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10-Month Manuscript Program 
​at Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

Application for All 2024
Manuscript Program Workshops

Application Deadline: December 15, 2023

About the 10-Month Manuscript Program

The 10-Month Manuscript Program at PVWW is for writers in any genre who are serious and committed to completing (or revising) a book-length manuscript over the course of ten months. The program is completely virtual, 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 drafting (or revising) a full manuscript. Each workshop within the program is limited to ten writers, meets (virtually) once a month for three hours, and also involves communication and interaction with classmates between meetings via an easy-to-access online classroom space (Google Classrooms). At their core, PVWW's Manuscript Program workshops are 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 ten months, writers in the program 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, and while it offers some flexibility in terms of workload, it does require a rigorous commitment to the work, a clear project in mind, as well as a commitment to the other writers in the cohort and the various aspects of the program. If you have not already, we highly recommend you review the 10-Month Manuscript Program page before applying.

About the Instructors

THE NOVEL (FIRST DRAFT)

BLAIR HURLEY is the author of The Devoted, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her second novel, Minor Prophets, was published in 2023. Her work has been published in New England Review, Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and an ASME Fiction award finalist. Find her online at www.BlairHurley.com.

 

THE NOVEL (REVISION) - For writers with a completed first draft

LIZ HARMER is the author of the novels The Amateurs (2018) and Strange Loops (2023). Her stories, essays, and poems have been published at the Globe & Mail, The Walrus, Best Canadian Stories, The New Quarterly, Hazlitt, Image Journal, and elsewhere. A recent fellow at the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, she was also the runner-up for the Mitchell Prize in poetry. She’s the winner of a National Magazine Award for Personal Journalism, a CRAFT Literary Creative Nonfiction Award, and the WAGs-ProQuest Award Distinguished Masters Thesis, among other prizes. She teaches in the MFA program at Chapman University. Find her online at www.LizHarmer.com.

 

POETRY/HYBRID and CNF

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI 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. Find her online at www.CarolynZaikowski.com.

 

MEMOIR

KIM ADRIAN is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet, Sock (a Bloomsbury's Object Lessons book), and Dear Knausgaard, which James Wood (literary critic for The New Yorker) described as “a delight from start to finish.” She edited The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms, and wrote the libretto for the chamber opera "The Strange Child." Several of her short stories and essays have been listed as Notable or Distinguished in the Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her work has garnered many awards and recognitions, including, most recently, a fellowship from the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Bavaria, Germany. Find her online at www.KimAdrian.com.

Blair Hurley
Novel First Draft

Liz Harmer photo Virginia (2).jpg

Liz Harmer
Novel Revision

Carolyn Zaikowski
Poetry/Hybrid & CNF

KimAdrianSquare_edited.jpg
KimAdrianBook.jpeg

Application for the 2024
10-Month Manuscript Program
For All Workshop Sections

Before you begin: Please be aware that this application form does not autosave and should be completed in one sitting. We estimate this may take 15 - 30 minutes. We strongly recommend typing and saving your answers to the short answer questions in a separate document, then copying/pasting them into the application. We also strongly recommend that you read through everything on the 10-Month Manuscript Program first and understand fully what this program entails before submitting your application.

 

All applications must be received on or before December 15, 2023 to be considered for the 2024 program year.

Please fill out the form below.

The Workshop Groups

Which section of the program are you applying to be in?
If applicable to your manuscript and/or writing goals, please let us know your SECOND CHOICE if you do not get into your first choice workshop group:
FOR NOVEL REVISION APPLICANTS ONLY: In the Novel Revision Workshop (which is limited to 8 writers), writers read and workshop each others' full manuscripts (see course description for more details). Do you feel you are able to actively participate and keep up in a workshop that requires this level of reading and feedback?

Program Commitment
and Engagement

How familiar are you with all platforms used in this program (Zoom, Google Classrooms, Gmail)

Outside of monthly workshops, each instructor curates a virtual Google Classroom space for writers to stay involved with each other and the course material in between meetings. The virtual classroom includes readings, craft lectures, writing prompts, discussion questions, and other resources all centered around the monthly craft topic. How engaged with this aspect of the course do you foresee yourself being?

In addition to regular work on your own manuscript, involvement in the Manuscript Program requires writers to read and offer thoughtful feedback on sections of their classmates' manuscripts on a monthly basis. How do you feel about this aspect of the program?

In addition to monthly workshops, the program puts writers into smaller groups to check-in with each other throughout the month (Accountability Buddies). These small monthly groups/pairings are an opportunity to get to know the writers in your workshop and their projects more thoroughly, and to give and receive more feedback than simply your monthly workshop. Are you willing, able, and excited to interact and "show up" in your monthly Accountability Buddy pairings with workshop classmates?

Outside of an unforeseen emergency that would require you to withdraw, how serious would you be about attending all class meetings (once a month), engaging with the asynchronous elements of the program, and sticking with the group over the course of ten months?
How flexible is your availability on the listed weekday your workshop meets (listed on our Manuscript Program page)? We ask this because if / when a class ever needs to be rescheduled, all rescheduled classes will happen on the same day of the week.

Past Experience

What's your experience with writing workshops?

Your Manuscript

Please note: This program in no way promises that writers will emerge from the program with a query-ready manuscript. While this has on occasion happened, the most common scenario is that while writers for the most part make significant headway on their manuscript drafts, more drafts (and significant revision) are usually needed before a manuscript is ready to send out to agents; however, this also fully depends on where you are in the drafting / revision process when you enter the program and how much work you put in over the ten months. The time you are willing to put into your manuscript and the program are the most likely predictors of what you will get out of the program. 

Work Sample

GUIDELINES

Please upload (or copy / paste below) a work sample from the project you propose to work on during your months in the program, or from a piece in a similar genre. Please note: If you are just beginning your project and/or you do not have a readable excerpt yet, it is fine to include a different work sample, as long as it is in a similar genre; however, given that the program does involve workshopping significant excerpts, we strongly encourage you to share a work sample from the manuscript you would be working on in the program, regardless of roughness. 



​Please follow the formatting criteria below:
 

  • For prose writers: Writing samples should be no longer than 1000 words, or 5 double-spaced pages.
     

  • For poets and hybrid writers: Writing samples should be anywhere from 5 - 10 pages in length.
     

  • Please make sure your submission follows standard formatting (Times New Roman, 12 pt font, double-spaced, page numbers, etc.)
     

  • All files must be either a PDF or .doc/.docx. We will not be able to open any files other than these!
     

  • Include your name, email address, genre of the work, and which workshop you are applying to on the top of your work sample.
     

  • Applications without work samples will not be considered for admission.

Upload your work sample here:

Upload File

Payment & Policies

The cost of the 10-Month Manuscript Program is $2,500 ($3,400 for the Novel Revision Workshop). Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop does not have the ability to offer financial aid or scholarships for participation in the program. We have the ability to accommodate a very limited number of payment plans for those who could otherwise not attend, although this requires additional setup, which will happen upon acceptance into the program. If accepted into the program, are you able to pay the full tuition by the end of February, 2024, when it is due?

* We are able to offer four-part payment plans on half of the program's tuition, through PayPal's Pay Later and Afterpay. A soft credit check may be needed for this, but would not affect your credit score. All those with payment plans would still need to pay the $500 initial deposit to hold a spot in the program. Interest rates for Pay Later and Afterpay range from 4.99% - 9.99%. If you select this option and are accepted into the program, we will be in touch with next steps then.


​
** Please note that if you can only attend the program with financial aid, you will be offered a spot only if we have available aid for the workshop to which you are applying. We do not regularly have financial aid available for this program, although occasionally exceptions happen.

Refund Policy: Except in the case of serious unforeseen medical emergencies early in the program, we are unable to refund participants who need to withdraw from the program midway through the year, or at any point after deposits have been made. This policy is strictly upheld. Each section of the program is small, admission is selective, and frequent withdrawals undermine the integrity and sustainability of this program. For this reason, we must make sure that all applicants understand and accept this policy.*

Thank you for your interest in PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program! We look forward to reviewing your application. All applicants will be notified of their status in January. Workshops begin in March.

Thank you for applying!

Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

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