Class Description

After purchasing a session, your editor / coach will reach out to you (via the email address you provided upon checkout) within seven days in order to schedule your session. All 2-hour sessions can be used for editing, coaching, or a combination of both! For details on page counts and options, return to our website's Editing / Coaching page! ABOUT NEIL RICHARD GRAYSON CONSULTS ON: Short stories and novels, essays and memoirs, idea-driven pieces and odd, conceptual forms, speculative and slipstream stuff, writing process/accountability, thematic and continuity problem-solving, structure, submitting to lit mags. AREAS OF INTEREST: I love talking about thematic undercurrents, psychological trappings, and the lyricism and rhythm of sentences. I think I tend to abide by that Anton Chekhov line about how art doesn't answer big questions, but instead, tries to ask them in their fullest complexity. More than anything, whether I'm working on a supershort story or a book-length epic poem, I'm always on the hunt for the piece's emotional and intellectual core--the handful of ideas that feel most urgent to the piece, and whose interactions form a sort of engine that propels it. I love to read work that feels like it's in urgent conversation with the present day--right now, I'm really excited by writing about maleness, about whiteness, and especially about America. BIO: Neil Grayson was raised in the woods of upstate New York. Since then, he’s been a schoolteacher, video game designer, rock climbing instructor, bartender, and cross-country hitchhiker. He holds degrees in English & Education from SUNY Potsdam, and an MFA from Ohio State University. His fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in CutBank, HOBART, StoryScape Journal, Fiction Southeast, among others. He’s been awarded fellowships from The Kenyon Review, Community of Writers, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart.

Cancellation Policy

Get in touch with your coach / editor if you'd like to change the date of a scheduled session. Session dates can be changed if your coach / editor is notified at least 48 hours in advance. Refunds are available only if work with coach / editor has not yet begun (this includes any time spent by editor on pages) and must be requested within two weeks of purchase. If requested within two weeks of purchase and no part of the coaching / editing package or session has been used, we will issue a full refund, minus a 10% transaction fee (this is a non-refundable fee that we would otherwise be charged). If you request a refund after two weeks from the date of purchase and/or after work with/by coach / editor has begun, we cannot offer any credit or refund. If you are absent on the day of a scheduled session or miss it for any reason, we are unable to offer any kind of refund, credit, or rescheduling. For questions, please get in touch with Joy at joy@pioneervalleywriters.org

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