Class

2024 Year-Long Fiction Writing Project with Alison McGhee—June Online Cohort

In the Loft's year-long Fiction Project, we’ll dive into fiction in all its glorious forms throughout the year. What are you drawn to? What are you interested in writing? Short stories, flash fiction, sudden fiction, novels for adults, novels for children, less-definable fiction forms and structures: we are open to all of it. I’ve always loved to experiment in my fiction writing and you should feel free to do the same. The advantages of a multigenre fiction workshop are many: reading and thinking deeply about fiction in a genre adjacent but unfamiliar to your own work can expand our creativity and positively influence our own writing. Throughout the year, you may be drawn to and want to experiment with various forms of fiction, and we welcome that as well.

Despite the possibility of multiple genres of fiction, our workshop will encompass all the building blocks of fiction in general. We’ll talk about what all fiction, no matter its specific form, shares in common: the creation of people and places and worlds that are alive to us, that feel real no matter how speculative they may be, that share some deep humanity with ourselves. We’ll consider the architecture of various fictional forms—what are the essential frameworks of short stories, novels, flash fiction, and other less definable works? How did each writer achieve their purpose? What can we learn from every piece of reading, and every writer submission, that we read?

We’ll read widely throughout the year, with an emphasis on brief writings that illuminate fiction’s breadth and depth and beauty. Note that our readings will often include writing that’s not fiction; poems, creative nonfiction, small essays and memoirs, even children’s picture books all contain structures, language, and innovative frameworks that can help us be better fiction writers. We’ll also invite critically acclaimed guest authors to some of our meetings, the better to understand their processes and sources of creativity. These discussions will be informal and free-ranging, based largely on your own questions regarding the authors’ work. We will also host discussions with publishing professionals, such as agents, editors, or booksellers.

Please see the Fiction Writing Project page on the Loft website for program specifics and schedule.

One-on-one meetings with Alison McGhee will also be held over the course of the year. These include one introductory meeting before the program begins, and one manuscript consultation session with Alison after the program concludes (and you submit your final manuscript) on May 30, 2025.

Your program orientation meeting is scheduled to take place Tuesday, June 4, 2024, at 6pm online via Zoom.

Your final public reading will be Tuesday, April 22, 2025, at 7pm online via Zoom.

In order to sign up for a cohort, you have a few options.

1. Register in full on the website (full payment is due at the time of registration) or pay via Sezzle at check out

2. Fill out the Payment Plan Request Form: https://forms.gle/zGiR3nQs1os4bzw16

3. Once registered, the Loft will schedule an introductory meeting between you and the teaching artist to ensure your project is a fit for the program. In the rare instance the teaching artist or student decide this is not a fit, the student is eligible for a full refund. See the refund and payment policies for more information.