The Work Room
Online Workshops, Craft Seminars, + Manuscript Consultations
A program of The Shipman Agency
Please note: For questions regarding Work Room classes, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
Faculty: Rabih Alameddine, Sandy Ernest Allen, Benjamin Anastas, John Manuel Arias, Anna Badkhen, Ryan Berg, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Sumita Chakraborty, Jos Charles, Anna Clark, Kavita Das, Garth Greenwell, Maria Dahvana Headley, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Kyle Dillon Hertz, Porochista Khakpour, Stephen Kuusisto, Dorothea Lasky, Andrea Lawlor, Greg Mania, Isle McElroy, An Xiao (Ana) Mina, Peter Mountford, Jamie Quatro, Khadijah Queen, Jess Row, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Danniel Schoonebeek, Sonia Shah, David Shields, Javier Sinay, Rob Spillman, Meredith Talusan, David L. Ulin, Laura van den Berg, Sunil Yapa, Michael Zapata.
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 workshops and seminars will be hosted on The Shipman Agency’s Zoom account. For manuscript consultations, you’ll communicate directly with the author. Craft Seminars + Master Classes generally have open enrollment. Workshops have capped enrollment.
Information on how to access classes will be sent 2 days prior to the start date. All classes are recorded. If you want to attend but the time zone doesn’t work for you, register for the class and email Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com to let her know you’ll need the recording. She’ll send you a password protected link that will be good for one week. Recordings will be viewable for 4 weeks after the class date.
A portion of all Work Room proceeds will be donated to If Not Now and Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
Books by Work Room faculty, and new and forthcoming books from our clients, are available on our affiliate page at Bookshop.org.
ALL GENRES
10 Sessions: Saturday, April 13-May 25
1:00-3:00pm ET
Greg Mania
12 students
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 next memoir, How Do You Take Those All at Once?: Notes on Fibromyalgia, Fatigue, and Other Foibles of the Flesh, and Save Our Serotonin: An Illustrated Guide for The Modern and Mentally Ill.
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 ten 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. In addition to workshopping material in class, students will also receive individual feedback by email from the instructor each 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.
1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. Please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
6 Sessions: Saturdays, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 4, 11
3:00-5:00pm ET
Ryan Berg
12 students
This 6-week writing workshop is taught by award-winning writer Ryan Berg, author of No House to Call My Home: Love, Family and Other Transgressions.
In this class, open to all levels, students look at the paralyzing stories that must be told, and examine how experience, reflection, and imagination are integrated in personal narrative. Discussions focus on published works that journey honestly into the hard stories, integrating traditional and contemporary styles to create new ones. Students practice techniques for entering into their own stories, creating original works, and analyze one another's attempts to artfully place the subjective in the context of the larger world.
We’ll examine the stories we've avoided writing, the way experience, emotion, and intellection are integrated in these personal stories through structure, pacing, dialogue, and other craft methods. We will read an array of authors, including: Melissa Febos, Carmen Maria Machado, Joan Wickersham, Alexander Chee, Esme Weijun Wang, Kiese Laymon, and Cathy Park Hong. Each student will have an opportunity to workshop one piece of writing.
Workshop Highlights:
Instructor and peer feedback
Generative writing exercises
2 partial scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Tuesday, April 23
7:00-9:00pm ET
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of three books. His most recent book is the novel is The American Daughters (One World, 2024). Other books include the story collection, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize, and We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019), which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize.
Literary and commercial success are often tied to having a great agent. But getting an agent is one of the most difficult, high stakes challenges writers face. It's helpful to know what agents do and don't do, what they expect to see from prospective authors, and how to land the agent who is the perfect match for you.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn why having an agent can be critical to your success
Identify the perfect agent
Increase your chances of landing an agent
2 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
2 Sessions: Monday, May 6+13
7-8:30pm ET
Jess Row
Jess Row is the author of five books, most recently the novel The New Earth and the essay collection White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination. He's taught writing full time for 25 years at parochial, private, and public (unionized) colleges and universities, and has mentored many younger writer/teachers in the job market and job negotiation process.
In a world of slashed budgets, dwindling opportunities, shrinking job markets and a ballooning cost of living, it’s easy for anyone who works in the literary world—writers, teachers, editors, arts administrators—to feel powerless and isolated. In this workshop Jess Row and his guests will focus on taking our power back, through effective negotiating, organizing, and coalition-building, with a focus on recent success stories and lessons for the future.
Workshop Highlights:
Asking for What You Need: How to foreground your actual living expenses and life requirements when talking to employers
How A Union Campaign Works: Where to get started when you're thinking of organizing your workplace
Making Your Struggle Visible: How, when and why to ask for public help when you and/or your coworkers are in trouble
Scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Saturday, June 15
1:00-5:15pm ET (break included)
Andrea Lawlor
Andrea Lawlor is the author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, originally published by Rescue Press in 2017, and reissued by Vintage/Knopf in 2019. A 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards, Kirkus Reviews called it, “groundbreaking,” and the Los Angeles Review of Books found it “intoxicatingly rousing.”
What makes writing queer and/or trans, anyway? The writer? The content? The form? I’ve found the more useful question for writers is, what are specifically queer & trans modes of writing? How can we see these modes in action across genres? How can we identify and learn from camp, for instance, or the coming out story, or queer fabulism, or trans eco-poetics? What can queer and trans texts teach us about narrative, about how to write bodies, sex, death, the future?
In this half-day multi-genre intensive, we’ll investigate queer and trans texts in order to produce our own. I’ll share some of what I’ve been noticing, propose some queer/trans modes of writing, offer prompts that build from the work we discuss, and make time for you to write. Most of our work together will be generative and community-building; there is no workshop component but there will be opportunities to share your work.
I’ll send a reading list after registration, which will include 1-2 books, as well as links and pdfs. Reading the work we’ll discuss is recommended but definitely not required!
Note: We will all respectfully hold space for everyone's possible trans-ness/queerness, while also assuming that all writers can learn from the work of queer/trans writers (to paraphrase the poet Trace Peterson).
Full and partial scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Sunday, May 19
3:00-5:30pm ET
Mary Alice Stewart
Mary Alice Stewart has been an Assistant Agent under Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency for three years, while also grinding it out as a writer herself. Her fiction has appeared in Joyland, No Tokens, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She is at work on a novel. 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, the writer, above all else, in an industry that though is beholden to art, is also beholden to capitalism.
Workshop Highlights:
“Why should you be immortal? You—among anyone else—why should the Gods choose you?” (From Epic of Gilgamesh)
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Writing itself is what counts
Fiction
1 Session: Saturday, April 6
12:00-3:00pm ET
Laura van den Berg
This craft seminar will be led by Laura van den Berg, the author of six works of fiction, including three short story collections. Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories, and she has been a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. My goal is for each writer to leave the seminar with a fuller toolkit for how to think about short story endings in general and in their own work specifically.
Have you ever written most of a short story draft only to get stuck on how it should end? Or landed on a “just okay” ending that you haven’t been able to improve in revision? This seminar will focus on the craft of writing short story endings that dazzle. Together we will explore what makes for a thrilling ending in a short story, aided by craft handouts and a reading list of published short stories that we can turn to for inspiration and instruction. The seminar will also offer revision exercises designed to help participants move closer to their own ideal story endings. My goal is for each writer to leave the seminar with a fuller toolkit for how to think about short story endings in general and in their own work specifically.
Workshop Highlights:
The seminar will include craft study and discussion of published short stories; generative revision exercises; and Q & A
Deepen your understanding of what makes for a compelling ending in the short story
Practical craft tips for writing & revising your own story endings
1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
4 Sessions: Sundays, April 7, 14, 21, 28
4:00-5:00pm ET
Garth Greenwell
This seminar is taught by Garth Greenwell, the award-winning author of What Belongs to You, Cleanness, and the forthcoming Small Rain. Called "a stylist's stylist" by The New Yorker and "the finest writer of sex currently at work ... certainly the most exhilarating" by the Times Literary Supplement, he is currently a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in the graduate Creative Writing Program at NYU.
After the carefully controlled, intimate perfection of Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin undertook his most ambitious and perhaps greatest novel, Another Country (1962). A portrait of a group of bohemian friends, a profound exploration of race and sexuality, a brutal indictment of American reality and a pained, not-quite-despairful prayer to American hope, Baldwin’s third novel is one of the great achievements of mid-century American fiction. In this seminar, we’ll read the book as writers, considering Baldwin’s stylistic achievements and his very brilliant sex writing (more than in almost any other book I know, sex in Another Country is a tool for grappling with historical and political questions), but also the book’s dramatic (even theatrical) structure, its use of POV, its organization of time. Above all, I want to think about ambition: what it means for a mature but still young writer to set himself an impossible task, sacrificing perfection to urgency. Classes will be recorded, and a video will be sent to you if you are unable to attend a session.
Note: I will plan to offer about 45 minutes’ worth of comments each session, and then open the class to questions and comments from you. While the class is scheduled to end at 5pm ET, I will plan to stay until 5:30pm if we need more time for conversation.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will…
consider questions of craft and style in one of the great novels in US literature
gain familiarity with techniques of close reading, including analysis of style, crucial to any writer's education
learn about Baldwin's career at its crucial midpoint, and consider the value of ambition, scope, and urgency weighed against ideals of aesthetic "perfection"
Reading Schedule:
It will be helpful if you can acquire the current Vintage edition, so that we all have the same page numbers.
4/7: Book 1, Chapter 1 (to p. 88)
4/14: Book 1, Chapters 2 and 3 (to p. 179)
4/21: Book 2, Chapters 1 – 3 (to p. 315)
4/28: Book 2, Chapter 4, Book 3 (to end)
All full scholarships have been claimed.
26 Sessions: every other Monday, May 6, 2024-April 21, 2025
6:30-9:00pm ET
John Manuel Arias
14 Students
John Manuel Arias is the author of National Bestseller, Where There Was Fire, a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize and named a Best Debut by Apple Books. Good Morning America called Arias “a rising lyrical star,” while Debutiful lauded Where There Was Fire as “a masterclass in how to wrap a reader inside a book.” His poetry and prose have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, F(r)iction and The Rumpus.
It all starts with a sentence. That one line will grow into a story, then into a draft, and finally a manuscript, polished and perfected, to be sent out into the world. But the process—getting to know your characters like family, writing twists even you didn’t see coming—is where the beauty lies. It’s in creating a novel that is whole. Because the novel, to come alive, must be whole.
This year-long generator will take a holistic approach to writing that first draft; from the sonic to stylistic, to inventing unique architecture, students will master novel-writing from the structural down to the sentence level. Along the way, with inspiration from texts by authors, poets, and essayists of color (from Toni Morrison to Justin Torres, Natalie Diaz to Arundhati Roy), students will be able to discover their own voice, style, and strengths.
Part One (April to August) will be fully generative: through craft lectures and prompts, students will learn and master plot, character development, outlining, dialogue, research, and metaphor, while discussing common texts that push the boundaries of what a novel can be. Part Two (September to January) will commence the workshop aspect—students will share excerpts with the group for feedback and encouragement. And Part Three (February to April) will focus on navigating the publishing industry as a debut novelist, facilitated through visits by agents, editors, and veteran writers. Throughout the year, students will have three one-on-one check ins with the instructor to discuss their novels at different stages, from foundation to completion. This workshop is perfect for students looking to write literary, historical, or magical realist fiction with a focus on decolonial storytelling.
Workshop Highlights:
Completed Novel Draft
Deeper understanding of Craft and Decolonial Storytelling
Insight into the Publishing Process
1 full scholarship available. Payment plans available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
2 Sessions: Sunday, April 21+28
1:00-3:00pm ET
Kyle Dillon Hertz
Kyle Dillon Hertz is the author of The Lookback Window, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. The NYTBR called The Lookback Window “an achievement of style, of language,” and it was named one of the best books of 2023 by Vanity Fair. He was named a Writer to Watch by Publishers Weekly. His work can be found in Time, Esquire, Lithub, and other places. He received his MFA from NYU and a residency from Yaddo. He teaches fiction at The New School.
Writers frequently feature characters who have undergone various types of trauma, from the psychological to the physical, but how does one reflect such a mind in a first-person narrator? Simply referring to previously endured events fails to accomplish one of the major effects of encountering trauma, oftentimes reducing the violence a person experiences into a narrative excuse for present-day actions in a narrative. A writer must reflect the psychology through the prose, combining elements of disordered time and comprehension, in an effort to elucidate the violences and recoveries of such a character.
In this class, writers will examine Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson, one of the masters of traumatized narrators. How does a writer reflect the psychology of a character through the prose? What are the methods used in Jesus’ Son? How does Johnson use time? Voice? Confession? What are the methods of investigation and reveal? How can we play with psychology to deeply embed a reader into the mind of a character? You do not need to read Jesus’ Son in advance of the class, although it will help.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn ways of representing disordered thinking, displacement, and associative logic in prose
Become aware of the ways that representations of trauma impact a narrative, for better or worse
Apply lessons learned from Denis Johnson to your own writing in order to maximize psychological acuity in your sentences
2 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
2 Sessions: Saturday+Sunday, May 18+19
12:00-3:00pm ET
Laura van den Berg
This craft seminar will be led by Laura van den Berg, the author of six works of fiction, including three novels (her most recent novel, State of Paradise, will be published in July). She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her goal is for each writer to leave the seminar with a clearer, more concrete understanding of how to approach their own revision work.
Have you ever finished a draft of a novel only to realize you have no idea what to do next? Or attempted to comprehensively revise a longform project but struggled to make real progress? Are you searching for a roadmap? This seminar will focus on the art and craft of novel revision, with the aim of making the process less overwhelming and more approachable. After all, revision can be every bit as creative and exhilarating as getting the first draft down—and time spent re-imagining our early drafts is the ultimate show of faith in our work. Together we will explore a variety of revision tools and processes; discuss strategies for sustaining momentum; and complete revision exercises designed to clarify intentions and identify roadblocks. My goal is for each writer to leave the seminar with a clearer, more concrete understanding of how to approach their own revision work.
Workshop Highlights:
Seminar will include the study of craft essays & other writings on revision; offer different frameworks and roadmaps for writers to experiments with; and provide revision-oriented writing exercises.
Craft essays will include work from Peter Ho Davies, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Jeff VanderMeer, Zadie Smith, and Alexander Chee.
The first session will focus on the craft of novel revision (tools & techniques, how to find a roadmap, things I wish I'd known when I was revising my first book). The second session will focus on revision-salient writing exercises, process discussion (how to navigate roadblocks & sustain momentum), & Q & A.
1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Thursday, May 23
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. In Axios, Michael Zapata’s work was called an important “part of the growing Latinofuturism movement.”
How does a mind work anyway? What are we to make of all those thoughts and realities that float through the consciousnesses of our characters like schools of foraging fish in the sea? Can omniscience itself be a thinking character? In this master class, Michael Zapata will guide writers through inquiries into interiority, inner speech, inner seeing, unsymbolized thinking, and emotional states of being in order to create works of fiction that both utilize and bend the limits of our characters’ minds. Additionally, we will consider and discuss what artists and scientists have to say about the endlessly sticky matter of consciousness.
Workshop Highlights:
We will study how interiority itself can be a type of narrative engine
Generative exercises in class
A Q&A session
1 scholarship available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
3 Sessions: Sundays, June 2, 9, 16
1:00-3:00pm ET
Rabih Alameddine
This class is taught by Rabih Alameddine, the author of six critically acclaimed novels. His most recent book, The Wrong End of the Telescope, was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award and called “profound and wonderful” by Publisher’s Weekly.
There is no better method of learning how to write than studying the works of masters. Aleksandar Hemon is one of our best, and in this three-part seminar, we will study his latest novel, The World and All That it Holds. In the first two sessions, we will read this incredible book closely, paying attention to the language used, to diction, plot, characters, style, structure. In the third session, we will continue our discussion, after which Hemon joins our group, and we get to ask questions about the choices he made, the techniques he employed, and so on.
Workshop Highlights:
Become a better reader
Become a better writer
Have fun!
For information on scholarships, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
NonFiction
1 Session: Thursday, April 25
6:00-8:00pm ET
Kavita Das
Kavita Das, the author of Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues who worked in social change for fifteen years before writing about social issues for a range of literary and journalistic outlets will teach Objectivity, Truth, and the Spaces In Between, a one day nonfiction craft seminar.
In this fraught moment when disinformation and hot takes have reached a fever pitch, notions of objectivity and the search for truth have taken on even more importance and meaning. But, does true objectivity exist given that all writers (and readers) have their own set of biases? If truth is a singular destination, what does it mean when a writer says they’re telling “their truth?” Through lectures, readings, and discussion, we’ll examine the concepts of objectivity, truth, and the spaces that exist in between in writing.
Workshop Highlights:
We’ll parse the notion of objectivity and how it is impacted by undiverse newsrooms and publishing platforms.
We’ll examine the concept of truth even as we explore how it is impacted by the lens of the narrator (“whose truth”).
We’ll think about our own writing in this spectrum of veracity and what questions to ask of ourselves as responsible chroniclers and narrators.
1 full scholarship available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
4 Sessions: Tuesdays, April 9, 16, 23, 30
6:00-8:00pm ET
Greg Mania
12 Students
This workshop 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 next memoir, How Do You Take Those All at Once?: Notes on Fibromyalgia, Fatigue, and Other Foibles of the Flesh, and Save Our Serotonin: An Illustrated Guide for The Modern and Mentally Ill.
Sometimes the truth hurts, and, more times than not, it is a laughing matter. Humor is a connective tissue: No matter what we’re trying to work through, we’re bound by the laughs that come from it. It’s a powerful tool on the page, too.
This four-day workshop will examine how we metabolize our stories through humor. We will focus closely on the art of layering levity into our writing through discussion, selected readings, and critiquing each other’s works-in-progress. In addition to receiving feedback from the instructor and their peers, students can expect to shape their ideas through generative writing exercises and analyzing different approaches to comedic storytelling.
Note: Please submit no more than 15 pages of a work-in-progress by Tuesday, March 26.
Workshop Highlights:
Instructor and peer feedback
Robust in-class discussion and analysis
Writing prompts
1 full and 1 partial scholarship available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
6 Sessions: Saturday, May 4, 11, 18, June 1, 8, 15
4:00-6:00pm ET
Stephen Kuusisto
12 Students
Online Writing Workshop on Embodiment, Crisis, and Creativity
This six week writing workshop is taught by award winning poet and memoirist Stephen Kuusisto who has written widely about disability and imagination. His memoir “Planet of the Blind” has been translated into 18 languages.
Each week will focus on the circumstances of bodily individuality. In this course we will write about the body in all its remarkable subjectivities, as lyric prose says we’re all universal. We will explore the techniques of putting poetry into prose; strengthening our voices; and using devices from fiction to create writing that is both cinematic and original. Bring your body.
Workshop Highlights:
Instructor and peer feedback
Generative writing exercises
4 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
2 Sessions: Tuesday, May 14+28
6:00-7:30pm ET
AX Mina
AX Mina is an author and coach who’s worked with hundreds of clients through coaching programs, 1:1 coaching and workshops. Author of Memes to Movements (Beacon 2019) and The Hanmoji Handbook (MITeen 2022), she loves supporting writers in their creative, intellectual and professional journeys. Her mission is building a more just, compassionate and sustainable world, through coaching, organizational support, wellness work and creative expression. She has spoken at venues like Creative Mornings, Harvard Law School, the Personal Democracy Forum, and the International Journalism Festival, and she has contributed writing to publications like the Atlantic, Fast Company, Hyperallergic and the Economist, and she has exhibited art in spaces such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mozilla Festival and the Museum of the Moving Image.
As a nonfiction writer, you have great stories, ideas and perspectives to share, and the world deserves to hear them. Clearly communicating who you are and what you do is an essential part of the toolkit of building your platform.
In this two-part, interactive workshop, author AX Mina will walk you through a series of values-oriented exercises that will help you ground the story of yourself as a writer in your authentic values and the why behind your work so that people sit up and pay attention. We'll use your superpower — writing — to build a public story that's true to yourself and your work, while helping elevate your platform for others.
Participants in the workshop should expect to develop and refine their writer bio and come out of the class with a series of practical strategies for building an authentic platform. This course will require at least 1 hour of exercises before each class. There is an option to have a 50 minute 1:1 coaching session at a special rate of $100.
Class 1: Telling the Story of You
Class 2: Building Your Platform
(Optional): 50 Minute 1:1 Coaching Session
While tailored for nonfiction writers, this workshop can work well for writers of any kind.
Workshop Highlights:
Practical skills for growing your platform
Refining your bio and public presence
Staying authentic to your self as a person
2 partial scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Thursday, May 16
7:00 pm-8:30 pm ET
This workshop is led by Sonia Shah, an investigative science journalist and author of critically acclaimed and prize-winning books on science, human-animal relations, and international politics. Her 2020 book, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, a finalist for the 2021 PEN/E.O Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, was selected as a best nonfiction book of 2020 by Publishers Weekly, a best science book of 2020 by Amazon, and a best science and technology book of 2020 by Library Journal, and her 2016 book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science/technology, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the National Association of Science Writers’ Science in Society Award. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Are you fascinated by scientific research and want to include scientific findings in your fiction or non-fiction storytelling but don’t know where to start? This workshop is for you.
Tap into the insights of a wide range of scientific and technical fields to enrich your writing on personal experience, nature, politics, climate, race, history and more. No scientific background required!
Workshop Highlights - You’ll learn how to:
Find the latest scientific research on your topic
Evaluate the reliability of scientific papers
Decode and translate scientific jargon
Pinpoint the right experts to talk to
Interview scientific experts with confidence
Write about technical subjects outside your area of expertise—and get it right
Find the drama and lyricism within scientific discoveries to deepen and enliven your writing
2 scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com.
2 Sessions: Sundays, May 5+June 2
1:00-3:30pm ET
Sandy Ernest Allen
10 Students
Become a better self-editor in this two-part Craft Seminar taught by author and journalist Sandy Ernest Allen. Sandy's essays and features have been published by Esquire, The Cut, 99% Invisible and This American Life. His debut book, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise (Scribner) was long-listed as a top work of journalism of the decade by NYU’s journalism school. His work has been praised by The New York Times, O Magazine, The Los Angeles Times ("a bracing work of art") and The New Republic, ("thrilling writing"). Sandy received an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and is a former BuzzFeed News features editor. He has taught nonfiction writing and literature in a variety of contexts to a variety of people, from teenagers to retirees.
This is a Craft Seminar is focused on the revision of personal essays. When writing about our own lives, how can we forge the critical distance necessary for revision itself? In general, how can we become better self-editors? This course will be geared towards serious writers of literary nonfiction who already have a strong draft of a personal essay (or standalone memoir excerpt) they wish to revise. Consider this an opportunity to push your best unpublished personal essay draft to the next level. During the first class, the instructor will guide students through a variety of strategies for revision, ones they’ll then try out during the interim month.
Students should already have a solid draft ahead of the first class meeting. They will submit both their initial and revised drafts ahead of the second class, primarily for instructor perusal. (Maximum 15 pages. If a memoir excerpt, material should work on its own without further explanation.) Students will also be asked to share a single-page reflection with the instructor, discussing how the revision process went for them. Though this won’t be a formal workshop, participants may be asked if they’d be willing to have portions of their two drafts shared with the group for discussion. Ample time will be provided for student questions, both about revision, as well as topics like pitching, editorial processes, fact checks, and the various challenges one can face when writing about real people and events.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will come away with a variety of approaches for the revision of personal essay/memoir, including work they already feel is strong.
They'll get to try out and play with various mechanical drills in service of revision, as well as strategies for forging distance between the self who wrote the draft and the one who is revising.
They will learn how to navigate some of the real-world hurdles one might face when attempting to publish personal essays/memoir.
1 full scholarship available. Please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
Poetry
4 Sessions: Tuesdays, June 4, 11, 18, 25
7:00-8:00pm ET
Sumita Chakraborty
12 Students
This 4-week writing workshop is taught by award-winning poet and scholar Sumita Chakraborty, the author of Arrow (Alice James Books and Carcanet Press, 2020) and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. Chakraborty has written and published multiple long poems in prominent venues and has presented on panels on the challenges and joys of long poems twice at AWP. Her second collection, The B-Sides of the Golden Record, is in progress and primarily contains two long series and one long sonnet crown. This course combines and adapts elements of workshops she has taught both at NCSU and at the University of Michigan, where she previously held the position of Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry. You are welcome in this course whether you have a long poem in progress already or whether you are hoping to begin one.
Long poems present numerous challenges to the writer who is accustomed to writing, performing, and publishing short lyrics. How do you know when a poem needs more than the single page? How do you approach its structure and pacing? Should you worry about the reader’s staying power? How do you tackle revising it? And when all is said and done: Where, and how, do you share it at readings or publish it?
Our four meetings will combine brief craft capsules and the opportunity to receive oral feedback from one another and from the instructor on your in-progress poems. Each week, you’ll also receive a set of prompts for the week to help guide your writing, with one set geared toward writers who do not have a pre-existing long poem and another set geared toward those who do. The goal of this course is for writers who came in without a long poem to finish with an idea for one, portions of a draft, and ideas for where to go next, and for writers who come in with a long poem in progress to gain additional clarity, vision, and inspiration for their next steps.
Workshop Highlights:
First and foremost: we will have a ridiculous amount of fun
Generative exercises for starting and drafting long poems, strategies for revising them, and advice about publishing and performing them
Get feedback, support, and camaraderie from instructor and peers
2 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
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.
“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
$250/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 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.
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
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. You are a literary writer who has worked on your project using all the tools at your disposal. You want a discerning reader who can evaluate your work using a fresh lens based not only on what you have already created but where you might take it. I have taught for decades in the US and abroad and published collections of stories, and 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-utilized aspects of their repertoire.
I begin by talking with you about your project in an initial meeting to assess what you are trying to do, and what would be most useful to you as a writer. Following that, we would work out a series of meetings that would suit your project. Because of the intensely personal nature of creative writing, I choose to work with students whose project/ethics resonate with my own and whom I know I can help in the long term. Please submit a work sample of ten pages to cheyenne@theshipmanagency.com in advance so I can determine fit. If it is a go but your circumstances make the fee prohibitive, let’s talk and see if there is a way to negotiate a compromise that is mutually respectful.
Manuscript Feedback/Fiction & Memoir: If you have a completed manuscript where the structure is fairly straightforward, and you want feedback on the project, send me the first 50 pages double spaced in 12 pt font, and a synopsis. I will review your work and return it with a comprehensive assessment of the project. This process, including an initial conversation via phone or zoom, and a follow-up call, will take 6 hours. You also have the option of requesting an entire manuscript review up to 200 pages, which would be a 20 hour engagement including the initial call and two one hour follow up calls.
Coaching: This is for those of you who want to excerpt stand-alone sections from a manuscript to send to journals and seek guidance on both the piece and the submissions, and for those who have a handful of stories or essays but need help shaping a manuscript. We will read your work aloud over zoom once a week, pausing along the way for comments regarding language and craft. We can get through a minimum of ten pages an hour. The process is best utilized with a longer time commitment over several months. The work we do together provides you with built-in deadlines, and the format gives you a cumulative benefit as you shape your project.
Please note: upfront payment is for first hour; number of hours and final cost to be discussed after registration.
All Genres
I'm the NYT-bestselling author of eight books in a variety of genres, most recently Beowulf: A New Translation, and The Mere Wife. My reimagining of Vergil's Aeneid into a full-cast musical for Audible came out in 2023. I've taught at Sarah Lawrence and Bennington College, and as well as teaching dozens of masterclasses and workshops at universities around the world. For the Shipman Agency Workroom, I've taught workshops on finding your voice, adapting the classics into contemporary work, and editing yourself, among others. Over the twenty years or so since I sold my first book, I've often consulted with writers (some of whose names you'd know!), helping them develop projects from ideas to actualities, line-editing drafts, and giving intricate editorial feedback. I've done everything from full novel responses to inspiration sessions in which a writer tells me what they find intriguing, and we develop it together. Many people who've worked with me have felt that I helped equip them with the inspiration to begin believing in their projects. I want you to get what you need to go deeper in your work, and I'll help you find the right tools. That's my natural inclination no matter what the project.
My consultations are pretty flexible for that reason. I'm happy to work with people who don't have manuscripts yet, as long as they have a sense of something they're dreaming of writing, and some work samples so I can tell if we'll be a good fit. If you don't have a manuscript yet, we'll have a couple of video sessions to begin plotting a course, with research suggestions, creative brainstorming, and discussions of your personal map of inspirations. If you have a manuscript, our sessions will begin with an initial discussion of the kind of feedback you're looking for, and the questions you have about the work, before I dive in. We'll make a plan that suits your workstyle. Typically, I meet on Zoom with writers twice a month in an ongoing development scenario, but we can work out a plan depending on what your project is - smaller projects, like short stories, may be more suited for written feedback.
I charge hourly because I want you to have the flexibility to choose the engagement - and because I'm available to work on many different kinds of projects, in a variety of different ways.
As a writer, I have experience in almost every corner of a storymaking career, whether it's nonfiction, fiction, scripts, translation, memoir, poetry - I've done it all. If I wasn't a writer for a living, I'd be an editor, because I love editing just as much as I love writing.
My style is both empathetic and pragmatic. I'll tell you what's great, what's wobbly, and what's not working - along with questions and suggestions for how to craft the piece you want to craft.
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.
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 nine 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 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 $1250.
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.
In this time of tremendous change, we’re all asking how to align ourselves and our careers with our values. How do we communicate our skills as writers? How do we build our platform and get our thoughts and ideas out there to a broader public? How do we (yikes) find courage to speak boldly and clearly on stage? And most of all, what do we stand for? And what about the nuts and bolts — how do you navigate the business side of building out a sustainable writing career?
I offer coaching as a tool for creative career discovery and finding Ikigai, or meaning, in our paths toward impactful careers, sustainable livelihoods and personal wellness. And I’m thrilled to partner exclusively with The Shipman Agency to offer coaching specifically for writers.
I’m an experienced global executive with a radically inclusive approach as a coach and strategist. I’ve worked on creative projects larger and small, and my career has taken me from the busy streets of Shenzhen to the Oscars red carpet. I have over a decade of experience in writing, creative media, public speaking, and organizational strategy and leadership that I bring to my coaching practice for creatives.
An author myself, I’ve worked on three books — Memes to Movements, a nonfiction analytic book about media and social movements; The Hanmoji Handbook, a young adult book about emoji and the Chinese language; and I helped edit Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters, an overview of the artist’s work. And I’ve written and given expert commentary in venues like Hyperallergic, the LA Review of Books, the Atlantic, the Economist, the Aspen Institute, TED and the New York Times.
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:
Clarifying your core values and mission as a writer (i.e., your ikigai)
Getting the word out: Public speaking skills, and telling the story of yourself and your work
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)
Leadership and management skills, whether for those leading creative communities and mission-driven organizations or those running their own business.
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).
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
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.
Poetry
I’ll work closely with authors on every aspect of the editorial process, including line edits, ordering, and revision, as well as comprehensive notes and feedback via email and Zoom, if desired. Poetry manuscripts up to 75 pages are charged at a flat fee of $650, though I’m happy to consider sliding scale offers as needed, and especially during global pandemics. Poetry manuscripts above 75 pages are subject to a no-fee consultation to gauge the scope of the project and the general state of the manuscript, with a quote provided afterward.
Prose
I’ll work closely with novelists and nonfiction writers on every aspect of the editorial process, including line edits, through-lines, plot mechanics, dialogue, and revision, as well as comprehensive notes and feedback via email and Zoom, if desired. Prose manuscripts are charged at $0.20 per word, though I’m happy to consider sliding scale offers as needed, and especially during global pandemics. I’m also available to provide a no-fee consultation to gauge the scope of the project and the general state of the manuscript prior to beginning work.
Note: payment is for initial down payment fee; additional fees to be determined and invoiced separately.
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 and on a sliding scale 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 submit a work sample of up to 15 pages if you want to work with me. Students who are working on longer projects and/or have complete drafts can opt for a complete manuscript review and a two-hour editorial feedback session, broken up into two, (1) hour segments, for which I would charge $750-$1500 sliding scale depending on the length of the project and the financial status of the student.
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, please don't hesitate to contact me anyway and we might be able to negotiate a work barter for my services.
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.
“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 $150 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!
3 Sessions: Tuesdays, April 2, 9, 16
7:00-9:00pm ET
Benjamin Anastas
25 Students
Benjamin Anastas is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary (Dial Press) and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG). His memoir Too Good to Be True (Little A) was a national bestseller, and his essays, literary journalism, reviews and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Oxford American, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Bookforum and The Best American Essays 2012. He has been the recipient of residency fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation and the MacDowell Colony.
At some point in every writer's life, a creative trail you've been following will lead you to a secret trove of family documents or a collection of papers held by a research institution. It can be confusing--and intimidating--to navigate the rarified world of the archive, and primary documents themselves can be inscrutable, resisting easy interpretation and use. This three-part class will provide interested students a primer in how to use primary documents in your creative work, starting with concrete examples from a variety of contemporary writers and my own work as a literary journalist and fiction writer. We will also cover the nuts and bolts of navigating special collections, from making your first approach to dealing with "fair use" questions, handling privacy issues and dealing with permissions.
In the first session I'll give a presentation on the fundamentals of navigating the archive and give some examples of how non-literary material (letters, photographs, scientific papers) can be generative of new work. Students will be provided with a list of archives with digital collections for public use and will have the chance to choose a document to use as source material for a new essay or a piece of fiction. They can also use a document of their own. In sessions two and three, students will propose a new creative work to the class and receive constructive feedback; we will also be looking at further examples of essays and fiction that use archival material.
Workshop Highlights:
Students will learn the nuts-and-bolts of navigating special collections, from the initial approach to dealing with "fair use" questions, handling privacy issues, and permissions.
Students will gain familiarity with using online archives and undertake their own adventure in the archive by choosing the source material for a new project.
Students will receive supportive critical feedback on a new project they propose and begin to write.
2 full scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com