Year-Long Fiction Writing Project with Alison McGhee

9 Tuesdays & Saturdays | 6:00 PM–9:00 PM Central Time and 10:00 AM–1:00 PM Central Time except for weeks when individual consultations are scheduled.

June 10 – August 17, 2024

• 8 full class meetings, Tuesdays and Saturdays, with additional one week of individual conferences
• Note: no meeting July 2
• Half-hour individual meetings instead of workshop on July 23

This time is to be used for independent writing and reading and thinking about aspects of craft with regard to your own work and that of published writers. Note that you will meet individually with your teaching mentor on September 3, one week before our regular cohort reconvenes for fall workshops.

14 Tuesdays | 6:00 PM–9:00 PM Central Time except for weeks when individual consultations are scheduled.

September 10 – December 17, 2024

• 10 full class meetings with additional two weeks of individual conferences
• Note: No meeting October 15 or November 26
• Half-hour individual meetings: October 29, December 17
• Guest authors/speakers throughout this term

12 Tuesdays | 6:00 PM–9:00 PM except for weeks when individual consultations are scheduled.

January 7 – April 8, 2025

• 12 full meetings with additional two weeks of individual conferences
• Note: No meeting February 11
• Half-hour individual meetings February 25
• Guest authors/speakers throughout this term
• Final manuscripts will be turned in on April 8, with a final one-to-one meeting scheduled with teaching mentor no later than May 30, 2025

Our workshop will meet every week over Zoom; there will be no in-person meetings. Typically, five Tuesdays in a row will be devoted to discussion of craft, mini-lectures, writing prompts, and feedback on 3-4 workshop submissions, with oral feedback and a written summary expected from participants and editing, margin notes, written summaries, and oral feedback from the Teaching Mentor. The sixth Tuesday will be devoted to 20 to 30-minute individual conferences.

Each meeting will include discussion of assigned readings, a brief writing prompt, mini-craft lecture (for example, Tense, Point of View, Beginnings, Endings, Character Development, etc.), followed by discussion of submissions (typically three submissions per session). Each writer will submit up to two submissions per each five- to six-week period. Word count limits will depend upon your chosen genre, but for long-form writers who are submitting twice in each period, each submission will not exceed 4000 words. Most work should be double-spaced and page-numbered, using 12-point font and a standard typeface. We’ll spend approximately twenty minutes per individual submission per workshop session. If your goal is to experiment with various forms of fiction and delve deeply into all aspects of fiction writing and craft, you will be able to do that. If your goal is to complete a full draft of your fiction project, you will be able to do this by the end of the year as well.

During our 20- to 30-minute individual conferences (roughly every six weeks), we’ll discuss any questions and curiosities you have about your own work, from micro to macro, and whatever else you’d like to talk about with regards to the absorbing world of fiction writing. We’ll also meet once before the workshop begins so that we can discuss your goals for the year and make sure we and the workshop are a good fit for you. Your final manuscript will be submitted on April 1, 2025. I’ll send you a written summary critique letter by mid-May 2025 at the latest, after which we’ll schedule a one-hour final consultation.

Selections will include work from, among others, the following authors:

• Kim Fu
• Claire Keegan
• Tommy Orange 
• Naomi Shihab Nye
• Julie Schumacher
• Jason Reynolds
• Carson McCullers
• Mona Susan Power
• Danusha Lameris
• Laurie Foos
• James Baldwin
• George Saunders
• Elizabeth Strout
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• William Maxwell
• Ross Gay
• Helene Tursten
• Elizabeth Acevedo
• William Stafford 
• Ari Tison
• Leslie Jamison
• Ada Limon
• Celeste Ng

Throughout the year, 4–6 visiting writers and publishing professionals will meet with your cohort as special guests.

• Julie Schumacher, novelist and short story writer who has also written novels for children
• Ari Tison, novelist, short story, and picture book writer for YA and younger 
• Laurie Foos, novelist and novella writer, speculative, magical realism
• Mona Susan Power, novelist and short story writer
• Sara Crowe of Sara Crowe Literary, literary agent (primarily children but also some adult work

Online cohorts have their virtual classroom available to them via Zoom for the duration of their year. These spaces are available for Year-Long Writing participants to utilize at any time for writing and discussion space outside of group cohort meetings.

All of our manuscripts are disbursed electronically via a digital service after our first meeting. You must have basic Microsoft Word, Google Docs and email literacy. 

Full-time working artists must schedule their time carefully, and I respect your need to do the same. Our individual consultations, scheduled approximately every six weeks, will focus solely on you, your work, and any questions you have. I will also be available to you via email for limited exchanges outside of class. If you have a specific, pressing question not addressed in the workshop, feel free to email me. Note that I respond to emails only on Mondays and Thursdays. 

Writing can bring up painful memories, encounters, situations; if you need help managing mental health issues, anxieties, trauma, please make arrangements to get help with those things outside of your time with these programs; the Loft can not and does not diagnose, treat, or manage mental health issues, and neither does your teaching mentor. Here are some resources.