The Work Room
Online Workshops, Craft Seminars, + Manuscript Consultations
A program of The Shipman Agency
The Work Room was created in response to the pandemic. It has been so successful it is now a permanent feature of The Shipman Agency’s offerings. Here you will find opportunities to deepen your craft or get your manuscript in shape while studying with some of the world’s leading authors, many of whom offer classes exclusively through The Work Room. Students receive a graduate-level experience that will challenge their assumptions and broaden the scope of what their work can do.
All classes and consultations are virtual and held live over Zoom. Information on how to access classes will be sent two days before the start date. In the case of absences or time differences, all our classes are recorded. Got a question? Find our FAQ page below. For any other Work Room-related inquires, please contact our program manager Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com.
Faculty: Sandy Ernest Allen, Fatima Bhutto, Eula Biss, Alexander Chee, Anna Clark, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Matthew Gavin Frank, Ruth Franklin, Ru Freeman, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Jenny Johnson, Dorothea Lasky, Greg Mania, Isle McElroy, David McLoghlin, John Cameron Mitchell, Saretta Morgan, Daniel Jose Older, Khadijah Queen, Tricia Romano, Jess Row, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Amanda Stern, Mary Alice Stewart, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Michael Zapata.
Manuscript Consultations: Samiya Bashir, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Sumita Chakraborty, Jos Charles, Elaine Hsieh Chou, Anna Clark, Kavita Das, Michael Dickman, Ru Freeman, Maria Dahvana Headley, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Dorothea Lasky, Rickey Laurentiis, Greg Mania, Sarah Manguso, AX Mina, Jamie Quatro, Khadijah Queen, Kristin Radtke, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Ayşegül Savaş, Elissa Schappell, Sonia Shah, Danniel Schoonebeek, David Shields, Rob Spillman, Meredith Talusan, David L. Ulin, Sunil Yapa
Books by Work Room faculty, and new and forthcoming books from our clients, are available on our affiliate page at Bookshop.org.
ALL GENRES
3 Sessions: Mondays, July 28 - August 11
6:30-9:00pm ET
plus optional weekly office hours
Saretta Morgan
Saretta Morgan is the author of multiple chapbooks and the poetry collection, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), which received a Southwest Book Award, and was named a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Working across disciplines, she produces texts and interactive text-based experiences that prompt explorations of physical and social connection, drawing attention to how languages emerge through the practice of everyday life. Her work has been supported by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Beacon, Tucson MoCA, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Phoenix Art Museum, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Black Mountain Institute, and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, among others. She currently lives in Atlanta, where she trains in Capoeira and wild bird rehabilitation.
These three weeks are an invitation to slow down and listen for the critical knowledge that arrives through your body, even when your capacity to remain present feels thoroughly diminished. Whether you’re looking for a structure to help you through your summer reading list, or support in preparing for the academic year ahead, this generative and reflection-based course offers an intimate and exploratory space to practice receiving and building language when the world around you is crowding in.
Taking inspiration from the (intentionally) somatic practices of multi-colonized and diasporic writers; from critical disability studies; and from the physical material that structures your lived experience, you’ll develop rigorous, individualized reading strategies that are grounded in playfulness and self-discovery.
Workshop Highlights:
Redefine what it means for you to “sustain attention” through creative annotation exercises, guided meditations/visualizations, and procedural prompts.
Reconnect to your creative power by identifying where (in your body, in time/space) reading happens for you, and what support you might offer yourself when language (your own and that of others) feels inaccessible.
Recharge through weekly drop-in office hours designed to help you work through creative issues.
This course has 3 scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 20.
4 Sessions: Saturdays, September 6, 13, 20, 27
9:00-11:0am ET
Ru Freeman
Ru Freeman is an award-winning writer, poet, and activist who teaches has taught internationally for over 15 years, and whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian,The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. Describing her work, Colum McCann writes, “Ru Freeman captures the moment when the thorn enters the skin, and then she leads us forward towards healing. One of the best and most necessary voices of our times.” She is the author of the essay collection Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship & A Creative Life, the short story collection, Sleeping Alone, and the novels A Disobedient Girl, and On Sal Mal Lane, a NYT Editor’s Choice Book. Her novels have been translated into multiple languages including Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, and Chinese. She is editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, and Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security. Her poetry appears in Poetry, Poetry Northwest and American Poetry Review, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Rutgers University, an MA in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, theVirginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation.
In the preface to her novel, LOVE, Toni Morrison writes, “People tell me that I am always writing about love. I nod, yes, but it isn’t true—not exactly. In fact, I’m always writing about betrayal. Love is the weather. Betrayal is the lightning that cleaves and reveals it.” Is all fiction, at some level, about love and betrayal? How is love—in all its nuance and complexity—elevated beyond the ordinary in literature, and how do we translate passion itself into prose? We will read selections from a range of writers, and examine the trammeled relationships that are shaped by love; love between parents and children, friends, siblings, lovers, and the divine, as well as love of country and place. Along the way, you will write and have the opportunity to share your work in class.
Each 2 hour class will be formatted the same way:
Open Q&A (15 minutes)
Discussion of readings (30 minutes)
Writing to prompts (15 minutes)
Open read of your work & responses (60 minutes)
At the end of this series of classes, students will:
Have a portfolio of writing to continue to work on
Discover the best shape for their own writing on the subject of love
Receive critical feedback on their own work
This course has 2 scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, July 24.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, August 9 + 10
3:00-4:30pm ET
John Cameron Mitchell
John Cameron Mitchell wrote/directed/starred in the rock musical and film Hedwig and the Angry Inch for which he won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, a Special Tony for his performance, an Obie Award, the Best Director award at the 2001 Sundance Festival and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, along with 25 other awards. He wrote/directed the improv-based film Shortbus (2006); directed the film adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole (2010) which garnered a Best Actress Oscar nom for Nicole Kidman; and co-wrote and directed the YA punk romance How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017) starring Kidman and Elle Fanning. He executive-produced (with Gus Van Sant) Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2004) which was the most decorated documentary of 2004.
John spills his guts on what he's learned as a multi-hyphenate polymathematical writer (drama, screen and prose), director, performer, songwriter, podcaster, memoirist, producer and DJ in his 42 years of storytelling. He will discuss different forms of approaching narrative writing (autobiographical, adaptations of pre-existing texts, stories based on real-life figures, improv-based development as well as stimulate cross-format creation. Eg, could your novel begin as an audio-based format (like a fictional podcast), could dialogue in a novel or play be improved through improvisation with actors? He'll also get into the challenges of telling a story in a culture that asks, "Is that your story to tell?" When does well-intentioned identity politics come into conflict with an author's informed imagination of characters and settings that they have less personal experience with. He will also encourage input and discussion with participants in the masterclasses.
John’s recent Op-Ed in The New York Times captures the spirit of this class.
This course has 1 full and 2 partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, July 31.
1 Session: Wednesday, August 27
7:00-9:00pm ET
Michael Zapata
This master class is taught by award winning novelist and editor Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, among others, and founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine. He is the recent recipient of the Meier Foundation Artist Achievement Award. In Axios, Michael Zapata’s work was called an important “part of the growing Latino-futurism movement.”
The traditional workshop has always felt particularly overbearing and even colonial to me in its corrective, hierarchal, and prescriptive formats. Instead, I’ve always believed that a workshop is an artistic space for writers who are in the process of making.
This is a class for both instructors and writers who are looking for a new way to engage the writing workshop. We'll review and practice the Socratic Method and Feminist process, both of which center the writer and allow for equity, inquiry, and discovery. The Socratic Method in workshop uses lines of inquiry to address the complexities, mysteries, and realities of our work rather than eliciting prescriptions or assertions. The Feminist Process first emerged as a set of practices in organizing and women-only groups in the 1970s where people began to identify the roles personal power dynamics played in dialogue and decision making. Over time, others unified these practices into their work in antiracism and decolonization movements. This course will help you move towards a more rewarding and equitable writing workshop to bring out into the world.
Workshop Highlights:
A deeper understanding of new ways to approach the writing workshop.
Learn how to both participate and run writing workshops that treat the workshop itself as an artistic space.
This master class includes a Q&A
This class has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, August 18.
1 Session: Thursday, August 28
6:00-9:00pm ET
Isle McElroy
Isle McElroy is the author of the novels People Collide and The Atmospherians. Their criticism and essays regularly appear in Vulture, The Atlantic, Esquire, and elsewhere. They are the 2025-26 Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute and they currently teach in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College.
“Misery is a potent aid in obliterating memory, and shame in distorting it,” Deborah Eisenberg writes in her introduction to Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, a disconcerting collection of stories centered on the moral and political compromises of everyday people that laid the foundation for the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Eisenberg’s statement reveals how willingly a person might aid in atrocity, both in the moment and in hindsight. In her short fiction, she exposes the countless ways that Americans have shielded themselves from confronting abuses performed in the name of their country. Eisenberg’s ongoing critique of everyday complicity in American life feels especially potent now. Her literary gaze, ruthless in its honesty, offers a vision of how a writer might engage with our current political climate–and the preceding decades that created this climate. In this course, we will explore the work of writers like Eisenberg, Helen DeWitt, John Keene, and others to look at strategies for both exposing and undermining complicity in works of fiction. Writers will have an opportunity to complete a short exercise in class.
Workshop Highlights:
To gain a deeper understanding of honesty in fiction and nonfiction.
To explore how writers use genre to convey literary and political truths.
To learn strategies for writing more honestly in one's own work.
This course has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, August 14.
4 Sessions: Sundays, September 7, 14, 21, 28
9:00-11:00am ET
Saretta Morgan
Saretta Morgan is the author of multiple chapbooks and the poetry collection, Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024), which received a Southwest Book Award, and was named a finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Working across disciplines, and drawing on years of embodied research on/with the environment at intersections of humanitarian aid, water defense, conservation, land stewardship, demilitarization movements, and wildlife rehabilitation, she prompts explorations of physical and social connection to bring attention to the languages that emerge through the process of simply existing with a body in the world. Her work has been supported by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Beacon, Tucson MoCA, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, Phoenix Art Museum, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, Black Mountain Institute, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, among others. She currently lives in Atlanta, where she trains in Capoeira and wild bird rehabilitation.
This workshop is inspired by the "Meet Us on the Porch" virtual birding initiative hosted by The Streets is Cawing, an Atlanta-based Black birding group founded by writer and tech artist, Corvida Raven.
Every migration season billions of birds travel remembered flyways, “stopping over” to rest and replenish along the way. Their ritual of transition provides us with an opportunity to watch, listen, and notice the changes happening in our communities. From the construction of prisons in the Everglades, to Naval testing in the Salish Sea, threats to avian life are deeply entangled with those to our own.
This September, meet me on your porch, near a window, or in stillness wherever you are, to sit with your awareness of migration, borders, and mobility at various scales. I’ll read aloud selections from texts that emerge through lived experiences of confinement, restriction, and the denial of access—then offer prompts designed to support you in reflecting however feels best—writing, drawing, bibliomancy, stretching. I’ll offer suggestions, but how you spend the time is a gift that’s completely up to you.
Arrive with or without your camera on. With tea or something specifically adult. In something cozy or dressed to take on the day. I’ll provide resources for learning which birds reside in, and migrate through, your particular area. Birding is as much about dedicating time to look, as it is about what you may eventually find. Depending on where you live, you may or may not see or hear birds every morning. Regardless, take this invitation to enter the week gently, and with intention.
Workshop Highlights:
Reflect on your individual relationship and access to migration and movement.
Form a deeper connection with your immediate environment.
Begin your week through a space of intention.
Note: Twenty percent of proceeds will be donated to The Streets is Cawing to support their important work of reconnecting Black folx with the outdoors.
This course has 3 scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, August 29.
1 Session: Monday, October 6
6:00-7:30pm ET
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a Professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University and an instructor at Randolph College Low-Res MFA program. He is the author of three New York Times Editor's Choice books, including the novel The American Daughters (One World, 2024) and the story collection, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021) and We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019). He holds a masters in psychology.
With all the distractions of family, work, and life, it can be difficult to maintain a writing practice. Especially when it feels like your focus should be elsewhere. But writing is an art that holds a mirror up to society. In these conflict filled times, we need your mirror more than ever.
In this seminar, we will discuss numerous techniques to stay engaged and productive, including strategies that I've employed in my own work. Tips and techniques include well-known concepts such as mindfulness and schedule keeping, but we'll also deep dive into internal positive/negative self talk, core motivations, and goal making that are the keys to writing success. This talk is both practical and inspirational.
Workshop Highlights:
A discussion of techniques to overcome lack of motivation and writers block.
Offering tips such as mindfulness and schedule keeping.
Deep dive into core motivations and related concepts to keep the writer engaged in their work.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, October 25 + 26
12:00-2:00pm ET
Fatima Bhutto
Fatima Bhutto’s books include the novels The Runaways and The Shadow of The Crescent Moon, longlisted for the Women’s Prize and winner of the 2014 Prix de la Romanciere. Her non-fiction books include Songs of Blood and Sword and New Kings of the World.
Language has been robbed of all of its meaning. It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, media and government have abused language to the point of absurdity. What does “cease-fire” mean when you can keep killing? What do “human rights” mean when they only apply to certain groups, based on the color of their skin? What does “war” mean when only one side has an army? Beyond politics, how are we to convey the fragile business of living if words have lost their meaning?
If language is so degraded, how can our writing mean anything? In this master class we will study writing that brought the full force of its meaning onto the page and therefore out into the world including texts by James Baldwin, Ta Nahesi Coates, Mahmoud Darwish, and others. There will be a reading pack and time for Q&A.
Workshop Highlights:
Discussion of the degradation of language and writing in a political climate where words have ceased to have meaning
Discussion of how writers can convey the joys and betrayals of ordinary life purely through the written word
A reading list of classic texts that not only elevated language to its fullest form but also impacted culture
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Wednesday, August 6.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, November 1 + 2
12:00-4:00pm ET
Khadijah Queen
Khadijah Queen is the author of eight published books--poetry, memoir, criticism, drama--with three others in the works. She designed this class to share some of her strategies for finishing books in progress, so they get DONE rather than languish incomplete. She’ll talk through a step-by-step strategy with at least one of my published books, as well as an example of something in progress. And will give you some tools to help you think through finishing your project.
Working on a long poem, story, essay, play, or book? What will it take to finish? Can we do it—or at least create an actionable plan to finish—in a weekend? This intensive will provide solutions and strategies in the form of planning sessions, discussions, writing exercises, spreadsheets, and other resources. We’ll cover revision; how to bypass blocks, fears and resistances; myths and benefits of taking breaks; the role of editors and feedback during the publication process; and where planning meets plain old knuckling down. Any genre is welcome. This may be most useful for work between midway and “almost there.” Let’s find our way to the finish line together.
Workshop Highlights:
What do you want to finish?
Why do you want to finish it?
What's in the way of completion?
There are 2 full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, October 24.
1 Session: Saturday, November 6
11:00am-2:00pm ET
Mary Alice Stewart
Mary Alice Stewart is an Assistant Agent under Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency while grinding it out as a writer herself. Her fiction has appeared in Forever Mag, Joyland, No Tokens, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. Mary Alice has lectured for The Shipman Agency’s Work Room, North Carolina Writers’ Network, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Caricon: A Celebration of Caribbean Literature, Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writers’ Club, and more. She has attended The John Ashbery Home School and the Disquiet workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, and received a residency with Virginia Center for Creative Arts. As a private editor, her clients have gone on to publish with premier publishing houses. She is from Maine.
This seminar will discuss the nitty-gritty, "industry standard" query from the perspective of an Assistant Agent. We will go over often overlooked basics and effective ways to communicate your creative projects in hopes of making it out of the slush pile. In the spirit of “demystifying,” this lecture hopes to center the work and the writer above all else, in an industry that though is beholden to art, is also beholden to capitalism and market trends.
Over the course of this workshop, writers will listen to a comprehensive lecture and have the opportunity to ask further questions/clarifications in a Q&A, as well as a few prompts to help craft their own effective queries.
Fiction
2 Sessions: Wednesdays, July 23 + 30
6:00-8:00pm ET
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, instructor at Randolph College Low-Res MFA program, author of three New York Times Editor's Choice books. This class is for beginning and intermediate writers.
Summer Novel Seminar. Are you trying to write a book? Looking for professional advice on how to improve your craft? Need a better understanding of how publishing works? In these two classes, we'll be covering all aspects of novel writing including finding a compelling topic, choosing the right protagonist, refining setting, focusing your research, revising and completing the project, finding an agent, and picking the best publisher for your book.
The classes will be primarily lecture, but will include question and answer sessions as well as light generative work. Each session will be approximately 90 minutes.
Workshop Highlights:
Attendees will learn how to write a novel.
Attendees will learn how to refine their concept.
Attendees will learn how to find an agent/editor.
1 Session: Saturday, July 26
2:00-4:00pm ET
Daniel José Older
Daniel José Older, a lead story architect for Star Wars: The High Republic, is the New York Times best-selling author of many comics and twenty books, including the Young Adult series the Shadowshaper Cypher, which was named one of the best fantasy books of all time by TIME magazine and one of Esquire’s 80 Books Every Person Should Read. He won the International Latino Book Award and has been nominated for numerous others. Daniel has taught at VONA, VCFA, Antioch, Grub Street, and many other sites.
The common understanding of worldbuilding positions it mainly as a skill for sci-fi/fantasy writers. The truth is that every story — whether a picture book, memoir, history, or contemporary novel — demands that we put as much care, craft, and analysis into the creation of its world as we do for its characters. We ignore worldbuilding at the cost of great storytelling.
In this course, we will begin with a working definition that takes us beyond the simplicity of "setting." We'll place the always political act of contextualization into a deeper dialogue with the other elements of story. We'll build dynamic, living worlds and learn how to weave them through the larger narrative. Here, we understand place to be a crossroads, always. The ever-shifting dynamics of time, power, and spirit meld with the movements of people at these intersections, and that's what breathes life into them.
This class is for everyone, all experience levels welcome.
Workshop Highlights:
the foundational nuts and bolts of worldbuilding, and why it's for everyone.
going deeper: a place is meaningless without a power analysis.
how to put settings in conversation with other narrative fundamentals and the secret heart of your story.
This course has 1 full scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Wednesday, July 16.
2 Sessions: Thursdays, August 14 + 21
7:00-8:30pm ET
Nicole Dennis-Benn
Nicole Dennis-Benn is an award-winning novelist whose books place working-class Jamaicans, especially women and queer folk, at the center of the universal human experience. Her debut novel, HERE COMES THE SUN, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016 and was recently listed as a New York Times Most Notable Book of the decade. PATSY, her second novel, was a Today Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and was named best book of the year by TIME, Oprah, People, NPR, among others. Nicole was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Pen/Faulkner Award in Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award Fiction Prize. Her highly anticipated third novel, acquired by Random House, is forthcoming.
How much research do we need to get it right? How do we discern how much factual details to incorporate into a story without weighing it down? When do we give ourselves creative license? This course is for anyone who has those questions.
We'll discuss selected works and supplemental readings to aid our discussions on technique/craft in relation to shaping your story. Excerpts of other books and stories will be listed as we go along to better aid your individual storytelling process.
Workshop Highlights:
How much research do we need to get it right?
How do we discern how much factual details to incorporate into a story without weighing it down?
When do we give ourselves creative license?
2 Sessions: Sundays, October 5 + 12
1:00-3:00pm ET
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Called a “twisted, twisty genius” by Vulture and “ferociously intelligent” by The New York Times, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is a PEN Faulkner and Radcliffe award winning author. Her short stories have twice been featured in The Best American Short Stories (2023 & 2024). This two-part craft seminar is open to writers with any level of experience.
So much of writing a short story is about understanding how to best structure the story you are telling: how to compress time, how to make great leaps in time, how to include sufficient backstory without clogging up the narrative. In a short story, how you manage the question of time is pivotal for animating your characters and keeping your reader curious and engaged. And the opening paragraph is the story's heartbeat! In this two-part craft seminar, we will conduct close readings of four successful short stories and examine how each writer establishes the rules of their story world from the very first paragraph. We will also devote time to editing a story you are working on and discuss challenges you might be facing and how to move past them.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn to craft a pitch perfect opening paragraph
Learn tools for structuring your story
Learn tools for bringing your characters to life
This class has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, September 26.
1 Session: Thursday, November 13
6:00-8:00pm ET
Isle McElroy
Isle McElroy is the author of The Atmospherians, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and People Collide, named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Vogue, NPR, Them, and the New York Times. McElroy teaches at the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College and teaches an annual novel generator class.
What makes a novel impossible to put down? How does a novelist create momentum from the opening page? In this craft lecture, students will study opening passages from authors like Raven Leilani, Sarah Thankam Mathews, James Baldwin, Imogen Binnie, and others to learn how novel beginnings convey the arc of the book to follow.
As readers, we will focus on tone, setting, characterization, and plot to get a sense of what the writer has done to draw the reader into the world of the novel. Topics covered will include world-building, character development, shifting points-of-view, nontraditional form, unreliable narration, and dialogue. The attention to both introductory and advanced craft elements will make this course suitable for writers at every level.
Workshop Highlights:
How to create momentum and intrigue
How to deliver information while also building tension and developing character
The difference between mystery and confusion
This course has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, November 3.
1 Session: Wednesday, December 3
6:30-8:30pm ET
Michael Zapata
This master class is taught by award winning novelist and editor Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, among others, and founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine. He is the recent recipient of the Meier Foundation Artist Achievement Award. In Axios, Michael Zapata’s work was called an important “part of the growing Latino-futurism movement.”
Does free will even exist? What does uncertainty mean for our characters and the material realities through which they move and act? Does motivation even matter in prose? In this master class, Michael Zapata (author of the acclaimed novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau) will guide writers through inquiries into characterization to create works of fiction that both utilize and bend the limits of our characters’ lives, and the relationships they contain. Additionally, as both resources and examples, we will pull from a wide range of fictional material including the short stories When We Nearly Young by Mavis Gallant and Atomito by Liliana Colanzi, the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, and the film The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buńuel.
Workshop Highlights:
A deeper understanding of new ways to approach characterization.
New approaches in thinking about how material realities impact characters and their relationships.
This master class includes a Q&A.
This class has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, November 24.
2 Sessions: Wednesdays, December 10 + 17
7:00-9:00pm ET
Jess Row
Jess Row has published three collections of short stories (The Train to Lo Wu, Nobody Ever Gets Lost, and Storyknife, coming in July 2026). His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Granta, Ploughshares, the Baffler, and many other venues, and has been selected three times for the Best American Short Stories. A teacher of creative writing for more than 25 years, he's currently a professor in the Department of English at NYU.
Beginning with Jamaica Kincaid's beloved story "Girl," we will look at ways of taking a distinctive, dynamic voice and making a story out of it, using (among other techniques) context clues, submerged information, indirection and subtext. While the reader thinks they're simply listening to someone talk, they're absorbing an entire fictional world. It seems difficult at first, but in truth this is one of the easiest ways to create a story—even for complete beginners!
Our other authors will include Grace Paley, Kate Braverman, Yvonne Vera, Nicole Krauss, and Raymond Carver, and we'll also talk about one of my own stories, "Dear Yale."
Workshop Highlights:
What makes a good narrator: how to pick out the right voice and make it tell a story
How narrators (in most cases) tell us much more than they intend to—and why that matters
The varieties of first person short stories: from simple dramatized monologues to fully structured works
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Monday, December 1.
NonFiction
8 Sessions: Saturdays, July 5 - August 23
12:00-2:00pm ET
Greg Mania
This generator is taught by Greg Mania, author of the memoir, Born to Be Public, which has been named a best book of 2020 by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Largehearted Boy, and was a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Humor. He is currently working on his debut novel.
So, you have an idea for a book. Maybe you even already wrote it! Either way, you are ready for the next step. Does the thought of writing a book proposal for your nonfiction project make you want to light no fewer than 14 lavender-scented candles and lie in the dark for three days straight? You’re not alone! But after having written three book proposals, I promise you it’s not as daunting as it seems.
In order to demystify this seemingly overwhelming task, I’m thrilled to offer the Book Proposal Generator. Beginning with an overview of the anatomy of the book proposal by looking at several different examples, this generator will be broken up into eight weekly sessions. Each week, we will be discussing and going over one element of the book proposal in detail. At the end of each session, students will be assigned to complete a draft of the section discussed, which is to be handed in the following Friday, no later than 8 p.m. Students will receive peer and instructor feedback in class the following day, after which the next section of the book proposal will discussed and assigned to complete for the following week. By the final session, each student will have a complete book proposal, and will be ready to take the next step on the path to publication.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will receive several different examples of proposals that have successfully sold to use as reference when working on their own.
Students will receive extensive individual feedback on their own proposals from course instructor that will be emailed to them each week.
Each student will leave this course with a complete book proposal, ready to take the next step on the path to publication.
This workshop has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, June 28.
2 Sessions: Sundays, July 13 + 27
1:00-3:30pm ET
Alexander Chee
Note: For late sign ups, there is a recording of Session 1 available.
Alexander Chee is the author of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, named most recently as one of the best nonfiction books of the century (so far) by Kirkus Reviews. He is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction and guest edited Best American Essays 2022. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.
When I sat down to put together my first essay collection, I made a study of collections I admired and spoke to some writers who had written essay collections too. Some hadn’t thought about the organization much. Some had. Some hasn’t revised their essays—and some had. I had a vague idea of how a short story collection came together but that didn’t quite map onto this form—it mattered that I would be a speaker in these essays, and a character, too. But I didn’t want this to be a memoir, either. But some of those I read did. This class collects my thinking about this newly popular literary form as it expands. I will look at more collections, now that I am at work on my second essay collection, and offer a survey of the form by way of a mix of classics and newer works, discussing collections by Vladimir Nabakov, Barry Lopez, Cathy Park Hong, David Wojnarowicz, Elif Batuman, Jenn Shapland, Lucy Ives, among others.
This is a lecture class in two parts with suggested but not required readings and 6 writing prompts, 3 per class, that I have used to write essays for my next collection. There is no workshop component. Students will be sent a suggested reading list after registration. Reading the collections under discussion is recommended but not required.
Students will learn how to take an essay they admire and turn it into a writing prompt; and then do the same to an essay collection they admire. We will discuss the differences in approach between the essay collection written all at once, as a discrete aesthetic project; the essay collection drawn from your history of publication; the memoir in essays. And we will cover approaches to revising them, and looking for essay ideas you abandoned but could still finish among old drafts, old blogs and pitches that were never accepted.
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 6.
ASL interpreter included
2 Sessions: Saturday, August 2 + 9
1:00-2:00pm ET
Matthew Gavin Frank
Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of the nonfiction books, Submersed, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers, The Mad Feast, Preparing the Ghost, Pot Farm, and Barolo, as well as the poetry books The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Guernica, The New Republic, Iowa Review, Salon, Conjunctions, The Believer, and the Best Travel Writing and Best Food Writing anthologies. He’s a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.
In his piece, “Some Extensions on the Sovereignty of Science,” poet and essayist Alberto Rios writes, “When something explodes, / Turn exactly opposite from it and see what there is to see.” As essayists, how might we, too, “turn away from the explosion” in order to more fully focus on the associative subject matter lurking in the “opposite” direction? By “turning away” from the subject matter with which we most urgently want to engage, are we able to capture our subject’s emotive power even more poignantly? Join Matthew Gavin Frank for a conversation on the power of association as an entry point into the essay. As part of interrogating the parameters of our own stories, and storytelling tools, we will also discuss the often malleable and elusive parameters of “creative nonfiction” itself. The first session will include a lecture and delivery of a writing prompt. The second session will feature the participants' responses to the writing prompt in a celebratory "full-class reading."
Workshop Highlights:
Discuss and engage the malleable parameters of "creative nonfiction."
Practice embedding our personal narratives within a larger researched context.
Generate and share new work based on a writing prompt.
2 Sessions: Sundays, August 10 + 17
1:00-2:30pm ET
Jennifer Michael Hecht
This course is taught by bestselling and award-winning nonfiction author and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht. Hecht has published eight books including Doubt: A History with HarperCollins; Stay, with Yale; and The Wonder Paradox with FSG and she holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. She has also published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The American Poetry Review, and Tin House.
Nonfiction has its own rules, traditions, and shortcuts—for both writing and publication. We’ll talk about practical issues, like when to send a proposal and when to send a full draft, and literary issues, like how poetic to be, and how to be poetic. Drawing on experience in all aspects of nonfiction writing from memoir, to popular history, to essays, and academic work, the course will cover some secrets of writing true stories and getting them published. In both sessions the class will be open to questions of all kinds. In the interval between the two sessions, students will have the opportunity to have a bit of their work read by the instructor and to receive a brief response.
Workshop Highlights:
A deeper understanding of the poetics of nonfiction writing.
Some specific how-tos for publishing memoir, essays, and popular nonfiction.
An opportunity to have work read and responded to by the instructor.
This class has 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, August 3.
1 Session: Sunday, August 17
12:00-2:30pm ET
Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee is the award-winning best-selling author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, all lauded in reviews for the attention to descriptive writing and place.
As a younger reader, I loved novels like Frank Herbert's Dune, where a powerful sect of witches obtain power in part through their attention to detail, or in Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes' own careful eye seems to make every ordinary room or landscape into a trail only he can read. Or Batman, who used much the same approach in solving crimes. I think of it as training myself on the power and pleasure of description. As a writer, I have come to understand descriptive writing as being about more than summoning the magical power or the answer to a crime, and more than just the right metaphor at the right time. When done right you open sensory doors to other worlds. You carry the reader in your pocket or that of your character's as you run for the door, your life, the train. At every level of the story, across their five senses, you potentially can play the instrument the reader is.
And then we turn our attention to setting. Setting in writing is the people, as much as the place and the time. Whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction you will need to consider history, the laws of a place, the styles, the traditions, the weather, and how you are structuring the reader's relationship to time in this world. Your world for the duration of the story. Through writing samples and writing prompts, and revision prompts as well, we will establish some frameworks to understand why you are describing what you are describing and how to approach it from your own specific set of aesthetics and politics also--and how to address the politics of description. We will look at passages from works by Iris Murdoch, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, Penelope Fitzgerald, Martin Amis, Ocean Vuong, Toni Morrison, Jayne Anne Phillips and Kelly Link, among others.
This class will teach students to expand their sense of what description is and why it is done. We will cover methods for identifying what you habitually leave out or leave undone and how to solve for that by approaching what might be behind such omissions. How does the writer describe their own concerns unconsciously in what they describe and once they see this, how can they then expand those concerns or turn them toward other topics?
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Thursday, August 7.
1 Session: Sunday, August 24
3:00-5:30pm ET
Eula Biss
Eula Biss has been revising for the entire 21st century! She is the author of four books, most recently Having and Being Had and On Immunity: An Inoculation, a New York Times bestseller.
Revision is where the work of writing really happens, and revision demands not only skill, but stamina, strategy, and an understanding of process. This intensive is designed for writers with a draft already in progress and will include in-class revision exercises to help you build momentum. In addition to forwarding your work together, we’ll discuss some common challenges and explore strategies for overcoming obstacles. Ample time will be reserved for your questions and you’ll leave with a plan for ongoing revision. If you feel stuck or frustrated, this class is for you!
Writers should bring a short draft (500-2,000 words) or an excerpt from a longer draft to class. You won’t be asked to share this work with others, and it can be rough, incomplete, disastrously flawed, etc.
Workshop Highlights:
In-class revision exercises
Revision strategies for ongoing work
Your questions answered
This class has 5 full and 5 partial scholarships available. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Sunday, August 17.
Note: All class sessions will be recorded and this course can be taken asynchronously.
8 Sessions: Saturdays, September 6-October 25
12:00-2:00pm ET
Greg Mania
This generator is taught by Greg Mania, author of the memoir, Born to Be Public, which has been named a best book of 2020 by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Largehearted Boy, and was a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Humor. He is currently working on his debut novel.
So, you have an idea for a book. Maybe you even already wrote it! Either way, you are ready for the next step. Does the thought of writing a book proposal for your nonfiction project make you want to light no fewer than 14 lavender-scented candles and lie in the dark for three days straight? You’re not alone! But after having written three book proposals, I promise you it’s not as daunting as it seems.
In order to demystify this seemingly overwhelming task, I’m thrilled to offer the Book Proposal Generator. Beginning with an overview of the anatomy of the book proposal by looking at several different examples, this generator will be broken up into eight weekly sessions. Each week, we will be discussing and going over one element of the book proposal in detail. At the end of each session, students will be assigned to complete a draft of the section discussed, which is to be handed in the following Friday, no later than 8 p.m. Students will receive peer and instructor feedback in class the following day, after which the next section of the book proposal will discussed and assigned to complete for the following week. By the final session, each student will have a complete book proposal, and will be ready to take the next step on the path to publication.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will receive several different examples of proposals that have successfully sold to use as reference when working on their own.
Students will receive extensive individual feedback on their own proposals from course instructor that will be emailed to them each week.
Each student will leave this course with a complete book proposal, ready to take the next step on the path to publication.
This workshop has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, August 29.
8 Sessions: Sundays, September 28 - November 16
4:00-6:00pm ET
Sandy Ernest Allen
Writing about ourselves, writing about other people; both sound seemingly simple — and yet! Each can prove quite tricky, depending. Join acclaimed essayist, journalist and author Sandy Ernest Allen for an advanced 8-week, intermediate/advanced nonfiction writing workshop, focused around thinking through how to best write “true” stories, as in reported personal essays, literary memoirs and other such, while being respectful to ourselves — and to others. This could mean strangers; this could close family or friends. Oftentimes as writers of these forms and others, we’re dealing with all of the above, all at once. This (slightly non-traditional) workshop course is intended for serious literary nonfiction writers — personal essayists, memoirists and literary journalists in particular — who want to explore these complicated ethical issue with a group of peers. Prior writing workshop and prior nonfiction writing experience are both highly recommended. Applicants will be asked to submit a short writing sample for instructor review.
Author Sandy Ernest Allen has been grappling with these very questions for his whole career. A trans, queer writer whose longtime focus has been psychiatric history, he’s negotiated how to write about “the Other” as well as himself in his various literary nonfiction writing. His experimental, reported literary nonfiction debut A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia was first published by Scribner in 2018. The book, widely praised by critics, is written in two fonts, animating the broader issue of of how to even write about the diagnosis in question, let alone those given it. This effort was recognized by Jo Livingstone in the The New Republic, for example, who wrote: "A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is a watershed in empathetic adaptation of ‘outsider’ autobiography.” AKOMP was longlisted a top work of journalism of the decade in 2020 by NYU’s journalism school, amongst many other honors.
Originally from Northern California, Sandy received two degrees in nonfiction writing (from Brown and then the University of Iowa, MFA '12). He was then BuzzFeed News’ Deputy Features editor, helping to create the (late) platform’s global news brand for its first few years. He had a role in editing 200 features and long reported personal essays during that time, and wrote many of his own. He’s often in his pieces had to grapple with how to write about people whose experiences are perhaps quite distinct from his own — a topic that will be a focus of this course. As a freelancer for the last 8+ years, he's continued thinking through these issues in his formally innovative essays, features and audio stories. He’s appeared on This American Life in a duet with himself. He’s reported on the past and future of asylums and of bathrooms for the design-focused podcast 99% Invisible. Sandy has written both reported and personal pieces on madness and/or transness (including his own) for numerous outlets including The Believer, Eater, Cosmo, The Cut, Them, and many other venues. He's reported at farms and community centers in Montana and the Netherlands to give some examples, for pieces on the Hearing Voices Network and about the "care farms" movement, interacting with sources who have disabilities ranging from traumatic brain injuries to severe psych diagnoses to dementia. In his own writings and appearances elsewhere, Sandy is often discussing media coverage of people with (psychiatric) disabilities and of trans people, as on his popular newsletter What's Helping Today.
Together we’ll think through and learn more about issues like inherent power imbalances when writing about others, negotiating ...
how reporters (and memoirists) should approach working with various sorts of sources, both those we know and those we do not
how to factor in our own biases and identities when writing even reported essays and memoirs
practical advice how to best prepare to work with the likes of fact checkers, editors, producers (books, media, podcasts)
an informal workshop session during which peers will discuss and review your sample, according to your direction (more description below)
During our eight weeks together, we'll read, listen to, and discuss a variety of texts as we think through these issues. Each participant will be offered one workshop slot, during which we’ll all discuss a 5 – 10page submission of your choosing. (Your submissions can be distributed the week prior or handed to us all cold the day of. They can be a short essay or an excerpt from something longer.) The writer will read their sample to the rest (if they want) and then lead the class through a discussion of whatever concerns or questions they’re having, especially as regards their ethical quandaries related to self and others. So unlike a traditional workshop wherein a writer keeps silent, I’m expecting we’ll all just have a chat. My hope is the writer can help steer the group as to how the rest of us might be of use, perhaps more like an editorial meeting.
There is 1 half scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, September 19.
1 Session: Sunday, September 28
1:00-3:00pm ET
Anna Clark
Anna Clark wrote or edited three books, including The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Tragedy, which won the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism and the Rachel Carson environmental book award. She's been a Fulbright fellow in creative writing and a Knight-Wallace fellow in journalism. She is an investigative reporter at ProPublica and she teaches nonfiction in Alma College's MFA program in creative writing.
We will begin by exploring the porous boundaries of investigative literature, from Gwendolyn Brooks in Montgomery to Lynn Nottage in Reading, Pennsylvania, to Patrick Radden Keefe in Northern Ireland. Writers working in this tradition interrogate the public realm in imaginative ways, excavating new details, bringing a fresh vantage to profound questions, and twining the personal and political – all with the force of immersive storytelling.
We'll then explore specific ways of bringing investigative muscle to our own work, no matter what genre we’re writing in. In walking through ten unsung strategies for digging deep, we’ll spotlight surprising documents, archival resources and the narrative possibilities buried in public records. We’ll show how they can level-up your words with bracing detail, structure, intimacy and revelation. We’ll hold room for navigating misinformation and disinformation. And there’ll be time for your questions, too. Participants will receive a rich reading list and a tip sheet full of brass-tacks tools and resources.
Workshop Highlights:
Explore the techniques of classic works of investigative literature
Learn ten specific investigative strategies for bringing depth and detail to creative work in any genre
Strengthen your ability to vet disinformation and misinformation in your research
This class has 3 full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, September 19.
2 Sessions: Saturday, October 4 + 11
11:00am-1:00pm ET
David McLoghlin
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet, and a writer of memoir and personal essay. His third book, Crash Centre (2024) was recently shortlisted for The Pigott Prize, and has been hailed by senior Irish poet Thomas McCarthy as “a work unquestionably triumphant with poetic victories.” With unusual, memoir-like power, it explores what happens when grooming, gaslighting and abuse masquerade as trust in the relationship between the author and a charismatic literary monk. He was awarded a Literature Bursary (grant) for memoir by Ireland’s Arts Council and has an immersive essay forthcoming in Golfer’s Journal, and personal essays have recently been published on Poetry Foundation’s website. His poems have been broadcast on WNYC’s Radioloab and anthologized on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably in Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020).
In this practical masterclass you will learn to extract the story that you want to tell from the raw material of your life. The through-line is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as “A common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole.” In story, it’s the necklace that the pearls (sections, chapters, scenes, beats) are strung upon. Memoir or personal essay is not our autobiography, or whole life. Instead, it’s the exploration of a particular thread, or story, from your life. For example, in This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff writes about those years he spent with an abusive stepfather. His second memoir, In Pharoah’s Army, describes his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. There is no crossover. There is in life, but in memoir or personal essay we keep material separate in order to better tell a specific story.
We’ll identify the subject of the through-line using examples from movies, fiction and nonfiction, and will discuss short extracts to help us identify it in the writing of others. We’ll use prompts and in-class writing exercises to refine the core threads that make up the through line in our own work, and will talk about theme (which is more abstract) vs throughline (which is very practical as the story’s central question). If you’re interested in writing your personal story by teasing out that central defining thread, or through-line, then this class is for you.
You'll gain greater clarity around:
identifying your key scenes and what unites them or links them together;
identifying and continually refining your projects's core or central question;
what your through-line is, and will be well on the way to learning what to leave out and what to include, as you'll be writing with your through-line in mind.
This class has 1 full scholarship and 2 half scholarships available. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Friday, September 26.
1 Session: Sunday, October 12
2:00-4:00pm ET
Anna Clark
Goodness and happiness are difficult to write about in more than a glancing way, as if writers believe they are not real or multidimensional enough to be the stuff of stories. This craft seminar will explore what is possible when we take the light as seriously as the dark.
While this session is prose-centered, we will explore techniques of writers across genre, as well as practitioners of the solutions journalism movement. Moral force, kindness, delight, problem-solving, and play—we will consider strategies for writing about how they are felt and observed, and also how they function in community (that is, in story, or plot). We will practice some of those strategies ourselves, in prompts. We will discuss how to handle perception, conflict, tension, and truth while working in the major key. Along the way, we will watch for how to avoid glibness, superficiality, or falling into the traps of hero narratives. Participants will receive a reading list to accompany them on their own writerly adventures.
Workshop Highlights:
Explore ways of finding the story-rich nuance in goodness and happiness
Recognize the traps of superficiality -- and how to avoid them
Practice techniques for squarely facing experiences of kindness, delight and moral force with the intentionality they deserve
This class has 3 full scholarships and 2 half scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, October 3.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, October 18 + 19
1:00-3:00pm ET
Tricia Romano
Tricia Romano is the author of the acclaimed oral history, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture (Public Affairs, 2024) which Dwight Garner, writing for the New York Times Book Review, called “A well-made disco ball of a book.” It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Choice Awards, and a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize. A fellow at MacDowell, Ucross and Millay artist residencies, her work has been published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, Men’s Journal, Elle, Alta Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She has been a staff writer at the Seattle Times and served as the editor in chief of The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative newsweekly.
Oral histories are the redheaded stepchild of literature—often derided as "copy and paste" and "easy" to write—when they are complex and confounding art forms that require a dastardly level of organization and research. The narrative oral history should be a breeze to read; the difficulty of its construction hides in plain sight. The best compliment I've received is that my book is a page-turner that they couldn't put down even though it took me five years to write.
There are many different types of oral histories, but for this class in preparation attendees will read a few excerpts of some of the best narrative oral histories in recent times, including Please Kill Me, Edie, Meet Me in the Bathroom, and Live From Saturday night and talk about what makes them so successful. We will also do a live reading excerpt from Freaks to give an example of how to move a narrative along with many different voices. We will also talk about the practical and technical aspects of creating a narrative oral history.
Workshop Highlights:
We will talk about both the art and practice in the narrative oral history form, including:
What makes an oral history successful?
What are the many common pitfalls of oral history storytelling and how to avoid them?
Tools and tricks of an oral historian: What I wish I knew before starting my project. Interviewing techniques for longform oral history and how to bridge gaps in information.
This class has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, October 10.
1 Session: Sunday, November 16
12:00-2:00pm ET
Ruth Franklin
Ruth Franklin's criticism appears regularly in The New Yorker, Harper's, and other publications. Her books include Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award) and The Many Lives of Anne Frank. She teaches nonfiction writing (criticism, biography, and memoir) in the MFA program at Columbia University.
How can thinking and writing critically about art and culture deepen our practice as creative writers? Join Ruth Franklin, a longtime book critic and teacher of nonfiction, to consider how works or art to which we are drawn—paintings, books, film, photographs—can give us new ideas for or perspectives on our own work.
In this single-session class, we'll do a close read of a short lyric essay that blends criticism and memoir. We'll then practice some techniques to accomplish similar effects and discuss strategies for responding to the art we consume on a daily basis, from books and museum exhibitions to podcasts, television, and more.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn how to clearly and effectively describe a work of art
Explore the use of criticism to tell stories about our own lives
Generate possibilities for continuing the work we begin together
This class has 3 scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, November 7
Poetry
2 Sessions: Wednesdays, August 6 + 13
7:00-9:00pm ET
Jenny Johnson
Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, BOMB Magazine, and The New York Times. Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship, and a NEA Fellowship. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Writing poems (or lyrical prose) that is sound-driven can allow us a way into writing about that which feels hard to say or express. In this class, we will consider how sound effects meaning in poems by Ross Gay, Jennifer Chang, John Keene, Maggie Millner, and others, attending to what Robert Pinsky calls a poem’s “audible web.” We will consider the effects of specific vowels and consonants on a poem's soundscape, as well as strategies for using rhyme as an embodied element in your poems. You will also have a chance to experiment with sound in a few writing exercises, letting sound be your guide as you explore a subject matter that you’re struggling to tackle. We'll be taking cues from poets, but writers of all genres are welcome.
Workshop Highlights:
Observe the effects of sound and rhyme in model poems
Explore a difficult subject allowing sound to govern
Experiment with rhyme as an embodied element
This class has 1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 27.
Manuscript Consultations & Private Mentorships
Please note: If you’re interested in a manuscript consultation, please be sure to click through for complete pricing information. The price you see has variants. Not all prices for consultations are flat rates; some are registration fees that will go toward a final fee based upon work done. Please read individual writers’ descriptions for how they charge for their services.
With over a decade of experience as a poet, educator, book and magazine editor, and manuscript coach, I have guided writers from early drafts through extensive revisions and into publication. As faculty at Columbia University, Reed College, and the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and numerous literary and arts residencies, I have led workshops and coached students through poetry and prose projects, and helped writers develop their voice and craft across a variety of genres.
I have spent 25 years as a book, magazine, and anthology editor, working with authors on poetry manuscripts, nonfiction manuscripts (creative as well as informative), short form pieces such as articles, stories, and essays, and more. I combine creative coaching with editorial rigor, helping writers transform their poetic voice while paying attention to both the line and larger structure.
As the author of Field Theories (2017), Gospel (2009), and the forthcoming I Hope This Helps (2025), I bring a deep understanding of creative process, structure, and revision, complemented by my experience editing and shaping full-length manuscripts.
This consultation includes:
Initial Intake: A one-hour session to discuss your manuscript’s themes, goals, and challenges. We’ll explore your vision, identify key areas for growth, and discuss the direction you want your work to take.
Detailed manuscript feedback and editing: I will provide a close, comprehensive reading of your manuscript with holistic feedback. For poetry, this includes line edits, radical revision suggestions, and organizational recommendations for manuscripts of 40–90 pages. For prose (up to 100k words), this includes structural feedback, character development insights, plot coherence, and stylistic recommendations. My approach focuses on both the fine details and the broader arc, helping you refine your work at every level.
Follow-up consultation: A second meeting to discuss my editorial feedback and revisions. We will also cover publication strategies, potential next steps for your work, and methods for generating new creative material moving forward.
POETRY
Full-length Manuscript
40–90 pages: $1,000
Chapbook Special!
15-30 pages: $350
A Poem!
1-5 pages: $75
PROSE
Book Manuscript (< 100,000 words): $2,500
Creative Nonfiction and Nonfiction
Short Form Manuscript (Essays, Stories, Articles): starting at $250 (hourly rate)
I look forward to helping you craft your best work and explore new creative possibilities!
COACHING
I love working with authors to bring their books to life from wherever they are to where they need to go!
I am available to work with you at any stage of your writing process — from idea to proposal and submission — and engage a variety of methods to help you get your work done and put your best foot forward on the page.
I have limited availability from season to season to take on just a few individual coaching clients. What you gain in me is a thought partner, a writing partner, and a sounding board.
What we’ll do together:
Brainstorm: Helping you to dream up and actualize ideas for your book.
Drafting: Helping you to develop your first draft and then further develop that draft into a finished manuscript.
Encouragement: Providing support and accountability to help you overcome obstacles and achieve your goals.
Proposals: Working with you, once your manuscript is ready, to develop a comprehensive book proposal.
Pricing: Begins at $750 per week (ideal project commitment is 12 weeks)
“I chose to work with Lillian-Yvonne on my second manuscript because they're a true innovator in the field of poetics, leveraging technology and other modes of inquiry to push the limits of language, to push the poem itself beyond what we might conventionally think it can say or do. Lillian-Yvonne’s critiques are always astute, and challenging, and simultaneously uplifting, somehow, while always respecting what the poem itself is trying to accomplish. Ultimately Lillian-Yvonne helped me shape my manuscript into something more than I myself imagined it could be. And that’s a gift.” - Jubi Arriola-Headley
$400/hr
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram will provide a holistic reading of the manuscript and comment on the overall book concept, ideas, and major themes. This option also includes comments on poem ordering and arrangement, with extensive line edits and comments on individual poems. Manuscript length 48-64 pages. Additional fee to be negotiated for manuscripts between 64-80 pages.
I teach in English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where I’m in the core MFA faculty. I’ve previously taught at Emory University, the University of Michigan, and North Carolina State University, and I’ve also been in the core MFA faculty at the latter two. Many manuscripts on which I have consulted have become award-winning collections with leading presses. Working one-on-one with writers is one of my favorite responsibilities. I have a particular love for questions regarding sequencing and for offering generative feedback, although I enjoy every aspect of manuscript critique, including offering practical recommendations and tips for publication and promotion (if desired).
My experience as a poet lends itself to helping writers re-envision what they have created; my experience as a scholar of poetry lends itself to offering nuanced readings of the text as it is as well as identifying areas it may wish to further explore. I also have a substantial editorial background: I’ve been poetry editor of AGNI (where my time on the editorial staff totaled thirteen years), art editor of At Length, a guest editor for the Academy’s Poem-a-Day, served on the Alice James Books Editorial Board, and served as a reader or contest judge for several book prizes, among other commitments.
I am the author of Arrow (Alice James Books (U.S.)/Carcanet Press (U.K.), 2020), which received coverage in the New York Times, NPR, the Guardian, and other venues, and received the GLCA New Writers Award, the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize (U.K.), and other honors. Poems from my second in-progress collection, The B-Sides of the Golden Record, have been published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Kenyon Review, The Offing, Massachusetts Review, Poetry, Split This Rock’s The Quarry, LARB Quarterly, and elsewhere. I’m also currently writing a scholarly book titled Grave Dangers: Poetics and the Ethics of Death in the Anthropocene, which is under advance contract with the University of Minnesota Press, and my peer-reviewed critical articles have appeared in Cultural Critique, Modernism/modernity, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and elsewhere. I’ve received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and Kundiman, and I’ve been shortlisted for the U.K.’s Forward Prize.
Figuring out what makes books tick is one of my favorite things to do, and I look forward to working with you.
Manuscript review: This manuscript consultation includes 60 minutes of Zoom time to be used however you and I decide would be most beneficial to you (recommended: a 30-minute initial conversation about your book, your goals for it, and your sense of where it stands and what it needs, followed by a 30-minute post-read conversation). Next, I will provide a holistic reading of the manuscript and comment on the overall book concept, ideas, and major themes, including on sequencing and arrangement. You can also select up to 15 pages on which to receive extensive line edits, questions, and analyses. You will also receive resources to aid in revision of individual poems as well as the full collection. We’ll discuss a timeframe for our work together in our first meeting (or over email, if you elect not to use any Zoom time on an initial meeting). Manuscript length up to 80 pages. Additional fee to be negotiated for longer manuscripts. $400
Manuscript review + revision: At this level, I will also read the revised manuscript with the same level of response. You’ll also receive up to 60 additional minutes of Zoom time, with the schedule determined collaboratively (e.g. 30 minutes after first-read feedback and a 30-minute post-second read conversation, or the full 60 after the second read). The goal of the additional Zoom minutes is so that we can discuss my feedback, any additional questions you may have, and other associated topics that may be on your mind, such as publication. We’ll discuss a timeframe for our work together in our first meeting. $700
I am a poet with three published poetry collections and have been working one-on-one with writers for over five years, including consulting as faculty on collections from students at Randolph College, the Jack Kerouac Disembodied School of Poetics, UC Riverside, and NYU. My accolades include a Pulitzer nomination, the 2017 National Poetry Series, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation, and more. I have an MFA from the University of Arizona as well as an MA in English Literature from UC Irvine and currently teach poetry as part of Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA program
I believe in providing in-depth generative feedback. In our manuscript consultation, I will work to give a sense of how I’m reading the manuscript, what excites me, but above all what I believe could be emphasized, expanded, focused in on, and written through. This will include a combination of suggested edits, expansions, generative prompts, reordering, and/or reading recommendations.
This will typically take the form of an email exchange followed by a close-reading. Depending on manuscript length, reading will take between two to four hours. I will write and provide detailed notes throughout this process. In addition to the notes, we’ll meet virtually for a discussion of the work, preferably two hours. As I charge by the hour, however, this process is quite flexible, and I am willing to work with what works best for you.
I model my manuscript consultation approach after radical empathy and radical listening. This manuscript consultation aims to be supportive, inclusive and collaborative, with an eye towards helping your novel become the best possible version of itself through a detailed and deep understanding of the craft of fiction. What’s included:
A one hour introductory phone call to understand what your needs are, what you are struggling with and what you hope to achieve.
An extensive editorial letter beginning with the manuscript’s summary and strengths, followed by dedicated sections on: worldbuilding, characterization, character relationships, story arc/narrative structure, pacing/timeline, emotional effect, language and dialogue, in addition to anything specific to your manuscript that a) you want to address or b) that comes to my attention while reading.* The editorial letter will conclude with suggestions and ideas for how the overall manuscript might be improved.
*Examples: setting, interiorization, stakes, internal vs. external journey, braiding multiple storylines, logical inconsistencies/plausibility, narrative POV, narrative subversion (“twists”), reader investment, tone and atmosphere, scaffolding, beginnings and endings, compression and expansion, thematic question(s), authorial vs. character knowledge, missed opportunities, sensitivity remarks and more.
A one hour follow-up phone call after you have processed the editorial letter, have any questions and/or would like to discuss your revision plan. During this call, I can also answer any questions about the querying and publishing process.
Note: Line edits are not included.
All genres of fiction are welcome, including speculative fiction.
Please submit the first 20 pages of your novel to see if we are a good fit.
Max word count: 100,000 words.
Flat Fee $2,500
True stories, well told, matter! I will give line-by-line editing and a letter with detailed editorial notes on your nonfiction manuscripts. That includes book chapters, essays, artist statements, book proposals, articles, work samples, or any other form of nonfiction prose.
Price: $200 flat fee for the first 20 pages (12 pt. Times New Roman, double-spaced, minimum of 1-inch margins) and $4 for every page after that.
A la carte option: For a manuscript consultation that includes a letter with detailed editorial feedback, but no line-by-line edits, the flat fee is $150 for the first 20 pages (12 pt. Times New Roman, double-spaced, minimum of 1-inch margins) and $3 for every page after that.
Note: payment is for initial flat fee; additional page fees to be determined and invoiced separately.
“I am a poet turned first-time memoirist, and Kavita was the perfect reader for my manuscript. Her attention to narrative structure, flow and focus, and sensory detail helped sharpen my scenes and chapters. For an Asian American coming-of-age narrative set in the turbulent ‘60s, Kavita’s experience and craft recommendations on weaving together social issues with the personal were particularly valuable." - Jeffrey Thomas Leong, student
My manuscript consultation is based on an examination of how a work balances the craft of writing with the substance of conscience, the personal and the political. These guiding principles are ones that I've culled through my fifteen years working for social change and ten years writing about it, including in my recent book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Change. As the creator of the Writing with Conscience class which I've offered through The Shipman Agency, I'm inspired by helping more writers to be writers of conscience.I offer two types of manuscript consultations:
1) Stand Alone Manuscripts - Essays, Articles, Op Eds, Stories. Sliding scale starting at $150 based on length/word count. This includes substantive summary feedback about what is working well and suggestions for improvement as well as line edits.
2) Book Manuscripts - Draft manuscripts for book length works. Sliding scale starting at $500 depending on the length of work. I will provide summary feedback on how the manuscript hangs together as a cohesive whole, respond to the narrative flow and narrative elements, whether the desired themes are coming through, and whether there is a balance between personal and political themes. This also includes a 20 minute post feedback consultation via phone/zoom to discuss any questions.
I have taught poetry workshops and advised poetry thesis manuscripts for the past decade at Princeton University, as well as in the MFA programs at NYU and Columbia, along with guest workshops in graduate and community programs around the country. I have seen manuscripts through from rough drafts, extensive revision, and into publication. I have published four of my own books of poems including Days & Days (Knopf, 2019) and the forthcoming Pacific Power & Light (Knopf, 2024). Many of my poems have appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere.
This consultation includes an initial hour-long meeting and conversation about what you imagine your book to be, where it comes from and where you would like it to go. What are your concerns about the work, and what are you most excited about. With these things in mind I will closely read the book and provide both holistic notes as well as suggesting line edits and possible developments and alternatives, including ordering of the manuscript and “writing into the corners” of the book. I will send you these edits and ideas and then we will meet a second time to discuss them, as well as publication possibilities, and strategies for creating new work in the future.
I look forward to working with you!
Short stories, Personal Essays, Memoir
You: Are not mainstream in your outlook. Your vision is wide, and you are moved to write a work that has deep resonance for your community, your environment, your country, your world. Your story could be intimate and personal or complex and global or all these things. Line-by-line editing and a letter with detailed editorial notes on your project. I have taught for decades in the US (across the country and at a range of institutions including Columbia University and CCNY) and abroad, and published collections of stories, essays, and novels. I have also published poetry and worked as a freelance journalist. I meet writers where they are, with regard for who they are as people, what has moved them to write, and with a view to helping them go further. I help writers to lean into the emotional truths that underlie their writing, to draw on their strengths, and to develop under-utilizedaspects of their repertoire.
Price levels:
1 Detailed editorial feedback letter including line edits. $200 for the first 20 pages (12 pt. Times, double-spaced, 1-inch margins) and $4 for every page after that.
2 Detailed editorial feedback letter but no line-edits. $150 for the first 20 pages (format as above), $3 each additional page.
3. Full manuscript consultation available by request. As a veteran in the literary world, I have an extensive network of contacts across the media and publishing industries. I routinely connect my students to industry professionals when I feel their projects are ready. Please provide a work sample of up to 15 pages for review to evaluate fit. The fee for a complete manuscript review and 2 feedback sessions (1 hour each) is $1,200 for projects up to 60k words and $1,500 for those up to 90k words.
All Genres
Maria is a New York Times-bestselling, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning novelist, translator, poet, and dramatist whose work unearths hidden meanings, characters, and possibilities in stories we think we know. She's the author of eight books, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation (2020) and The Mere Wife (2018). In 2023, she delivered the Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Oxford, and released a reimagining of Virgil's Aeneid into a full-cast musical for Audible. Her version of the literary world is one in which all the genres merge, all the storytellers are equally thrilling, and there are definitely dragons. Her work on Beowulf was described in The New Yorker as "storming the dusty halls of the library, upending the crowded shelf of Beowulf translations to make room for something completely new."
Maria has most recently taught writing at Sarah Lawrence and Bennington, and she regularly teaches workshops at universities around the world. For the Shipman Agency Workroom, she's taught sessions on creating the fantastical, finding your voice, adapting the classics into contemporary work, and editing yourself, among many others.
Her consultations will help you find the tools to go deeper in your work, to finish and submit your newly revised novel, or even to totally reinvent yourself as a writer, diving into the project you've been too afraid to start. She's also happy to consult with writers who don't have manuscripts yet, as long as they have an idea and a work sample.
To begin, please submit a short description of your project, and of your consultation goals, which Maria will review to make sure it's a good fit. If approved, the next step is registering and paying the initial $300 for one hour of work. You'll submit the first 15 pages of your manuscript, as well as a synopsis of the overall project and a bio. Maria will provide written notes on the first 15 pages, along with an estimate for the full job.
If you don't have a manuscript yet, the consultation series will begin with the above - short description and consultation goals, review, initial payment - and then you'll begin with an hourlong Zoom session to make a plan of attack.
The consultations will include Zoom or phone sessions with questions, research suggestions, creative brainstorming, and live feedback. Together, you'll make a plan that suits your project. Maria's style is both empathetic and pragmatic - she'll help you achieve your writing goals, and offer a great deal of feedback and ideas along the way.
The payment is for one hour of work, plus preparation of an estimate for the full project. Additional hours will be invoiced and paid after registration.
Her rate is $300/hour, and her minimum is $1200.
Poetry
I’ve taught in the graduate writing programs at The New School and Columbia and have guided MFA poetry collections of a great variety of poetic schools and backgrounds. My eclectic taste for whatever is surprising, insightful, and urgent is evident, I hope, in the many brief reviews I’ve written for the Academy of American Poets, at poets.org. For $1,250 I can give a manuscript a close read with notes throughout, a written response of 1-2 pages, and two online meetings. For $1,500 I will read the revised manuscript as well, with the same level of response, both on the page and in a brief report, and in another online meeting.
Nonfiction
I have worked with authors on works of memoir, journalism, creative nonfiction, and academic manuscripts. For $1,250 I read the manuscript and write up a 1-2 page response, provide selected pages with detailed line edits, and have two online meetings to discuss. Depending on the readiness of the manuscript this may be mostly about overall structure and the development of your book’s best feature, or about line edits for style and power. I’ll also advise on steps toward publication. At the $1,500 rate my response is 4-5 pages and I return the whole manuscript with notes throughout.
Short Story collections, Novels
Full manuscript $1750
A manuscript consultation with me centers energy, joy, and deep intentionality. In engaging with your fiction, I prioritize radical listening and open communication, ensuring your creative vision and unique voice will not only guide our discussion, but also shape my engagement with your pages. I seek to meet every project with equal parts rigor and respect. Committed to encountering work through a decolonial lens, I am especially equipped to engage with projects that decenter the white, western gaze while challenging and subverting a colonial hegemony. I welcome projects that play with time, structure, point of view, and language in a way that expands our understanding of literature while championing historically disenfranchised voices. Empathy brews at the center of this work—work I hope we will do together.
Specifically, you can expect:
A one-hour initial conversation to discuss your vision, intentions, and goals for your project. What you wish to achieve, and how I can best support your aspirations.
A 4-6 page (single spaced) editorial letter addressing your project through the lens of your clarified vision. As I believe we writers learn as much from leaning into our strengths as we do from identifying where we might push our work even further, I will spend proportionate time considering both with a consistent focus on locating the heart of your work. Fictional craft elements I’ll consider include character development, structure, voice, tone, plot, time/pacing, point of view/perspective, and place, among others.
Detailed line edits and margin notes on the first 20 pages of the manuscript.
A one-hour follow-up conversation to address any questions you may have while charting a revision plan that feels approachable and in line with your goals.
Flat fee applies to projects up to 100K words. A $1 fee for every page over 100K applies.
My ask of you: Please send the first 20 pages of your manuscript to Work Room manager Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com so I can determine if I will be the best reader for your work. Due to the personal nature of engaging honestly with one’s work-in-progress, I wish to honor your time, and ensure my approach will best align with your project and your needs.
As a mixed Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) writer, reader, and teacher, I am committed to championing voices that have been historically marginalized and disenfranchised. I have taught creative writing at the graduate level, provided manuscript consultations, and led workshops and craft seminars for the last five years. My goal is to bring this experience and enthusiastic investment in artmaking to your work-in-progress, helping you identify and hone your individual voice rather than assert my own.
Add-on / A la Carte:
A one-hour consultation on querying agents, including a thorough review of a query letter with line notes: $300
I will provide feedback about your poetry manuscript, including line edits, radical revision suggestions, and organizational recommendations. This feedback will come in the form of notes and conversation. The cost is $500 for a 2-hour consultation, including written notes, for manuscripts between 40 to 70 pages.
Rickey Laurentiis is offering tutorials and consultantships in the poem, the manuscript & the syllabus.
Rickey Laurentiis is a poet who was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to study light. Their debut book, Boy with Thorn, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. As a curator and art writer, they have work with a number of institutions including The Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, John Hopkins Archaeological Museum, and the the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Their next book is Death of the First Idea, coming froom Knopf in 2025. Literary honors include fellowships from the Lannan Literary Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh. Friends call her Riis.
In private consultantships, I will work one-one-one in periods of an hour or more in three subjects: individual tutorials concerning packets of poems (no more than 15 pages of work) & full consultantships on the poetry manuscript (no more than 60 pages of work) and writing syllabi (including poetry, fiction and nonfiction courses). In my tutorials and consultantships, I aim to listen carefully; to hear what lives under the ask towards what’s best for the piece of writing at hand or the course being developed. I want the tutor or client to leave feeling restored to their assignment as writer, and with specific tactics to apply to their writing in its general improvement, and specific strategies to apply in the classroom.
Tutorials, 1 hour, $150
Consultantships 1.5hr or more, starting at $500
Fiction, Nonfiction
Sarah Manguso is the author of ten books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her books are frequently described as crossing, blurring, or reinventing genres.
She has taught creative writing for more than twenty-five years, both privately and at various institutions of higher learning, and she would welcome the opportunity to work with you on a manuscript of fiction or nonfiction.
To receive an estimate, please register and pay the initial $250 for one hour of work. Sarah will provide notes and line edits on the first few pages of your manuscript, along with an estimate for the full job.
Her rate is $250/hr, and her minimum fee is $1500.
Sarah’s fee includes detailed line edits and notes on all aspects of the work, which will be provided via Track Changes. Sarah will then be available for a discussion via phone or Zoom.
Please note that upfront payment is for one hour of work plus preparation of an estimate for the full project. Additional hours will be invoiced and paid after registration.
“Greg’s approach to teaching and mentorship is representative of who he is as a whole: thoughtful, compassionate, insightful, honest, and humorous. I’ve benefited from one-on-one sessions with him and have also taken part in a seminar that he led. In each setting, Greg excelled at providing his students with the individualized counsel that an aspiring writer can only hope for. He provides equal parts praise, guidance, and compassionate critique in a way that encourages his students to harness and unleash their own creative prowess."
- Clay Klaus-Wade
"Greg is a fantastic teacher. He is encouraging, specific in his teachings and an effective communicator. He clearly loves to teach and to share his knowledge. He always involves the student and simultaneously emboldens the student to craft their own style. He creates a safe space for each student to ask questions, to test their own theories and assumptions."
- Buffy Shutt
Hi! Thanks for your interest in learning with me. A little bit about myself: I am the author of the memoir, Born to Be Public, which has been named a best book of 2020 by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Largehearted Boy, and was a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Humor. I am currently working on my next memoir, Not a Wonderland: Dispatches From a Body That's Trying to Kill Me, and Save Our Serotonin: An Illustrated Guide for the Modern and Mentally Ill.
My teaching philosophy is pretty simple: If you care about your story, someone else will, too. My job—and joy—is to help my students hone their craft by looking inward. Because only by looking inward can you learn to write about the way you move through the world. I'm not here to teach as much as I am to hold up a mirror and help you mine your reflection for the things you might not have noticed before or hadn't thought to consider in one way or another—all of the things that make up the fabric of your being, the things that should be radically honored both on and off the page.
This consultation will begin with an initial hour-long meeting and conversation about your work-in-progress. I want to hear about why you started writing your project, and where you imagine it going. I want to know why your project matters to you. We will also discuss any concerns or challenges you face, as well as what you want to achieve by the time you finish your final draft.
Following our conversation, I will then give line-by-line edits, along with detailed editorial notes on your work-in-progress. This can include a nonfiction manuscript, book proposal, book chapters, query letter, essay(s), article(s), work samples, or any other form of nonfiction prose.
Price breakdown: $200 flat fee for the first 20 pages (12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and one-inch margins), and $3 for every page after that.
A la carte option: For a manuscript consultation that includes a letter with detailed editorial feedback, but no line-by-line edits, the flat fee is $175 for the first 20 pages (12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, and one-inch margins), and $3 for every page after that.
Please note: Payment is for the initial flat fee. Additional page fees to be determined and invoiced separately.
I look forward to working—and learning—with you!
AX (Ana) Mina
As a nonfiction writer, you have great ideas. How do you get the word out and build a platform? I offer coaching as a tool to help you refine your ideas, communicate them effectively and find the right people to support your work.
You have great thoughts to share — how do you communicate them crisply and precisely for public consumption? Think of thought leadership as a layer that supercharges your communications efforts. Building from my experience developing communications strategy, we’ll develop a custom strategy for getting the word out there about your work and your best ideas.
Every writing client has different needs, and we’ll work on a toolkit that will help you take action on bringing your ikigai, or life’s purpose, into fruition through guided exercises on a tool called Quenza and ongoing coaching sessions. Here’s an example of some of the tools we can explore together:
Brainstorming and ideation sessions — start with your idea, no matter how rough, and let’s refine it through active feedback and idea generation
Working through creative blocks, using creative strategy and ideation, meditation, yoga, tarot and somatic wellness practices (I’m a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher with training in secular mindfulness)
Getting the word out: Public speaking skills, and telling the story of yourself and your work
Leadership and management skills, whether for those leading creative communities and mission-driven organizations or those running their own business.
Clarifying your core values and mission as a writer (i.e., your ikigai)
Coaching is a partnership, and I’m happy to take a first 30 minute call for free to determine two things: (1) how we vibe together as people and creative and (2) whether there’s a fit with what you’re looking for and where I can help. If we mutually agree to move forward, we’ll develop a coaching package that works for you — whether that’s finding your ikigai, developing your platform or something more custom. We can also do ad hoc, ongoing coaching to help you work through creative blocks.
Sessions are a sliding scale of $125-200 for up to 75 minutes (with a suggested rate of $150), and a 5 pack is available for $500 - 800 (20% discount).
The expectation that writers “rip off the Band-Aid” or “just do it” when the perspectives we’re called to express feel painful or triggering, is a form of normalized suffering that racial capitalism and patriarchal industries depend on. By overriding feelings of resistance and hesitation in favor of production, we lose critical information, and the capacity to form language unique to our individual journeys.
If you’re into pain, that’s great. But for everyone else: writing doesn’t need to feel tortuous. Persistent anxiety and physical manifestations of stress aren’t necessarily proof that you’re “doing the work.” Insight—about even the darkest of subjects—can take place in moments of connection, gratitude, curiosity, and pleasure. Sometimes the language you need requires going outside, working with your hands, developing personal rituals, re-learning rest, shifting (even temporarily) the orientation and shape of your life ... We can think through the specific auxiliary practices that make sense for your body, your budget, your values, and your work.
I’m passionate about working with writers who are ready to develop multimodal strategies in support of specific projects, concerns, or interests. This approach to generating and revising work involves a commitment to evaluating the ways you spend time and relate to others during all of the time that you aren’t writing. It isn’t for everyone. Ask yourself if you are open to:
developing practices of invitation that honor your physical and emotional boundaries, while intentionally creating space for them to expand;
learning to recognize, trust, and follow the languages/silences that are unique to you, even when they extend beyond recognizable signifiers and established frames;
reframing mastery as a commitment to curiosity and honesty about what the world looks like from exactly where you are;
preparing yourself in physical and material ways for the language that you need to arrive.
If so, let’s start with a 30-min call. You can share your goals and we’ll decide on a plan that feels meaningful to you. This consultation is available to individual writers as well as small, focused groups working in a similar vein. Due to the nature of the process, in most cases a minimum of two sessions will be required. A sliding scale is available for QTBIPOC writers and writers with disabilities.
The following is provided as a guide; actual prices will depend on the scope of your project.
Standard Fee:
Starting at $150 / 75 minutes for a single writer
Starting at $225 / 90 minutes for small groups
Sliding Scale:
Starts at $100 for a single writer and $175 for small groups
Graphic novels, memoirs, and book-length comics comprise one of the fastest growing book markets world wide, but commercial publishing houses don’t always offer rigorous editing the way they might with books of more traditional prose. I will offer detailed editorial notes on drafts of graphic novel, memoir, essay, and comics projects ranging from short, stand-alone pieces to book-length projects. As a comics editor, I examine the effectiveness of the text—the strength of the language, voice, details, and dialogue—as well as the image—pacing, framing, perspective, and technique. I also critique the relationship between the two, and offer suggestions as to how text and image can function together most effectively to communicate a story, argument, or idea.
$600 for a manuscript up to 20-pages;
$800 for a manuscript up to 50-pages;
$1200 for a manuscript up to 120 pages;
$2000 for a manuscript up to 250 pages
Please note: If your graphic manuscript is particularly prose-heavy, fee structure can be discussed separately.
Spring Consultation Offer (April 20-June 1)
Novel/YA Novel
I will provide editorial coaching, revision notes, and feedback in the form of an editorial letter and one virtual meeting (1 hour). $400
Poetry Manuscript
I will provide editorial coaching, revision, comprehensive notes, and individual line edits in the form of an editorial letter and one virtual meeting (1 hour). $300
N.B. At this time, Ayşegül is not available to begin new consultations until October.
This manuscript consultation is intended to find the essential strengths of your project—the places where the writing comes alive—and identify the aspects of your novel-in-progress that give you joy. From here, we will discuss ways to complete the book, bring out its inherent qualities, and to follow your own voice in the process.
After an initial one-hour conversation, where we discuss your vision and the areas you would like to tackle, I will read the manuscript and offer a detailed editorial letter, notes throughout the manuscript, and 5-10 pages of in-depth line edits. In my letter, I will focus on plot elements, character development, structure, and voice. We will meet again for an hour-long call to discuss my notes and come up with a revision plan that feels manageable and right for the book.
I will also offer guidance about querying agents, and the editorial process.
I have led novel writing workshops as well as individual consultations for the past five years and love to collaborate with writers to find the unique qualities of their projects and help them finish their books with enthusiasm (and patience!)
Writers work alone and in the dark. The process of crafting a piece of writing that generates meaning and emotion, a work capable of nothing less than dreaming the reader into a world entirely of the writer’s making, is a daunting task. For as vast and mysterious as the levers of the writer’s imagination may be, the only tools at the writer’s disposal are paltry. Something to write with and something to write on. The only other thing the writer requires is a reader. Someone to witness the work and offer feedback. Inevitably, regardless of the quality of that feedback, the writer is dissatisfied. The writer suspects and rightly so, that there are issues. There are always issues, and the writer, regardless of how skilled they may be, cannot see them. They know this, and it’s maddening. Sometimes the issues are related to craft. The structure isn’t helping the story tell itself. The pacing is out of whack. The point of view is fuzzy. Other times the problem isn’t on the page but in the writer themselves. They don’t what the story is or why they’re telling it. They can’t recognize what is most alive in their work. If you find yourself in such a place, I offer my help. For years I have been helping writers in just this way. Helping them to locate the beating heart in their stories and strategize solutions for revision that work in the direction of their strengths.
You have several options.
Option1.
You receive notes on the text: (queries, comments and suggested edits) an editorial letter and an hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $450
Option 2.
You receive an editorial letter, and an hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $350
Option 3.
Your manuscript is returned to you with margin notes and an editorial letter addressing matters of craft. $250.
Option 4.
An hour-long conference via Zoom/FaceTime/telephone to discuss the work’s strengths and weaknesses, big picture issues and avenues to pursue in revision. $250
My rates are based on twenty, double-spaced, twelve-point type pages, or $250 an hour for longer works.
Do you have ideas or writing you’d like to turn into a creative non-fiction book? Over the past twenty years, I’ve published five award-winning nonfiction books and two edited collections, have edited dozens of books as an editor/publisher and have served as a judge for the National Book Awards in Non-Fiction. I think in books! Meet with me on zoom for up to 2 hours to talk through your book concept. We can discuss how to develop your idea into a book-length project, how to organize and structure it, find research and reporting opportunities, and publishing strategies, upon request. $500
Need feedback to turn your book-in-progress into a polished manuscript ready for submission? Send me your pages. I’ll provide a 3-4 page written response on structure, organization, clarity, originality, and publishing strategies and meet with you on zoom to discuss. $2000
David Shields specializes in literary nonfiction/creative nonfiction, autobiography, memoir, personal essay, the curated diary, literary collage, literary collaboration, oral history, dialogic books, one-act plays, remix/repurposing/“appropriation,” “found documents”/fraudulent artifacts, documentary film, the essay film, screenwriting, the photo essay, the elegy, brevity, the prose-poem, the short-short, flash fiction, “autofiction,” and other kinds of boundary-jumping work.
He’d welcome the opportunity to consult with you on your work, whether it’s a sequence of brief essays, a long collage, a screenplay, a book-length work-in-progress, or anything in between.
$250/hour for a one-to-one consultation, which involves a writer sending a manuscript electronically. It will be marked up using Track Changes, and followed by a phone conversation about the notes.
For private consults, the fee is $250/hour, or a negotiated flat fee for a longer manuscript. Detailed edits, line edits, and big-picture structure will be provided.
Please note: upfront payment is for one hour; additional hours to be discussed and invoiced after registration.
$250/hour
Writers have less editorial time with their in-house editors than ever. Many agents are great with the deal but simply aren't editors. Where is a writer to turn?
For thirty years I've worked with literary writers in various capacities but my great love has been the deep dive into a manuscript with them. While I always keep an eye toward what a reader might think, I maintain deep respect for the integrity of work that is formally challenging, based in vernacular, or otherwise considered non-traditional. I will work with literary writers in both fiction and non-fiction.
We'd begin, ideally, with the review of a complete manuscript though writers "in process" are welcome to set up other arrangements. You'll receive notes with a focus on how the draft as a whole works rather than the nitty gritty of a line edit. We'll then set a schedule for the rewrite and can review in sections or as a whole. The second draft may be the place we agree to do a line edit. Ideally, the response to that draft allows us to look at ahead at publishing possibilities.
Having worked "inside" the industry, I will provide counsel on next steps when we're done i.e. referrals can be made to agents; we can work together on an excerpt for a magazine or journal. Ongoing coaching and career consultation can be provided whether you're an editorial client or not. Non-editorial clients must commit to a minimum number of hours to be determined.
Fees are $250 per hour for both editorial and career consultation services. Writers must commit to a minimum number of hours, to be determined. Accommodations made for monthly retainer clients.
Please note: upfront payment is for first hour; number of hours and final cost to be discussed after registration.
Short story and essay consultations. Micro- and macro-suggestions on the manuscript, followed by a one-hour phone consultation. Up to 25 pages, 7,000 word count maximum. Critique will be based on 20 years of editing writers for Tin House, including pieces that have been included in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, O’Henry Prize Stories, and have been included in collections that have garnered National Book Award nominations, MacArthur Genius Grants, the LA times Fiction Prize, among many other accolades. $300-$400 depending on length.
I accept students on an ongoing basis for private editorial and writing career consultations. As someone with a fiction MFA degree from Cornell and who has published memoir, personal essay, and criticism, and is currently working on a novel, I am uniquely qualified to address a range of prose writing concerns that are specific to the individual writer. I was also the founding executive editor of them., Condé Nast's LGBTQ+ platform, and have an extensive network of contacts across the media and publishing industries. I am always happy to connect former students to industry professionals when I feel that their projects are ready, and have successfully done so for a number of former students.
I only work with people who I feel I can substantially help, so please provide a work sample of up to 15 pages for review. The fee for a complete manuscript review and 2 hour-long editorial feedback sessions is $1,200 for projects up to 60k words and $1,500 for those up to 90k words.
I am deeply committed to giving people from historically marginalized groups more access to writing and publishing channels. If you are from a marginalized community and can't afford my fee, I would charge on a sliding scale of $800-$1,200 depending on the length of the project and the financial status of the student. If you'd like to take advantage of this option, please note this in the 'Other Information' section of your registration.
Please note: initial payment isn’t final fee; final fees will be discussed after registration. The balance will be invoiced separately.
Please note: The cost is $250/hour, or an agreed upon flat fee. initial fee is not final; final fee to be discussed after registration and balance will be invoiced separately.
I am offering top-to-bottom manuscript consultations, which include comprehensive notes and feedback, in the form of both individual line edits and big-picture notes on frame, structure, and areas for revision, as well as narrative development. Consultations will include a phone conversation about the notes, with suggestions on next steps. I am comfortable working in fiction or nonfiction, short or book-length, up to 300 pages.
Beginning after April 23.
Please note:
Manuscript Critique
This is a big-picture edit focused on story structure, character development, pacing, narrative choices, intention, and theme, as well as general comments on style and voice. After a close read of your manuscript I will write you a detailed editorial memo, focused on the above at a big-picture level and ending with specific advice. I will also include detailed marginal comments highlighting examples, and possible places to strengthen the manuscript. Rate is a flat fee of $0.05/word. A one-time follow up is also included. Phone, FaceTime, or email.
Comprehensive Edit
This is the nitty-gritty edit, focused on writing compelling scenes, great dialogue, unique and powerful prose. This includes a focused line edit, an editorial memo on the prose, drama, and dialogue, as well as marginal comments. Can be a short story, a sample chapter, or an entire manuscript. Rate is a flat fee of $0.10/word. A one-time follow up is also included. Phone, FaceTime, or email.
FAQ
How do recordings work?
Almost all of our classes are recorded and uploaded to Vimeo. If you have time zone differences, get sick, or know you need to skip a session, we’ll send you a password-protected link to view the recording. You’ll have four weeks to view it. We also have an archive of past classes available for purchase. If interested, please inquire with kate@theshipmanagency.com.
Can I register for a class that’s already started?
For craft seminars and master classes, we welcome registration at any point. We’ll send you recordings and class materials to catch up. For workshops, we might be able to get you in, as long as you reach out before the third session.
What if I want to withdraw from a class?
If you let us know at least 2 days before the class starts, we’ll be happy to offer you a full class credit or a refund minus a $25 processing fee. If the class has already begun, we won’t be able to offer a refund or credit. If there are extenuating circumstances we should consider, please write to kate@theshipmanagency.com.
What if a class is canceled?
Occasionally, we cancel classes due to low enrollments or, very rarely, when a conflict comes up for the instructor. In that case, you’ll be offered a full refund or class credit.
What are the scholarship options?
Most of our classes have full or partial scholarship offerings. If so, those details will be listed on the course page along with an application via Google form. Scholarships are awarded based on financial need, stated interest, and, in some cases, the quality of the writing sample you submit. We will do our best to give you a decision at least a week before the class begins.
Can I set up a payment plan?
We offer payment plans for classes over $300. Those require a non-refundable deposit of $100-$250, depending on the course fee. You’ll pay in regular increments before the 30th of each month until the total course fee is fulfilled. kate@theshipmanagency.com can help you determine a schedule and get you set up. It’s essential that students stay on track so we can pay our instructors on time. If you can no longer keep up with your payment schedule, we will unfortunately have to withhold access to the class.
How do I sign up for someone else?
You can purchase a Work Room gift card, which can be applied toward the cost of a class or consultation, here.
Other guidelines:
Craft seminars and master classes generally have open enrollment, while workshops have capped enrollment. We process registrations on a first-come basis.
Students are not allowed to share the Zoom link for classes, record sessions, distribute or reproduce any associated materials.
We’re committed to ensuring our students are treated with respect. If you have a concern, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
1 Session: Sunday, July 27
12:00-3:00pm ET
Isle McElroy
Isle McElroy is the author of the novels People Collide and The Atmospherians. They wrote the Best Sex I've Ever Read Column for Vulture and taught a class on Desire and Sex Writing at the Sarah Lawrence MFA program. They regularly write about sex and relationships for magazines like The Cut, Elle, and The Atlantic.
Every couple months, someone online asks a predictable question: What is the point of including sex scenes in books and TV and movies? Normally, these questions are asked in bad faith. They're meant to elicit engagement. But beneath the clickbait is a serious question for art: Why is it sometimes necessary to include sex in a narrative? The truth is, many books would be improved if stripped of their poorly-written sex scenes. However, when a sex scene succeeds, it can serve as one of the most profound and memorable passages in a book. The best sex scenes don't merely capture the physicality of the moment, they reveal characters' unspoken longings, they make readers laugh, and, on the best occasions, they're as engaging as the act itself.
In this class, we will study work from writers like Garth Greenwell, Raven Leilani, Anne Carson, Susan Choi, K. Patrick, and others to deepen our understanding of how sex scenes work to develop character, heighten tension, and advance plot in fiction. Students will also complete short craft exercises.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn how to write a sex scene in your own work
Gain a deeper understanding of what makes a sex scene succeed
See the impact of sex scenes on character and plot.
This course has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 20.