About the Year-Long Manuscript Group Program

    The Year-Long Manuscript Group Program at PVWW is for writers in any genre who are serious and committed to completing (or revising) a book-length project over the course of the year. The program is intensive and comprehensive, and was designed in the spirit of building a community of writers committed to supporting each other through the rigorous and sometimes lonely process of completing (or revising) a full manuscript. Each group is limited to a small number of writers, meets (virtually) once a month for two hours, and also involves communication with the group between meetings via an easy-to-access online classroom space. At their core, each group is centered around giving and receiving feedback, craft instruction, building a supportive community, and the push toward completing a full-length manuscript. Over the course of the year, writers in all manuscript groups will be guided to set active, clear goals that will help them both get to the finish line and better understand craft elements related to their genre. The program is open to writers at all stages of the process, in any genre, but it does require a rigorous commitment to your work and a clear project in mind that you plan to work on for the entire year.

    About the Instructors

    ​KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of PVWW and the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Group Program. She is the former fiction editor of Storychord, a fiction instructor at Grub Street, and a professor at UMass Amherst. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com.

    ​CELIA JEFFRIES holds an MA from Brandeis and an MFA from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and La Muse. Her debut novel Blue Desert will be published April 2021. She is currently at work on a memoir. Find her online at celiajeffries.com.

    ​CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI is is the author of the hybrid novels In Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, PANK, West Branch, DIAGRAM, Everyday Feminism, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor and volunteer death doula. 

    Application for 2021 Year-Long Manuscript Groups 

    Past Experience

    The Manuscript Groups

    Your Manuscript

    Work Sample

    Please upload (or copy/paste below) a sample of your work. This should be your strongest work and does not necessarily need to reflect or be from the project you would be working on in the year-long workshop; however, if you do have polished work from the project you would be working on, that is preferred. Please follow the formatting criteria below:
    • All work samples should be no longer than 1500 words, or 5 double-spaced pages.
    • Please make sure your submission follows standard formatting (Times New Roman, 12 pt font, double-spaced, etc.)
    • All files must be either a PDF or .doc/.docx. We will not be able to open any files other than these!
    • Applications without work samples will not be considered for admission.
    Max file size: 20MB

    Payment & Policies

    The cost of the Year-Long Manuscript Group Program is $1500  ($1900 for the Novel: Revision group). Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop does not have the ability to offer financial aid or scholarships for participation in the year-long program, and with very few exceptions, we are not able to accommodate payment plans. Because of this, all participants in the program must be able to pay full tuition, and full payment is due by the end of February 2021. Please let us know if this is possible for you.

    Thank you for your interest in PVWW's manuscript groups! We look forward to reviewing your application. All applicants will be notified of their status by the end of January 2021. Manuscript Groups will begin in early March 2021.

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What People Are Saying About PVWW

"Can't say enough about PVWW, Joy, and her amazing team of teachers! Writing is very much about the ability to sit in your seat for hours and put pen to paper, but coming to PVWW has helped me build a community around my writing, breathe new life into my efforts, and get out of my own head a bit. And beyond that, I've learned lots of practical, nuts-and-bolts techniques that have vastly improved my work."
- Emily Everett, Editor at The Common

Contact Us

Email: joy@pioneervalleywriters.org
Phone: 518-645-1113 
Location: Northampton, MA

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