Workshop: First Novel Generator with Isle McElroy
Workshop: First Novel Generator with Isle McElroy
25 Sessions: every other Monday
March 24, 2025-February 23, 2026
6:00-8:30pm ET
Isle McElroy
12 students
Isle McElroy is the author of the novels The Atmospherians and People Collide, which was named a book of 2023 by Vogue, NPR, Vulture, and the New York Times Critics. Abbi Jacobson is currently adapting the novel for Television. Their writing has appeared in the Esquire, GQ, The New York Times, The Cut, and elsewhere. This is their third year teaching the year-long first novel generator.
Novels are written alone. But they don’t have to be revised and encouraged alone. And a supportive community of writers can make a huge difference between a few opening chapters tossed in the trash and a full manuscript emailed to agents.
The goal of this course is to write and revise a full novel manuscript over twelve months. The difficult part of the class will be maintaining a consistent writing routine—but I hope the support of a writing workshop will make the process if not easier, at least a little less lonely. The first section of the course will consist of craft lectures and readings of first novels by writers like Toni Morrison, Justin Torres, Raven Leilani, Alexander Chee, and others. This section will focus on how established writers launched their careers as novelists. Throughout this section, writers will also complete craft exercises intended to aid in their writing process. Writers will have an opportunity to share new passages–should they wish–every time the class meets. During the workshop phase, each student will receive peer workshops of their manuscript and will meet with the instructor individually four times to discuss their work-in-progress. The final month of the course will be devoted to professionalization. Agents, editors, and published authors will join the class to talk about their experiences in the literary world. This will be an opportunity for writers to speak openly about their expectations and aims for their careers with established literary professionals.
Workshop Highlights:
Learn to draft and revise a novel
Learn professional strategies for selling a novel
Read the first novels of established authors to understand the arc of a literary career
To be considered for the workshop, please send a 5-10 page writing sample to kate@theshipmanagency.com by Saturday, March 1st. The writing does not need to be from your novel-in-progress.
One full scholarship is available. To apply, please provide a brief one-paragraph statement along with your writing sample. This could include an explanation of your interest in the class, writings aims, and/or financial need, as you see fit. Please also indicate, yes or no, whether your participation is contingent on a scholarship.
Isle McElroy is a nonbinary writer based in Brooklyn. Their debut novel, The Atmospherians (Atria, 2021), was praised by Naomi Skwarna in The New York Times Book Review, as “exceptional writing.” They are the author of a story collection, Daddy Issues (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2016), winner of the Cupboard Pamphlet’s 2016 Editors’ Prize. Their next book is People Collide, to be published by HarperCollins in September 2023. They have received fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Tin House Summer Workshop, The Sewanee Writers Conference, The Inprint Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and The National Parks Service. Presently, they are at work on their second novel as well as a newsletter titled “The Scoop,” where they sit down to interview fellow authors over a scoop of ice cream.
McElroy is also an essayist and critic. Their writing has appeared in The Cut, BuzzFeed, Vulture, GQ, Elle, Vice, The Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Tin House, and elsewhere. In 2021, they founded Debuts and Redos, a monthly reading series featuring debut authors and authors who released books during the pandemic.
Their writing covers the subjects of diet culture, masculinity, non-binary identity, basketball, and more. When asked in an interview about the portrayal of the male characters in The Atmospherians—reprehensible and unsafe but at other times genuine and vulnerable—McElroy responded: “It’s hard to write anything out of hatred. Even from a dislike for the characters or an extreme dislike for the things they’ve done. It’s like parenting: you can like look at something a child has done wrong and say you’re extremely disappointed the child did that. But you also still love them. And that’s the only appropriate response to have to characters. I can look at the actions these men have taken, and I can say “Wow, that was a pretty awful thing to do. I don’t agree with that.” But I continue to love them. . . What seems on a surface level to be a contradiction is in fact the truth of being alive.”
McElroy lives in Brooklyn, NY.
