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, Samiya Bashir, Ryan Berg, Michele Filgate, Maria Dahvana Headley, Kyle Dillon Hertz, Jenny Johnson, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, Porochista Khakpour, Rickey Laurentiis, Annie Liontas, Greg Mania, Isle McElroy, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Aysegul Savas, Sonia Shah, Laura Warrell, Lindy West, Tiphanie Yanique, Yasmin Zahar, 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
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
1 Session: Sunday, February 9
1:00-4:00pm ET
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the author of five critically acclaimed books (three novels, a memoir, and an essay collection), all from major publishers (Grove, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Knopf Doubleday). She's taught creative writing and literature since 2003, moving mainly to online teaching since 2019. Her essays, criticism, investigative features, and profiles can be found in newspapers and magazines all over the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Elle, BOMB, Poets & Writers, and more. She's had fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, Civitella Ranieri, and more. Born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles suburbs, she currently lives in New York City.
Money-talk can be a nightmare in the arts, but I’d argue it can be at least somewhat empowering to understand some basic economics in our messy industry. Whether you like it or not, somewhere someone is calculating your worth with crude numbers game analytics. This seminar will look at everything from how to build a life doing what you live to the recent history of author advances to perspectives on harm-mitigation when dealing with the ugly realities of capitalism in the arts. How do we survive as artists in this world? How can we afford to live our dreams? How is everyone else making it look so easy? Why do some book sell for a few thousand dollars while others sell for a million dollars? Have the authors who prefer lower advances lost their minds? How do royalties factor into all this? Can certain agents get us certain advances? Is there a way to hack our way into riches? How do we stop worrying about this so we can start doing what we love again? Perhaps at the core of all these questions is the most fundamental one: can I afford to be an author in 2024? We will look at a variety of issues entangled in this expansive topic. While I will share my own stories after having published five books, I will also include stories and feedback from other authors, agents, editors, and other industry experts. I will also make sure to answer any and all questions.
Workshop Highlights:
A business-of-writing shop-talk to hopefully empower in this time of general economic instability
A community of people who share your practical concerns without having to think about craft for once
The opportunity to ask the "embarrassing"/taboo questions without judgment
Two full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 31st.
6 Sessions: Tuesdays, February 18, 25 and March 4, 11, 18, 25
7:00-9:00pm 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.
This course invites students of all levels to confront the stories they’ve been avoiding, exploring how personal narrative blends experience, reflection, and imagination. Through readings, discussions, and workshops, we’ll investigate how authors transform difficult truths into art, using structure, pacing, dialogue, and other narrative techniques.
We’ll engage with works by writers such as Melissa Febos, Carmen Maria Machado, Joan Wickersham, Alexander Chee, Esme Weijun Wang, Kiese Laymon, and Cathy Park Hong, whose stories push boundaries by combining traditional and contemporary styles. Students will practice methods for entering their own narratives, creating original pieces, and giving thoughtful feedback to one another. Each participant will have the opportunity to workshop a piece of writing, gaining insight into how subjective experience can resonate within the broader context of the world.
Workshop Highlights:
Instructor and peer feedback
Generative writing exercises
One full scholarship and two partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, February 9.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, March 22 + 23
2:00-4:00pm ET
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the author of five critically acclaimed books (three novels, a memoir, and an essay collection), all from major publishers (Grove, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Knopf Doubleday). She's taught creative writing and literature since 2003, moving mainly to online teaching since 2019. Her essays, criticism, investigative features, and profiles can be found in newspapers and magazines all over the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Elle, BOMB, Poets & Writers, and more. She's had fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, Civitella Ranieri, and more. Born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles suburbs, she currently lives in New York City. She explains her inspiration for this craft seminar:
I’d argue that the most important practice for prose writers to cultivate is a poetry habit.
I’ve been considered a “lyrical prose writer” since I first published in 2007, but I credit my obsession with poetry in how I got there. I studied poetry in undergrad and grad schools (Sarah Lawrence College BA, Johns Hopkins MA), but my love of poetry goes way beyond academic interest. In Iranian culture, poetry is the prime mode of literary expression. In so many of our spiritual practices, poetry is at the heart of all the wisdom. No matter what culture you come from, it’s my belief that poetry is the key to finding your way back to language. I recommend poetry to students who are experience writer’s block; I bring poems to prose writers who need to get back to the fundamentals of strong sentences; I share poems with any human being whose psyche needs that essential nourishment. Poetry’s lessons go way beyond simply inspiring—poetry can get artists to explore the tension between confession and revelation. We will look at a wide range of poems that can be used as everything from prompts to templates to roadmaps for the kind of critical self-examination that makes great prose possible.
Workshop Highlights:
Introduction and refresher for how to read poems as prose writers
Packet with poems that we will go over in class
Exercises to try in class and beyond
Two full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by March 14.
Fiction
4 Sessions: Tuesdays, November 26, December 3, 10, 17
8:00-9:30pm ET
Sunil Yapa
10 students
Sunil is the author of the best-selling novel Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, called “fast-paced and unflinching” by the New Yorker, a “genuine tour-de-force,” by the Seattle Times, and was a finalist for the Pen Faulkner Award. Sunil is an experienced teacher, having taught at The University of Nevada Lake Tahoe, The Center for Fiction, and with Pam Houston’s Writing by Writers. He holds a MFA in fiction from the CUNY Hunter MFA in NYC where he worked with Colum McCann and Peter Carey. He also holds a tv writing certificate from UCLA TV & FILM and has written extensively in fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays.
Great stories make us care; they take us on a rollercoaster of emotion. Yet often as writers we get stuck—poignant character studies without movement, or, a series of random plot moments. How can we bring them together into a story that is as emotionally satisfying as it is gripping?
Using films, tv series, and novels— from Finding Nemo to Ferrante, Breaking Bad to Moonlight—we will break down techniques to tell a story whose heart is a character’s deepest needs, contradictions, vulnerabilities, and secrets. My goal as a novelist and screenwriter is to give you screenwriting tools adapted for the novel so that you can break through on your project. Class includes watching two movies per week, one seminar meeting a week; a manuscript in progress is encouraged but not required.
Topics:
Week 1: You Can’t Always Get What You Want….
Week 2: Contradiction, Vulnerability, Secrets
Week 3: Every Story is a Love Story
Week 4: Hollywood Bullsh*t Demystified
Workshop Highlights:
Watch and dissect 8 films (or long form TV)
Learn character-driven storytelling secrets
Break through on your project in progress
2 partial scholarships available. For information, please contact Kate Mabus, kate@theshipmanagency.com
1 Session: Monday, January 27
8:00-10:00pm ET
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Maurice Carlos Ruffin isa professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University and 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.
Do you have a book-length project you’ve start working on or would like to write one day? This class will cover the mindsets and practices any aspiring author should be aware of. In today's literary environment, aspiring writers must be aware of one fact: you have the power to publish your book, if you're strategic. The successful writer pays close attention not only to their craft but also to the expectations of agents, editors, and readers. Knowing these craft and publishing expectations will empower you to move forward with confidence.
Workshop Highlights:
Inspirational discussion of mindsets and practices used by successful writers.
Practical discussion of do's and don't in today's literary environment.
Extensive question and answer session for aspiring writers.
One full scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 17
6 Sessions: Thursdays, February 6, 13, 20, 27, March 6, 13
6:00-8:00pm ET
Yasmin Zaher
10 students
Yasmin Zaher is a Palestinian journalist and writer born in 1991 in Jerusalem. She got her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School. Her first novel, The Coin, was published in 2024.
What better time to advance on your manuscript than the dead of winter? This MFA-style workshop is ideal for writers who wish to make progress on their writing projects in a high-level and supportive environment. We will meet once a week and will workshop each other’s new material, with attention to story, character, structure, form, and style. Feedback will be constructive, intended to give the writer a sense of what’s working, what’s not, and how to make it better.
This workshop is designed for writers who are ready to share their writing with others, and who are looking for a structured environment to motivate them to move forward. We will also discuss all that intersects with writing, like reading, publishing, art, and discipline. Each Participant will have the opportunity to share two submissions of up to 20 pages. Participants are also expected to read 20-60 pages of peer submissions each week. Participants from all levels and all fiction genres are welcome.
Workshop Highlights:
Read and give comments with the eye of a writer
Get detailed feedback on your writing
Meet like-minded writers with whom you could continue workshopping after the semester is over
One full scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, February 30.
1 Session: Saturday, February 8
2:00-5:00pm ET
Tiphanie Yanique
12 students
Tiphanie Yanique is an award winning teacher and writer. In this craft class she will focus on ending fiction stories using decolonial theory and emotional engagement. Students should have a piece of fiction they are already working on, and be prepared to learn immediately actionable skills.
Knowing how and when to end a piece of fiction is one of the hardest craft elements for any writer—even masterful writers. Yet, the end is what the reader is left with, and thus has a huge impact on how a reader perceives the whole work.
This is a 3 hour craft class which will include a lecture, group work, reading, dynamic class conversation, writing practice and feedback. We will be studying the art of great endings in fiction, and also writing great fictional endings. We will consider the political and social aspects of endings, and stretch towards endings that serve our creative, intellectual emotional and social hopes.
Workshop Highlights:
You will learn what endings are for in fiction
You will devise your own sophisticated concepts on what makes a good ending
You will implement these ideas into drafting an ending for your story
Two full scholarships are available, in addition to partial scholarships. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 31.
2 Sessions: Sundays, February 9 + 16
2:00-4:00pm ET
Maria Dahvana Headley
Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times Bestselling, World Fantasy and Hugo Award-winning author of eight books, including The Mere Wife, and Beowulf, a New Translation, dozens of short stories, an eight hour musical version of the Aeneid, play and TV scripts, epic poems, and...some projects that never made it out into the world, but might have, had she taken this class.
This class is for anyone who has a writing project they can't finish. Trunk novels, scripts that fell apart halfway, poems that died for lack of clarity, that one idea for a book you've been mulling for twenty years. All are welcome, in any form or genre!
This is a craft seminar about getting to The End. I know as well as anyone does that it's possible to write almost a whole novel, only to discover that you have no idea what your novel is about, and that you have no idea how to get it done. Worse yet, sometimes it's possible to fall out of love with a viable project, and end up staring at a pile of pages, unable to muster your courage to go back in. Is it possible to resurrect an abandoned novel and actually finish it? How can you reinvigorate yourself to get to the end of a manuscript, when you've lost your vigor somewhere along the long, dark writing road? This class is a solution-based generative workshop in which we'll each choose one of our own projects, and then relearn, through writing exercises, plotting exercises, and editing exercises, how to get to the finish line. We'll address re-inspiration, tools for redirecting your creativity toward completion rather than twitchy revision of two chapters, and everything else a writer needs to get a project completed, at long last.
Workshop Highlights:
Writing exercises to reinvigorate passion for a project that's been dormant
We'll work with tools to clarify what the project is actually about, and why it's still interesting
One of my superpowers is reverse engineering structure from theme, so we'll go deep into tools for creating an ending and actually getting there using the themes of your core story.
Two full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 31.
6 Sessions: Wednesdays, February 12, 19, 26, March 5, 12, 19
7:00-9:00pm ET
Laura Warrell
9 students
Laura Warrell is the author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, and other publications. Laura has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University.
The unsung hero of storytelling is, in large part, detail, what writer Francine Prose calls “the building blocks with which a story is put together” and “the clues to something deeper.” Precise, even unexpected, details make stories riveting, characters compelling, and sentences elegant. In this writing lab, we will examine the multitude of ways writers incorporate details into their work and explore techniques for finding details that make stories come alive. During the first four sessions of the course, participants will examine passages from published fiction and creative non-fiction, and complete generative exercises designed to help them use details effectively. During the last two sessions, participants will have the opportunity to share their manuscripts (new or old) with peers for workshop.
Workshop Highlights:
Mine your characters’ psyches and circumstances to unearth the precise details with which to tell their stories
Gain tools to put details on the page that place readers in your character’s world and convey your story’s underlying themes
Generate new, detail-rich material
One full scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, February 3.
3 Sessions: Sundays, March 2, 9, 16
4:00-6:00pm ET
Rabih Alameddine
20 students
Rabih Alameddine is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, most recently The Wrong End of the Telescope, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, which Publisher’s Weekly called, “profound and wonderful,” The Angel of History, An Unnecessary Woman, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, the winner of the California Book Award, and a Washington Post, Kirkus, and NPR Best Book of 2014, The Hakawati, I, The Divine, and Koolaids. His work has been awarded the Lannan Prize for Fiction, The Jon Dos Passos Prize for Literature, among others.
There is no better method of learning how to write than studying the works of masters. Rebecca Makkai is one of our best, and in this three-part seminar, we will study her novel, The Great Believers. 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 Makkai joins our group, and we get to ask questions about the choices she made, the techniques she employed, and so on.
Workshop Highlights:
Read better
Write better
Live better
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Friday, February 21.
1 Session: Sunday, March 2
2:00-5:00pm ET
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
20 students
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is the Japanese and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) author of the story collection Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury 2023), a USA Today national bestseller and the recipient of a HONOLULU Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Joyland, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is an Affiliate Faculty in Fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles and a Lecturer in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
For writers working with inherited or ancestral stories, the material can feel like both an incredible gift and an overwhelming burden. How does one honor the past while making space for contemporary concerns and interests? How do we write into those blurred lines, embracing the mythology, folklore, superstitions, and cultural histories we’ve inherited, while affording our passions and obsessions space on the page? I take both pride and pleasure in considering ancestral stories in conversation with contemporary ones, and this craft intensive will explore exactly that, as we discuss the responsibility of carrying forth these tales while inviting into the conversation both imagination as well as our own writerly obsessions. Through close examination of fiction by writers who are also working with ancestral tales, we will study their craft choices surrounding plot, point of view, character, and details, and we will take comfort in the company of artmakers communing with voices of the past.
This craft intensive will include close readings, small group discussions, and generative writing exercises participants can use to produce new work or engage with (and maybe re-see) their existing works in progress. Together, we will learn to write our way into existing mythologies, driven by the ideas, interests, and characters we simply can’t shake.
Workshop Highlights:
Writers will have the opportunity to get honest about the challenges of committing ancestral stories to the page while receiving comfort and support in the communal nature of ancestral art-making.
Writers will study fiction and nonfiction grounded in ancestral storytelling with close attention paid to character, point of view, detail, and plot.
Writers will engage in generative writing exercises designed to support existing works in progress and/or spark new work, with the opportunity to share writing with the class.
One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, February 22.
1 Session: Thursday, March 6
6:00-8:00pm ET
Michael Zapata
This one-part seminar 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 walls are the publishers of the poor.” - Eduardo Galeano
From the Mexican Revolution to student and indigenous led protests in Ecuador, to national teacher strikes, to the feminist Combahee River Collective, every movement for social change starts with both the inequitable conditions that created it and also a narrative of how the past and future collide with the present. Literature, with all its vast interiority and mind-bending possibility, is vital to resistance and revolution.
Through selected readings and discussions of multi-genre writers such as Eduardo Galeano, Roberto Bolaño, China Miéville, Audre Lorde, and Emily Raboteau, this class will explore the indispensable relationship between revolution, resistance, and writing. This class will include a short lecture on writers from various social movements in history, craft discussions on multi-genre works (poetry, CNF, fiction, and hybrid forms), and a writing exercise.
Workshop Highlights:
A fun and joyful study of revolutionary writers.
A deeper understanding of how writers who confront a social or political order can impact our own work.
The seminar will also include a Q&A.
Two full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Wednesday, February 26.
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.
3 Sessions: Sundays, April 6, 13, 20
2:00-4:00pm ET
Ayşegül Savaş
Ayşegül Savaş is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, as well as a work of non-fiction,The Wilderness, which will be published in October, 2025. Her short story collection, Long Distance, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker and have also been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The Yale Review, among others. She has taught creative writing at the Sorbonne, and lives in Paris.
Are you daunted by the idea of plot? Do you feel stuck once you have set up the landscape and characters of your fictional world? Plot, for some writers, can be the most challenging pat of finishing a short story or novel, but this difficulty may be alleviated by shifting the focus of the narrative drive. In this seminar, we will consider plot as a time structure rather than a series of events we must invent to keep the story going. In each session, we will examine the plot structures of several fictional works and discuss how their internal clocks create a sense of momentum. We will also look at different types of time structures (linear, looping, repeating...) Most importantly, we will discuss how these different forms can organically dictate the content of a fictional work.
Workshop Highlights:
Gain confidence in your ability to create plot
Gain familiarity with analyzing a work's structure
Think about time structures in your own writing.
One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, March 28.
NonFiction
8 Sessions: Saturdays, January 4, 11, 18, 25, February 1, 8, 16, 22
1:00-3:00pm ET
Greg Mania
10 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 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.
One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 27.
1 Session: Sunday, March 2
2:00-5:00pm ET
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
20 students
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is the Japanese and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) author of the story collection Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury 2023), a USA Today national bestseller and the recipient of a HONOLULU Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Joyland, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is an Affiliate Faculty in Fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles and a Lecturer in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
For writers working with inherited or ancestral stories, the material can feel like both an incredible gift and an overwhelming burden. How does one honor the past while making space for contemporary concerns and interests? How do we write into those blurred lines, embracing the mythology, folklore, superstitions, and cultural histories we’ve inherited, while affording our passions and obsessions space on the page? I take both pride and pleasure in considering ancestral stories in conversation with contemporary ones, and this craft intensive will explore exactly that, as we discuss the responsibility of carrying forth these tales while inviting into the conversation both imagination as well as our own writerly obsessions. Through close examination of fiction by writers who are also working with ancestral tales, we will study their craft choices surrounding plot, point of view, character, and details, and we will take comfort in the company of artmakers communing with voices of the past.
This craft intensive will include close readings, small group discussions, and generative writing exercises participants can use to produce new work or engage with (and maybe re-see) their existing works in progress. Together, we will learn to write our way into existing mythologies, driven by the ideas, interests, and characters we simply can’t shake.
Workshop Highlights:
Writers will have the opportunity to get honest about the challenges of committing ancestral stories to the page while receiving comfort and support in the communal nature of ancestral art-making.
Writers will study fiction and nonfiction grounded in ancestral storytelling with close attention paid to character, point of view, detail, and plot.
Writers will engage in generative writing exercises designed to support existing works in progress and/or spark new work, with the opportunity to share writing with the class.
One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, February 22.
Poetry
4 Sessions: Wednesdays, January 29, February 5, 12, 19
6:00-8:00pm ET
Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir brings three decades of experience teaching poetry workshops, editing manuscripts, and coaching writers from early drafts through extensive revisions to publication. As the author of four collections of poetry, including Field Theories (2017), and my forthcoming book I Hope This Helps (2025), I bring deep experience in craft and creativity. My work spans multimedia and explores the intersections of poetry, science, and social justice, with poems appearing in recent issues of Poetry Magazine, Zyzzyva, Orion Magazine, Freeman’s Journal, and more.
In some ways, you are the places where you've been in your life. Experience is carried in our bodies and our best poetry creates a uniquely poetic experience that moves readers. In this craft seminar we will work together to identify how the poem is doing what it is doing to our bodies and minds.
Bring your poems and work to find the poem’s voice. We’ll turn poems like glass in a window to find their shifting light. We’ll spend four weeks working to see – and create – our work anew. There is no workshop component to this class, but there will be opportunities to share your work and interact with other participants.
Session One: Limning the Line
Session Two: Divining Breath
Session Three: Perception: Sound & The Body, Part I
Session Four: Active Location: Sound & The Body, Part II
Workshop Highlights:
Develop strategies for listening to the poem as it helps you to find its form
Synchronous and asynchronous exercises
Opportunities to share work with other participants and practice the strategies we discuss
Two full scholarship available for BIPOC writers, as well as two partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, January 6.
2 Sessions: Saturdays, January 25 + February 1
2:00-3:00pm ET
Rickey Laurentiis
Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to care. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College where she read Latin, Literature & Theory, and Washington University in St Louis, where received an MFA.. Their debut book, Boy with Thorn, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and finalized for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She’s partnered with the Carnegie Museum of Art and lead a conversation at the Museum of Modern Art. Fellowships from the Lannan Literary Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem and the Whiting Foundation have honored her, and she was inaugural fellow at Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh. Her anticipated, second collection, Death of the First Idea, is forthcoming from Knopf (2025).
This class studies the relationship between the various ways a poem offers or constructs meaning — that is, "makes sense" — and the tactics it uses to literally embody that meaning, via the line, sentence and verbs. About this "making sense," we'll consider it in at least three ways: first, as any of those deliberate moments commonly called the image that gesture, relate to or otherwise awaken the body's five senses; second, as that overall moving, if transforming, logic or "sense" of identity or argument that drives the poem; and, lastly, as sensibility, not just the poem’s atmosphere, tone or stylistic tics but the poet's as well. Along with each, we’ll labor to see specifically how syntax (sentence structure, length, deployment, verbiage, meter and more) underwrites, enacts or, even, subverts or queers what sense is available in the poem. In short, we'll reveal, if not collapse, that ground which sits between "subject" (identity) and "form" (body) in both our own work and the work of a selection of published poets.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, January 18 + 19
12:00-2:00pm ET
Jenny Johnson
20 students
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.
One way to add tension to a draft is to experiment with contrasting impulses. In this two-part craft class, we will study poems that use juxtaposition to draw unexpected parallels, complicate relationships and power dynamics, expand a poem’s lyric universe, and hold space for paradox, simultaneity, and contradictions. We will consider poems by Arthur Sze, Mosab Abu Toha, Jessica Tanck, Kinsale Drake, and Robert Wood Lynn. You will also be prompted to get a start on a poem that places two unlikely subjects side by side, just as Robert Wood Lynn does in his series “Elegies for Fire and Oxycodone.”
Workshop Highlights:
Practice observing for contrast as a part of your daily notebook practice
Close read for words, images, and ideas juxtaposed in poems
Generate new poetry that places unlikely subjects side-by-side
One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, February 10.
2 Sessions: Saturday + Sunday, March 22 + 23
2:00-4:00pm ET
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour is the author of five critically acclaimed books (three novels, a memoir, and an essay collection), all from major publishers (Grove, Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Knopf Doubleday). She's taught creative writing and literature since 2003, moving mainly to online teaching since 2019. Her essays, criticism, investigative features, and profiles can be found in newspapers and magazines all over the world, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Bookforum, Elle, BOMB, Poets & Writers, and more. She's had fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, Civitella Ranieri, and more. Born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles suburbs, she currently lives in New York City. She explains her inspiration for this craft seminar:
I’d argue that the most important practice for prose writers to cultivate is a poetry habit.
I’ve been considered a “lyrical prose writer” since I first published in 2007, but I credit my obsession with poetry in how I got there. I studied poetry in undergrad and grad schools (Sarah Lawrence College BA, Johns Hopkins MA), but my love of poetry goes way beyond academic interest. In Iranian culture, poetry is the prime mode of literary expression. In so many of our spiritual practices, poetry is at the heart of all the wisdom. No matter what culture you come from, it’s my belief that poetry is the key to finding your way back to language. I recommend poetry to students who are experience writer’s block; I bring poems to prose writers who need to get back to the fundamentals of strong sentences; I share poems with any human being whose psyche needs that essential nourishment. Poetry’s lessons go way beyond simply inspiring—poetry can get artists to explore the tension between confession and revelation. We will look at a wide range of poems that can be used as everything from prompts to templates to roadmaps for the kind of critical self-examination that makes great prose possible.
Workshop Highlights:
Introduction and refresher for how to read poems as prose writers
Packet with poems that we will go over in class
Exercises to try in class and beyond
Two full scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by March 14.
1 Session: Wednesday, April 19
6:30-8:00pm ET
Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir (she:her:’nem) is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker whose work, both solo and collaborative, has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome and across the United States. Sometimes she makes poems of dirt. Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light. Bashir is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her latest, I Hope This Helps, is forthcoming in Spring 2025. Her honors include the Rome Prize in Literature and the Pushcart Prize, and grants and residencies from the New York State Council on the Arts, MacDowell, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and more. In addition to her books, Bashir has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. Her multimedia poetries burst the boundaries of video, installation, photography, collage, and environmental art, and has most recently been shown at Michigan State University, and in Portland, Oregon, and New York City.
This Master Class is one of inquiry and discovery through the practice of multimedia poetries, including audio, visual, digital, textural, hand-made, machine-made, and more. We examine the recent landscape of multimedia poetry to understand how it works, how and where it succeeds (and fails), and how the work being made might move us to push through traditional boundaries of form and genre and foster experimentation in our own poetry.
Participants will learn practical methods for integrating visual, audio, and digital elements into their poetry, expanding their creative toolkit for future projects. By discussing the work of poets and artists in the expanded field, participants will gain insights into how collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches can enrich their poetry. Participants will leave with hands-on exercises and prompts designed to fuel ongoing exploration of multimedia poetries, encouraging them to continue experimenting beyond the workshop.
Workshop Highlights:
Expanded Understanding of Poetic Forms – Participants will explore how poetry can take on new life across various media, from audio and digital formats to handmade and machine-made works, broadening their concept of what poetry can be.
Critical Analysis Skills – By examining the successes and limitations of contemporary multimedia poetries, participants will develop a critical lens to assess how different approaches enhance or challenge traditional poetic forms.
Inspiration for Creative Experimentation – The class will encourage participants to push past conventional boundaries, inspiring them to experiment with blending mediums and genres to create their own innovative works.
Note: This class is priced on a sliding scale from $100 to $250 based on what you’re able to afford. If you are registering at an amount below the upper bound, please pay through our payment portal and forward your confirmation email to kate@theshipmanagency.com with a note that you are registering for this class.
Two full scholarship available for BIPOC writers, as well as two partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, April 7.
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
$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’ve taught at Emory University, the University of Michigan, and North Carolina State University, and this fall I’ll begin a position at the University of Virginia. At Michigan and NCSU, and newly at UVA, I’ve been on the core MFA faculty. 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, and served on the Alice James Books Editorial Board, and I’ve 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 an initial one-hour conversation about your book, your goals for it, and your sense of where it stands and what it needs. 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 and/or readings of specific poems. Manuscript length up to 80 pages. Additional fee to be negotiated for longer manuscripts.
Manuscript review + revision: At this level, I will also read the revised manuscript with the same level of response. Instead of an initial meeting, the second one-hour conversation will come after I have read the revision 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.
Pricing: Manuscript review is $350, Manuscript review+revision $500
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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 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 $750-$1,200 depending on the length of the project and the financial status of the student.
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: Thursdays, February 6, 13, 20
6:00-7:00pm ET
Lindy West
Lindy West is an author, screenwriter, comedian, and podcaster who has worked in the personal essay space for nearly 20 years. After establishing herself as an alt-weekly film critic, blogger, and opinion columnist, Lindy's first memoir, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted as a half-hour comedy on Hulu starring Saturday Night Live's Aidy Bryant. Lindy subsequently released two books of humorous cultural criticism (The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually), and is currently at work on a second memoir, Adult Braces, about the solo cross-country road trip that saved her marriage and her sanity.
They say comedy is tragedy plus time, but how much time does it really take? Lindy West's work manages to find cathartic lightness, absurdity, and even silliness in the darkest moments of life -- her father's death, her unregretted but lonely abortion, her lifelong isolation and depression -- without sacrificing gravity. Women really can have it all!
Humor is a queen among coping mechanisms, an engine of survival and connection. In this deep dive into the craft of the funny memoir, Lindy West will lead participants through her process of deciding which stories to write and why, how to tell the brutal truth without alienating your audience, and how to protect your heart when you're offering it up for comedy.
Workshop Highlights:
Generating Memoir: learn how to be generous with yourself, what to share vs what to protect, the power in true vulnerability
Editing Memoir: learn how to be strict with yourself, what's serving the work vs what's serving your ego, how to let go and kill your darlings
Nuts and Bolts: ask Lindy anything about the business of publishing, her experience adapting her work for television, her cure for writer's block, etc.
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Thursday, January 30.