• Community Studios

    Cultivating a Sense of Place in Fiction

    In this session, we’ll discuss how to use a character’s associations with their environment to build a compelling sense of place in your story. We’ll also explore the reverse: the ways a sense of place can help create dynamic characters.

  • Navigating the MFA Experience

    Join us on Tuesday, August 19, from 4:45–6:00 PM ET for Navigating the MFA Experience, a College Chat featuring poets, fiction writers, and screenwriters Nicole Caplain Kelly, Christine Singleton, Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Sheena Daree Romero, Marya Cohn, and Jessie Keyt, who will share insights from their MFA journeys, followed by breakout discussions and a Q&A session.

    • Community Studios

    College Essays & MFA Portfolios

    This session will focus on fine tuning personal essay hooks and beginning opening paragraphs for college applicants. For MFA candidates, we will facilitate choosing portfolio pieces that connect with their chosen theme.

    • Committee Meetings

    IV Edit – Digital

    Whether you’re WordPress savvy or looking to learn more about online editorial systems, this group offers opportunities to dive into editorial tasks, outreach, and the publication of Girls Write Now Stories.

    • Community Studios

    Mentor Support & Share

    This session will focus on the half-way point of the summer mentorship cycle and what we are noticing in our pairs. What’s working? What would we like to improve? How are we tracking for any of the pair goals in this cycle?

    • Community Studios

    Poetry as Nourishment: Writing Food and Eating Poems

    In this session, we’ll explore food as a means of survival, safety, and gratitude, tracing its journey from soil to plate as a product of care and labor. We’ll begin with a brief gratitude prayer, read poems by Naomi Shihab Nye and January Gill O’Neil, and close with a fun writing exercise and sharing circle.

    • Salon Series

    Memoir & Op-Eds as a Tool for Reclaiming Your Story with Kaila Yu

    Join author and cultural critic, Kaila Yu, as she guides participants through how memoir and opinion writing can be used as tools of resistance, reflection, and reclamation. Drawing from her upcoming memoir Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, Kaila will share how writing personal narratives can dismantle stereotypes, challenge the gaze, and give voice to long-silenced truths.

    • Community Studios

    Reflecting: The Art of Writing Creative Nonfiction Essays

    In this session, learn how to use an A to Z structure to write a creative nonfiction essay. Exploring this structure can help you write about difficult topics or simply be a fun way to look at a theme from different angles.