheduling is a top priority, and our students tend to prefer classes that last less than six weeks. In Anchorage, we’re likely to schedule two of each type (Elements, workshop, and special topics) per term, leaving room to add an impromptu course or two with visiting writers as opportunities arise.

Special course offerings: We supplement our regular instructional schedule with clinics by visiting writers. We regularly partner with groups bringing authors to Alaska; please contact us if you’re aware of a partnering opportunity. Courses taught by special arrangement with visiting writers do not go through our regular proposal selection process.

Upcoming Classes & Workshops

Writing your story: finding emotional freedom in writing, start writing right now.

About Our Writing Workshops

• Upcoming Writing Workshops
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The Center for Fiction’s Writing Workshops explore a wide range of forms and subjects: fiction and nonfiction, memoir and translation, prose and poetry, history and social justice, and more.

Whether online or in person, we strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

Gain skill and confidence in your work, as well as key professional insights, under the guidance of award-winning authors and industry insiders.

Members of The Center for Fiction receive early access to writing workshops, as well as 10% off enrollment.

Recent Instructors

Jami Attenberg

Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships, and urban life for the New York Times magazine , the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times (London), the Guardian , and others. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up , and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You . Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Lily Andrews

Lily Andrews is a writer from Minnesota, but she lives in New York. She is studying to be a high school teacher and enjoys reading children’s literature. While she doesn’t know yet whether she will ever be a memoirist, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ghost City Review , Sonora Review , Ignatian magazine, and Rio Grande Review . She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and runs a post-abortion healing workshop called Hear Me Roar.

Stefan Merrill Block

Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting , was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, The Ovid Prize from the Romanian Writer’s Union, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers’ League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre, and The Center for Fiction. Stefan’s stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times , the New Yorker Page-Turner, the Guardian , NPR ’s Radiolab , GRANTA , the Los Angeles Times , and many other publications. Stefan’s most recent novel, Oliver Loving , was released in 2018 by Macmillan/Flatiron Books, and is being developed for television by Participant Media. He lives in Brooklyn.

Conor Bracken

Conor Bracken is the author of The Enemy of My Enemy is Me (Diode Editions, 2021), as well as the translator of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun (CSU Poetry Center, 2019) and Jean D’Amérique’s No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. His work has received support from the Community of Writers, Bread Loaf, the Frost Place, Inprint, Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and has appeared (or will soon) in places like BOMB, Image, jubilat, New England Review, the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Sixth Finch , and West Branch . He teaches writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky , illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter. Named among the best books of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews , and The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Blue  was honored with the 2023 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in the writing of non-fiction for children, and it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace , which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices , of which Kirkus Reviews said in a starred review: “This smart, generous collection is a true gift.” Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness. You can keep up with Nana on Instagram at @nanaekuawriter , Twitter at @nanaekua , and Facebook at @nanaekuawriter .

Born and raised in Istanbul, Deniz Çam is a New York-based creative. She was a producer at the Emmy-nominated show, The Problem with Jon Stewart , and a reporter at Forbes magazine. Her debut novel, Strangers & Revisions , is represented by United Talent Agency and revolves around a Turkish immigrant who reimagines what the American Dream means to her. Her romcom pilot, 60 Days , placed at the 2023 Austin Film Festival and was featured on Time Out New York as one of the best things to do in the city. Her work has appeared on Shondaland , Gay magazine, Bustle , and more. She also teaches comedy writing for screen and stage at the Second City Theater in Brooklyn. She is an alum of Brown University and Columbia Journalism School.

Joanna Cantor

Joanna Cantor holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from Colorado College. Her debut novel, Alternative Remedies for Loss , was an Amazon Best Book of the Month for May 2018 and received coverage in Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Nylon , and elsewhere. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Departures, Fodor’s Travel, Greatist , and Willamette Week . Joanna was a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She previously taught fiction writing at Catapult and is also a yoga teacher. She lives in Brooklyn. You can keep up with Joanna on Instagram at @joannacantor and on Twitter at @jojannna.

Elysha Chang

Elysha Chang is a writer and educator based in Brooklyn. Before moving to New York, she taught Asian American Literature and Creative Writing at Villanova University, University of Pennsylvania and Blue Stoop Philadelphia. Her debut novel, A Quitter’s Paradise , is about American immigrant inheritance and was published in 2023. She holds a master of fine arts from Columbia University and has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman.

Caroline Christopoulos

Caroline Christopoulos is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services, a publicity firm that works exclusively with writers/authors. She also works part-time at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC, where she has been a bookseller for twenty-two years and buyer for eighteen. She worked on the steering committee of the Asheville Grown Business Alliance and continues to be on the programming committee for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival. In addition to bringing authors and their works the attention they deserve, her focus includes strengthening community and promoting local business. She and her husband live in Asheville and New York City with their daughter and their dog, Tiny Cakes.

Sarah Cypher

Sarah Cypher is a freelance book editor and author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine, April 2023). She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction, and a BA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Lit Hub , Electric Literature , New Ohio Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review , and others, and she has been a resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She grew up in a Lebanese Christian family near Pittsburgh and lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife. You can keep up with Sarah on Instagram at @sarahcypher and on Twitter at @threepenny .

Kavita Das came to writing ten years ago after working for social change and social justice for fifteen years. She writes about culture, race, gender, and their intersections. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in WIRED, CNN, Teen Vogue, Catapult, Fast Company, Tin House, Longreads, the Atlantic, the Washington Post , Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Electric Literature , Colorlines, the Rumpus , and elsewhere. Kavita’s second book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues (Beacon Press, October 2022) is inspired by the Writing with Conscience class she created and teaches. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar , was published by Harper Collins India in 2019. In the real world, she lives in New York with her husband, toddler, and hound. And in the virtual world, she can be found on Twitter: @kavitamix and Instagram: @kavitadas and at kavitadas.com .

Omer Friedlander

Omer Friedlander is the author of the short story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land , winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and a finalist for the Wingate Prize. The book was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize, chosen as an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Book for outstanding achievement in Jewish Literature, and longlisted for the Story Prize. Omer has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He was a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His collection has been translated into several languages, including Turkish, Dutch, Italian, and Slovak. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Fellowship and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. He currently lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

Miciah Bay Gault

Miciah Bay Gault is the author of the novel Goodnight Stranger (Park Row, 2019), which was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award, longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize , and selected for Poets & Writers’ First Fiction roundup.

Miciah is a Breadloaf fellow and a Vermont Arts Council creation grant recipient. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Sun, Agni, the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, the New York Times ‘ Modern Love’ column, and other places. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is coordinator of the Vermont Book Award.

David Gordon

David Gordon was born in New York City. He attended Sarah Lawrence College, holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University. He is the author of seven published novels and a book of stories.His first novel, The Serialist , won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. It also won three major literary awards in Japan—Kono Mystery ga Sugoi, Mystery ga Yomitai and Mystery Best 10—becoming the first novel ever to do so—and was made into a feature film. In addition to Japanese, his novels has been translated into Chinese, Korean, French, German, Turkish, Russian and Polish. His most recent book, The Pigeon , is number five in the Joe the Bouncer series. A new novel, a neo-noir called, Behind Sunset , is forthcoming from Mysterious Press, as well as a video game co-written with Hampton Fancher, ( Bladerunner ). His work has appeared in Harpers , Paris Review , the New York Times magazine, the  New York Times Book Review , Fence , Brazenhead Review , Maggot Brain , LitHub , Electric Literature , and others.

Jakob Guanzon

Jakob Guanzon is the author of Abundance , which was longlisted for both the National Book Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021, and has been translated into multiple languages. His shorter works have appeared in BOMB , the New York Times , and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, and has since taught as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. He lives in Harlem.

Lucinda Halpern

Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent with nearly 20 years’ experience in both the publicity and agency sides of publishing. Before founding Lucinda Literary, she worked in the Publicity division of HarperCollins, where she assisted on the media campaign for Freakonomics among other New York Times bestsellers. She later took a management role in Sales and Marketing at Scholastic before becoming a marketing consultant for Gretchen Rubin ( The Happiness Project ) and others, and then launching her career as an agent. She has worked with such publishers as HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette, and currently represents authors writing in the categories of business, health, lifestyle, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction.

Lauren Harr

Lauren Harr is a publicist with Gold Leaf Literary Services and has worked in the book world for twenty years—as a bookseller in Asheville, NC and Albuquerque, NM, an assistant at literary nonprofits in Santa Fe, an intern at Graywolf Press, and a marketing assistant and publicist at Coffee House Press. She spent eight years at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe where her passions were connecting readers and books and assisting the events program. She lives in Asheville with her husband and daughter and holds an MFA from Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing.

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut is the author of the novels You Again , named a New York Times Best of the Year and shortlisted for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize, and The Captives , a 2019 Edgar Award finalist and published in over a dozen countries. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property . Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, the New York Times, PANK, Hobart , and elsewhere. A recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships, she has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in western Massachusetts.

Yahdon Israel

Yahdon Israel, a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for the New Inquiry , LitHub , Poets & Writers , Vanity Fair , and the Atlantic . He teaches Creative Writing at the MFA Program at City College, previously served on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle, and founded the Literaryswag Book Club, a Brooklyn-based subscription service and book club that meets every last Wednesday of the month.

Jason Adam Katzenstein

Jason Adam Katzenstein is a cartoonist and comedy writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker , the New York Times and MAD magazine. He is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir Everything Is an Emergency .

Seth Kaufman

Seth Kaufman is a ghostwriter and novelist. He is the author or co-author of five book proposals purchased by publishers, including autobiographies of basketball legend Rick Pitino, video game designer John Romero, and his own collection of music essays. He has collaborated on bestselling memoirs, biographies, current affairs, political and sports books. His work, under his byline or a clients’ byline, has been published by the Wall Street Journal , the New Yorker online, LitHub , Publishers Weekly , and many other national publications. His satirical work, The King of Pain , was called “one of 2012’s most enjoyable novels” by the New York Times . And Bleacher Report scribe Mike Freeman called Eat My Schwartz , the autobiography Kaufman co-authored (and also wrote the proposal for), “easily, one of the most unique and well-done books about NFL life I’ve ever read.”

Peter Kispert

Peter Kispert is the author of the story collection I Know You Know Who I Am (Penguin Books), named a best book of the year by Elle , O , The Oprah Magazine , and Electric Literature . His writing has recently appeared in Esquire, the New York Times Book Review, Sewanee Review, Story , and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

Josh Krigman

Josh Krigman (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and facilitator in New York City. He has taught creative writing at Hunter College, the United Nations International School, 826NYC, The Writer’s Rock, and for National Geographic Expeditions. He has been awarded residencies from Vermont Studio Center, and his work has appeared in The Summerset Review, Akashic Books, Necessary Fiction , and elsewhere. He received his MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Through Little Nights , he hosts interdisciplinary events designed to make art-making more accessible to new audiences. He is also the co-founder and New York host of Club Motte , an international storytelling series that hosts live events in New York, Oakland, and Berlin.

Danielle Lazarin

Danielle Lazarin is the author of the short story collection Back Talk . Her fiction and essays can be found in the Southern Review , Colorado Review , Literary Hub , Glimmer Train , the Cut , Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Glimmer Train Family Matters Award, the Millay Colony for the Arts, The Freya Project, and the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. She lives and teaches in her native New York, where she is at work on a novel and a story collection.

Alcy Leyva is the author of an award-winning Bronx-born multi-genre writer. His first Young Adult Fiction book the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life (Green Writers Press, 2024) won the Gold Indie Award in YA Fiction for Foreword Reviews and a Silver Nautilus YA 2024 Fiction Award. His short stories have appeared in two award-winning collections. His fiction, personal essays, poetry, and everything in between has been published in over fifteen different websites and magazines including the Millions and the Rumpus . His critical reviews have been featured in 2016’s Contemporary Literary Criticism (published by Laymen Poupard) and have been translated into both Italian and French. He currently resides in New York City and teaches English Literature at the United Nations International School.

Theresa Lin

Theresa Lin received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was awarded the De Alba Fellowship by Writing Program faculty for an excerpt of her novel manuscript. She is represented by Janklow and Nesbit and lectures at The Cooper Union. She has previously taught at Fordham, Rutgers, and Columbia and her writing has been featured in the LA Review of Books , Off Assignment , Racquet , Oh Reader , Storm Cellar , Truthout , Smart Set , and Random Sample Review , among others.

Bruna Dantas Lobato

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a Brazilian writer and literary translator based in St. Louis. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker , A Public Space, the Common , and other publications, and has been recognized with fellowships from Yaddo, A Public Space, NYU, and Disquiet International. Her literary translations include Caio Fernando Abreu’s Moldy Strawberries (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso’s Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions). Other translations from Lobato have appeared in Vogue, Bookforum, BOMB, the Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, the Brooklyn Rail , and the American Scholar , among others. You can keep up with Bruna on Twitter at @bdantaslobato and Instagram @bdantaslobato .

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of peluda , Dreaming of You and Candelaria . Her work has been featured in the Poetry Project, Harper’s Bazaar, NPR , Vogue, Vulture , and BBC Mundo. She received her MFA from New York University in 2020.

Jessie McCarty

Jessie McCarty (they/them) is an interdisciplinary writer and cataloger specializing in Irish, Southern, and LBGTQ+ folklore through new media and poetry. They are the author of The Bovine Huff , a research chapbook on The Shreveport Yellow Fever Mound in Shreveport, Louisiana and Ireland/Eire’s Tain Bo Cuailnge. The Bovine Huff was awarded the 3rd Best Poetry Book of 2022 in the Chicago Reader . In August 2023, McCarty co-authored the poetry collection Our Fairy Diary with multi-media artist Sarah Haines. This artbook of letters, written between Chicago and Shreveport, functioned as a study in fairy rings as a limited edition of 50. As of September 2023, Our Fairy Diary is sold out.

David McLoghlin

David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and writer of memoir and personal essay. His books are Waiting For Saint Brendan and Other Poems and Santiago Sketches . His third book, Crash Centre , will be published in May 2024 by Salmon Poetry. Apart from a major bursary (grant) for memoir from Ireland’s Arts Council, and a personal essay published in the anthology Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America (Black Lawrence Press), he has published personal essays, short stories and memoir extracts in The Stinging Fly , Poetry Ireland Review and other journals. An essay on being mentored by poet Sharon Olds is forthcoming in This Glistening Verb (University of Michigan Press) as part of their “Under Discussion” series. He is currently at work on a book about his grandfather, the golf architect, Eddie Hackett, widely considered “the Father of Irish Golf Design.” In October 2023 he played one of his grandfather’s designs, Connemara Golf Links, and is writing an immersion piece for Golfer’s Journal in the USA. He has previously taught memoir for The Center for Fiction, and teaches creative writing in Ireland with The American College, Dublin, Poetry as Commemoration and Writers in Schools. While living in New York between 2010 and 2020 he was Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, and an NYU Teaching Fellow at Coler Specialty Hospital; and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship Recipient (2023).

Leia Menlove

Leia Menlove’s writings have been published in Guernica , Fiction Magazine (CUNY), Narratively , the Harvard Review , the Evergreen Review , Catapult , Joyland , and others. She was a featured artist of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Series, “Conversations with Contemporary Artists,” discussing her fabulist erotic work, How to Train Your Virgin . HTYV was released by Badlands and ArtBook in 2015, and was covered in BOMB , T magazine, Vogue , MSNBC’s Chrystal Ball Show , Hyperallergic , Sluttist , and many other forums. She is editing her first novel and beginning work on her second.

Kate Milliken

Kate Milliken is the author of If I’d Known You Were Coming , winner of the 2013 John Simmons Award for Short Fiction, and the novel, Kept Animals , which was long listed for the 2020 First Novel Award. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Writers Workshop, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center among others. When not at work on her next book, Kate is a freelance editor and writing coach.

Ruth Mukwana

Ruth Mukwana is a fiction writer. Her work has appeared in several magazines including Bomb , Solstice , and Consequence . Her short story, “ Taboo ” was a runner-up in the Black Warriors Review 2017 fiction contest. She’s the Co-Fiction Editor of Solstice Magazine . She is the Creator and Host of SAHA, Stories and Humanitarian Action, a Podcast that investigates whether fiction can raise awareness on the causes and consequences of humanitarian crises. Her works in progress are a collection of short stories and a novel that follows Queen, a middle-aged woman working for the UN, as she’s forced to confront a past, she wants to forget, and her quest for justice. Told through multiple points of view, the novel interrogates trauma and memory, and resilience and forgiveness. She’s a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars (MFA), a 2022 Bennington Alumni Fellow and a 2020 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil NYC Emerging Fellow, and a former humanitarian worker with the United Nations. She lives in New York with her daughter.

As a fiction writer with an MFA from Bennington College and a humanitarian worker whose work and writing deals with social justice issues, she is passionate about writing for social justice and has a deep familiarity with both the research and questions of craft. Therefore, she offers a wide perspective and comparative approach.

Emily Nemens

Emily Nemens is the author of the novel The Cactus League , and her fiction has appeared in BOMB , the Gettysburg Review , the Iowa Review , and elsewhere. Emily has spent a dozen years editing literary quarterlies, including leading the Paris Review , which won its first American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction under her tenure; she also served as co-editor of the Southern Review . She has taught creative writing at Appalachian State University, the University of Leipzig, Drew University, and in community-based workshops.

Alison Mills Newman

Alison Mills Newman is a former child star from the ’60s, a singer/songwriter and recording artist with Taj Mahal, and has opened for Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Weather Report with Joe Zavinul and Wayne Shorter, screenwriter, poet and award winning independent filmmaker and author of Maggie Three and the highly acclaimed Francisco .

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories , where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review , and Gulf Coast Online . She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

Soraya Palmer

Soraya Palmer is the author of The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts . She is a Flatbush-born-and-raised writer and licensed social worker who has done organizing and advocacy work on the issues of gender-based violence, criminalized survivors, gentrification, and police brutality. Soraya has been awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center in Upstate NY and the Nawat Fes Residency in Fes, Morocco, and is a 2024 Fiction NYFA/NYSCA fellow. She teaches Fiction at the MFA program at CUNY City College and magical realism as a genre at The Center for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Nicholas.

Daniel Saldaña París

Daniel Saldaña París is the author of three novels— Among Strange Victims , Ramifications , and The Dance and the Wildfire —and a collection of personal essays, Planes Flying Over a Monster . His work has been translated into several languages, and he has been included in Bogota39, a list of the Best Latin American Writers Under 40.

The recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Banff Center for the Arts, the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Art Omi, and MacDowell, he has been awarded the Eccles Center & Hay Festival Writers Award in the U.K., and his latest novel was a finalist for the Herralde Prize in Spain. He was a 2022-2023 fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and has contributed to publications such as the Guardian , BOMB, Guernica, Aperture, Music & Literature, LitHub, Publisher’s Weekly , and KCRW’s UnFictional , among many others. You can keep up with Daniel on Instagram at @dsparis .

Dawn Raffel

Dawn Raffel is the author of six books, most recently Boundless as the Sky , a hybrid collection incorporating fiction, image, and early 20th Century history, amid the rise of both fascism and technology. The title novella, set at the 1933 Chicago World’s fair, is told through multiple perspectives, including “ordinary” people and sideshow performers whose voices have been lost to history books. Her previous book, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney , is historical narrative nonfiction based on deep archival research. Other books include a nationally bestselling memoir, The Secret Life of Objects , two story collections and a novel. She has taught creative writing at International Literary Seminars (previously Summer Literary Seminars) in Kenya, Russia, Lithuania, and Canada. You can keep up with Dawn by following her on Instagram at @dawnraffel , or on Twitter at @dawnraffel .

Juliana Roth

Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is currently seeking a home for her novel and collection of short stories. Her writing appears in the Breakwater Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Irish Pages , and Entropy as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University , was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing. Currently, she teaches writing at NYU and writes the newsletter Drawing Animals featuring essays, interviews, doodles, and podcast episodes celebrating our interconnection with nonhuman animal life. She also holds a 200-hour yoga teacher certification and is a current Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction. She formerly lived out of a backpack in the La Sal Mountains and as a volunteer on an organic farm in Maine.

Buku Sarkar

Buku Sarkar is a fiction writer and photographer based in New York. Her first book has just been published in 2023, a collection of short stories titled Not Quite A Disaster After All . She has written for various magazines including NYRB , ZYZZYVA , NYTimes , Sewanee Review , Threepenny Review , and received the best short story of the year award from Sewannee Review . Her photography, has been shown at ICP, Art Basel Miami to name a few.

Alanna Schubach

Alanna Schubach is the author of The Nobodies (Blackstone, 2022). Her short fiction has appeared in Shenandoah , the Sewanee Review , the Massachusetts Review , Electric Literature , and more. She was an Emerging Writer Fellow with The Center for Fiction and a Fellow in Fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts. She earned an M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

Amy Silverberg

Amy Silverberg is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories , the Paris Review , Granta , the Los Angeles Review of Books , TriQuarterly , the Southern Review , and elsewhere. Her debut novel First Time, Long Time is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in 2025. She holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from USC, where she currently teaches.

Javier Sinay

Javier Sinay is a writer and journalist. His books include Camino al Este , Cuba Stone (in collaboration), Los crimes de Moisés Ville (published by Restless Books as The Murders of Moises Ville in 2022), and Sangre joven , which won the Premio Rodolfo Walsh de la Semana Negra de Gijón, España. In 2015 he won the Premio de la Fundación Gabo/FNPI for his chronicle “Fast. Furious. Dead.,” published in Rolling Stone . His work has appeared in the newspapers La Nación and Clarín , in Buenos Aires, and on the website RED/ACCIÓN. He was also a South America correspondent for El Universal (Mexico) and the editor of Rolling Stone (Argentina). He has collaborated with Gatopardo (Mexico), Label Negra (Peru), Letras Libres (Mexico) and Reportagen (Switzerland). He lives in Buenos Aires.

Eraldo Souza dos Santos

A 2022 LARB Publishing Fellow, Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a Brazilian writer currently based between Paris and São Paulo. His first novel, to be published in 2024, is an autobiography of his illiterate mother and a meditation on the lived experience of Blackness and enslavement in modern Brazil. At the age of seven, his mother was sold into slavery by her white foster sister. It was 1968—eighty years after the abolition of slavery in Brazil and four years into the anti-communist coup d’état, during the month in which the military overruled the Constitution by decree. By weaving in extensive archival research and interviews, the novel narrates their journey to Minas Gerais—where she was born—and Bahia—the Blackest state in Brazil, where she was enslaved on a farm for three years—to investigate why the family that enslaved her has never been brought to justice. It also narrates his grandmother’s journey to search for her missing daughter. In March 2023, he offered a masterclass based on his novel at the prestigious UEA Creative Writing Course. You can keep up with Eraldo on Twitter at @esdsantos .

Mathangi Subramanian

Mathangi Subramanian is a neurodiverse South Asian American novelist and essayist. Her middle grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book award, and her novel A People’s History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner prize and The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her picture book A Butterfly Smile was inducted into the Nobel Museum by economics laureate Dr. Esther Duflo. She is a guest artist at Denver School of the arts and affiliate faculty at the Regis Mile High MFA program. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College.

Jenna Tang is a Taiwanese writer and translator who translates between Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, and English. She is a board member and chair of the Equity Advocates Committee at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Her translations and essays are published in McSweeney’s , Latin American Literature Today , World Literature Today , Catapult , AAWW , Words Without Borders , the Paris Review , and elsewhere. Her book in translation, Lin Yi-Han’s novel, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (HarperVia), will be out in May 2024.

Hannah Tinti

Hannah Tinti is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief , which won The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize , and the story collection Animal Crackers , a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley , is a national bestseller and is in development for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, a 2020 Whiting Prize, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.

María Alejandra Barrios Vélez

María Alejandra Barrios Vélez is a writer born in Barranquilla, Colombia. She was the 2020 SmokeLong Flash Fiction Fellow, and her stories have been published in Shenandoah Literary , Vol. 1 Brooklyn , El Malpensante , Fractured Lit , SmokeLong Quarterly , The Offing , and more. Her work has been supported by organizations such as Vermont Studio Center, Kweli, Caldera Arts, and the New Orleans Writers’ Residency.

Her debut novel, The Waves Take You Home , will be published March 19, 2024.

Sofia Warren

Sofia Warren has been a contributing cartoonist at the New Yorker since 2017. Her work has appeared in MoMA magazine, Catapult , L’Uomo Vogue , Narrative magazine, and the anthologies Send Help! , Very Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists , and Notes from the Bathroom Line . Her debut book, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator , won the 2024 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, was a finalist for the 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature award by Pop Culture Classroom, and was named one of the best graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes and Comic Book Herald. Sofia was born in Rhode Island and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Eleanor Whitney

Eleanor Whitney is a writer, editor, and content marketer. She is the author of Riot Woman , a collection of feminist essays examining the impact of the Riot Grrrl movement, and Quit Your Day Job , a business guide and an accompanying workbook for creative people. Microcosm will publish her fourth book, Spread the Word: Promote Your Book, Find Your Readers, and Build a Literary Community in the fall of 2023.

Throughout her career, Eleanor has worked to build communities, education programs, and marketing content strategies at museums, art organizations, and tech startups, including the Brooklyn Museum and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens College, a Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College, and BA in cultural studies from Eugene Lang College. She has taught writing at both Queens College and Eugene Lang College and in community workshops around the country. Hailing from Maine, she divides her time between Brooklyn and the Mojave desert. You can keep up with Eleanor on Instagram at @killerfemme and on Twitter at @killerfemme.

Joe Wilkins

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University. His debut novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, was praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize  and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award and has subsequently been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and German editions. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers , and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds , winner of the Oregon Book Award. His latest novel, The Entire Sky , is now out from Little, Brown.

Alissa Wilkinson

Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at the New York Times . Her book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine , a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, is forthcoming from Liveright in early 2025. She’s been writing criticism since 2005, and her work has appeared in Vox , the New York Times Book Review , Vulture , Rolling Stone , the Washington Post , the Dallas Morning News , the Los Angeles Review of Books , RogerEbert.com, Books & Culture , and many more. Her previous book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking and Living from Revolutionary Women , was published by Broadleaf in 2022. She earn an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction writing from Seattle Pacific University and an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University.

Diane Zinna

Diane Zinna is the author of the novel The All-Night Sun (Random House, 2020) and Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss , a craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2024. She has led a free grief writing class called Grief Writing Sundays since the start of the pandemic.

Courtney Zoffness

Courtney Zoffness is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir-in-essays Spilt Milk , named a best debut of 2021 by BookPage and Refinery29 and a “must-read” by Publishers Weekly . She won the Sunday Times Short Story Award and received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and MacDowell. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily , the New York Times , Guernica , the Believer , and other venues. She’s an Associate Professor of English at Drew University, where she directs the creative writing program. You can keep up with Courtney on Instagram at @czoffness, and Twitter at @czoffrun .

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