PVWW 10-Month Manuscript Program
MEMOIR
10 Months: March - December, 2026 • Meets First Tuesdays on Zoom (6-9 pm EDT) • $2,600
10-Month Memoir Workshop
with Julia Morgan McKenzie
This workshop is for fiction writers who have finished a complete draft of a full-length manuscript and are looking for support and structure in the revision process. The explicit goal of this course is to complete one full revision of a completed draft of a manuscript. All participants and the instructor will read up to 90K words of each others’ full manuscripts over the course of the year, and each writer will have two opportunities to discuss their manuscript with the entire group, where they will receive written and verbal feedback. Writers will meet with the instructor for two one-on-one hour-long sessions, one of which will focus on deep verbal feedback and recommended approaches to revision of their full manuscript, and the other on discussing up to 6,000 words of revised material. This course meets over Zoom once a month for three hours, in small accountability buddy groups of 2-3 people at least once between meetings, and is in regular contact via a virtual classroom space. Over the course of the year, we'll set active, clear goals that will help participants both get through a full revision and better understand craft elements in novel writing, such as character development, structure, plot, scene construction, and more. Each month, writers will be offered a set of linked, progressive exercises geared toward helping them as they revise, a slew of prompts and writing exercises geared toward re-writing necessary sections of the book or reworking existing pages, craft lectures, discussion questions, and readings designed to maintain momentum, solidify a regular writing practice, and provide support around all of the highs and lows of the novel revision process. Writers should be prepared to read and discuss up to four novels over the course of the year, as well as craft readings, as assigned by the instructor. For more details about what this course entails, including overall features of the program, see the above About the Program section​.
Limited to 8 writers.
Course Outline & Topics Covered
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MARCH: Speaking our truth — What is memoir today? Why do we read memoirs? Why are we drawn to tell our stories? What is possible in memoir?
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APRIL: Freeing our natural voice — How do we clear the way for our authentic voice to come through? How do we listen deeply to our quiet voice inside and encourage it to speak on the page? Who are we speaking to?
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MAY: Sensorial time travel — A particular smell (or song, or taste) can catapult us back in time to an experience like it was yesterday. How can we use this time-travel ability to deepen the sensorial elements in our writing?
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JUNE: Widening the lens — What urgent questions are we compelled to ask through writing memoir? When writing about our own experiences, how do we gain the perspective to see the big picture?
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JULY: Talking the talk — What are the elements of dialogue that lifts up off the page? How do we bring spoken voices to life in our story?
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AUGUST: Building the boat for the story to travel forward — What structure supports our story? Do we plan structure, or does it emerge? How does the character of us in our memoir change?
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SEPTEMBER: Seeing the world with new eyes — Through revision and editing, how do we take away what’s not needed, and add what is? How do we keep turning the dial of the kaleidoscope until a clear vision comes into focus?
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OCTOBER: Reading out loud — When stepping up to the microphone to read our work, how do we want to show up? How do we connect with our audiences in ways that are authentic to us?
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NOVEMBER: Sending our story into the world — Whether we’re beginning the process of query letters, residency applications, or literary magazines, we’ll make a plan for next steps.
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DECEMBER: Help along the way — How can we be kind and patient with ourselves when navigating choppy waters in our writing? What are ways we can create a practice and community that will sustain and inspire us going forward?
Instructor
JULIA MORGAN MCKENZIE went to Bard College before earning a master’s in education at Harvard and—many years later—an MFA at Stonecoast. Her first book, The Book Keeper: A Memoir of Race, Love, and Legacy (Swallow Press, 2020, published under her married name) was called “a carefully crafted memoir for all readers who care about family connections and legacies and about multiracial identity in an increasingly complex world” by Library Journal. Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, The Masters Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Inside Higher Education, and elsewhere. She’s hard at work on her second book, a memoir about race, mid-motherhood, and anxiety. She directs the Williams College Writing Center and lives in western Massachusetts. Visit her online at www.JuliaMorganMcKenzie.com
What Former Students Say
“"I started the program with a half-finished manuscript (~63K words) that I'd been working on for about 3 years. I ended the program with a first draft that is almost complete (~136K words). Wow! I didn't think I'd make so much progress in ten months. The give-and-take with the instructor and the rest of my cohort was the best thing about the class. Workshopping pieces exposed me to a wide range of opinions and brilliant insights from the others in the class. I learned new ways to think about writing, new things to pay attention to. I know this will help me as I start revision.​"- Connie Senior (Alum, 2024)
“This course gave me the confidence to believe that I'm going in the right direction with my novel revision. I don't think I could have found that confidence on my own. Liz has also been wonderful. She's generous with her expertise, available, and has responded quickly to any questions I've had outside of our regularly scheduled class times. She's egalitarian, doesn't talk down to us the way I've felt in other non-PVWW workshops. Finally, the level of writing has been superb. For the most part, I've really enjoyed reading the other manuscripts in our workshop. "- Anonymous (Alum, 2024)
“I ended up in Blair Hurley’s fantastic class with a cohort of nine other dedicated and talented writers. Soon after I began, I got an agent and a book deal for my first novel (Sister Creatures, October 2025), and this workshop is the only reason I was well underway on another project as I entered this whirlwind year of book promotion leading up to my debut’s publication. It was an absolute lifesaver!"- Laura Venita Green, author of the novel Sister Creatures (Alum, 2024)
“Workshopping an entire manuscript with a group of talented writers/readers was invaluable." - Angela Sweeney (Alum, 2025)
“Structurally, I enjoyed the workshops hour(s) each meeting where we dove deep into the submitted manuscript. I also enjoyed reading the feedback letters submitted by other students, as they allowed me to see how others read and interpret and think about things." - Anonymous (Alum, 2024)