FREE & OPEN TO ALL! ONLINE

February 2023 Reading Nights


​Featuring the writers of the 2022/23 Manuscript Program


​Join us for a series of weekend readings featuring (and celebrating) the talented writers of PVWW's 2022/23 Manuscript Program, reading and/or sharing from the manuscripts they've been working on all year. Each Reading Night will feature the writers of two separate sections of the program (see the schedule below), reading or sharing for a few minutes each. 
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If RSVPing the day of an event: We will NOT be sending out the Zoom link out on the day of the readings, nor will we be able to respond to requests for the link, so please do not expect an email with this if you RSVP on the same day of one of the readings. Instead, please attend via the Zoom link that will be posted here (below). Note: The link goes live at the time of the reading, not before!
​Please note: RSVP to attend one or all of the readings! The Zoom link is the same for all readings/days! You will not receive a confirmation upon RSVPing, but will receive the Zoom link in early February. Please mark your calendars after RSVPing!

Mark Your Calendars!

Sunday, February 12 (3 - 4:30pm EST) 
  • Nonfiction Workshop (Instructor: Carolyn Zaikowski)
  • Poetry/Hybrid Workshop (Instructor: Carolyn Zaikowski)

    ​Readers: ​Alice Agro-Paulson, Tzivia Gover, Susan Rice, Willow Barnosky, Alison Keller, Amy Rubin, Robert Gosselin, Aly Pierce, Jennifer Young, Megan Lieff, Brianne Bennes, Debra Blair, Carla Martin, Sue Swartzlander, Amy Sheldon, Wren Bellavance-Grace

Saturday, February 18 (4 - 5:30pm EST)
  • Memoir Workshop (Instructor: Dorian Fox)
  • Short Story Workshop (Instructor: Sara Rauch)​

    Readers: Nora Burkey, Elizabeth George, Allyson Mazzuchi, Peter Bishop, Sarah Hyde Kaspar, Wendy Lass-Luzi, Christine LeBel, Laurie McMillan, Neil Grayson, Susan Li, Maria Mejorado, Jane Morrison, Linda Wolfe Keister, Deborah Gavito, Katherine Walsh, Elizabeth Bayou-Grace, Tom Pedulla

Sunday, February 19 (3 - 4:30pm EST)
  • First-Draft Novel Workshops (Instructor: Kate Senecal)

    ​Readers: Audrey Altstadt, Adenike Akinbisehin, Lola Bondar, Kate Blakinger, Reilly Neil, Susan Petry, Ted Harvey, Ellen Wilbur, Helen Sharma, Suzette Henry, Tom Crice, Alison Carmel Ramer, Deanna Ross, Dawn Hubbard, Margo McLennan, Johanna Wilbur, Aimee Lunden

Saturday, February  25 (3 - 4:30pm EST)
  • Novel Revision Workshop (Instructor: Kate Senecal)

    ​Readers: Catherine Carberry, Rachel Rosen-Caroll, Amy Glynn, Anita Gill, Howard Singer, Whit Andrews, Ryan Kovacs, Ina Lipkowitz, Nora Dillon, Molly Keller, Armand Rodriguez 
Saturday, September 10 (1 - 3pm ET) • Virtual / Zoom • Free to Attend

Live Reading of PVWW Instructor Kira Rockwell's

Award-Winning Play, "Oh to Be Pure Again"

Directed by (NAME) and performed by actors (NAMES)

Join us for a virtual reading of PVWW instructor, Kira Rockwell's award winning play, "Oh to Be Pure Again." Directed by (insert name) and performed by actors (insert names).

OH TO BE PURE AGAIN
by Kira Rockwell

Play description: Set during one hot Texas summer at a Neo-charismatic Christian church camp, an idealistic young counselor works to shepherd the campers in the senior girls’ cabin through a delicate phase of self- discovery, only to be confronted with challenges to her own faith. This earnest drama follows their journey to make an authentic connection with something bigger than themselves. An ode to female desire, submission, rebellion, and growing up in a religious culture that's obsessed with purity.

The play received its world premiere with Actor's Express this year, and early developmental support from The Kennedy Center, The National New Play Network, and Great Plains Theatre Conference, among others. Kira is a neurodiverse playwright and educator originally from Texas with a trauma informed, healing centered lens that aims to nurture communal spaces that disrupt passivity and empower agency. She is proud to be a part of the Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop community.
RSVP Directions: Please RSVP just ONCE, even if you plan to attend more than one session, as we will add you to the Community Writing mailing list and email you the link to all sessions the day before. Link is always the same. Open to all! Teen writers welcome.

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 1/3, 2023!
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10-Month Manuscript Program

 ​10-Month Manuscript  Program

READING  &  O P E N  H O U S E

         KATE SENECAL              •              DORIAN FOX                •    CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI       

            The Novel                                       Memoir                      Poetry/Hybrid & Nonfiction       

Interested in our 10-Month Manuscript Program, but have some questions first? We recently held our annual virtual  Manuscript Program Open House, featuring short readings by some of the talented writers of our 2022 cohort, as well as a brief introduction to the 10-Month Manuscript Program, and the recording of the event is now up on our Youtube channel (link below)!

For more information on PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program, including course outlines and instructor bios, visit our our program page linked above!

​Deadline to apply is December 21, 2022!

Experimenting with Form

​in Poetry

​with Gail Thomas

4 Weeks: Sundays, January 8 - 29 (10am - 12pm EST)

Limited to 10 writers • Live on Zoom • $250

January 

February

March ​

April

May

 Wednesday, November 9th (8 - 9:30pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom •​ Free

Anthology Launch and Author Reading

Our friends at Essential Dreams Press are launching this incredible fiction anthology in November (Dreams for a Broken World), and we're delighted to partner with them in hosting this celebratory virtual author reading and launch party, featuring many of the authors from the anthology, including PVWW Founder Joy Baglio. We invite you to join us for an evening of readings, shared craft tips from the featured authors, and giveaways and prizes throughout the evening! Moderated by anthology Series Editor / Essential Dreams Press Founder Julie C. Day and Guest Editor Ellen Meeropol. Prizes include gift cards to PVWW workshops and copies of Dreams for a Broken World. All who RSVP will have their name entered into the drawings! 

Authors Reading at Event: Cynthia Robinson Young, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Marie Vibbert, Lisa C. Taylor, Veronica Schanoes, Robert V.S. Redick, Benjamin Parzybok, Jan Maher, Aimee Liu, Céline Keating, Ava Homa, Cai Emmons, and Joy Baglio

Full author bios and more info on the anthology on the Event Page (here) or the Dreams for a Broken World landing page.  ​
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​About Dreams for a Broken World anthology: The anthology brings together twenty-four authors from both genre and literary traditions, including reprints by authors such as Nisi Shawl, Ava Homa, Usman T. Malik, Aimee Liu, Sheree Renée Thomas, and Breena Clarke and original stories from authors such as Charles Payseur, Innocent Chizarama Ilo, Robert V.S. Redick, Marie Vibbert, and Veronica Schanoes. Their work traverses an array of styles, genres, and subject matter, from fantastic to realist, dark to playful, speculative to activist, yet are connected by questions of what it means to live in a fractured and uncertain world: How do we face the ugliness? How do we find a better way forward? In the process of editing and bringing together these stories, Essential Dreams Press Founder and Series Editor Julie C. Day is joined by Guest Co-Editor Ellen Meeropol, alongside Assistant Editors Carina Bissett and Celia Jeffries. All proceeds from the sale of the anthology go directly to the Rosenberg Fund For Children. 

 Sunday, November 6th (3 - 4pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom •​ Free Event

Craft/Process of Book-Length Projects

A Reading & Panel Discussion with PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program Instructors

KATE SENECAL       •       DORIAN FOX         •         CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI      •     JOY BAGLIO

It's maybe the question everyone embarking on a book-length project asks at some point in the process: How do you keep going? How is it humanly possible to sustain a project of this length over years? How do books get finished? There is no easy answer to this, and no one path toward book-completion, but something we know for sure can help with the challenges of sustaining lengthy projects is community around them, as well as learning about what's helped others - both in terms of craft and process - as well as an openness to experimentation. This panel brings together PVWW's Manuscript Program instructors for short readings from their current long-form work, followed by discussion on the challenges of putting together a book-length manuscript as well as strategies and approaches that have worked for them. They will draw on their own experiences (across a range of genres) as well as their experiences leading a cohort of writers through the process of book-creation, over the course of a year. There will be opportunities for questions and comments from the audience, and we hope this becomes a lively discussion with lots of involvement from all who wish to participate. Moderated by Joy Baglio, and featuring Manuscript Program instructors Kate Senecal, Dorian Fox, and Carolyn Zaikowski.
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PANELISTS

KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and the Director of PVWW's Manuscript Program, where she also leads the Novel Workshops (First Draft & Revision sections). She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the former fiction editor of Storychord. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com. In addition to her work at PVWW, she teaches writing at Grub Street and Umass, Amherst. She is at work on a first novel.

​DORIAN FOX leads the Memoir Workshop in PVWW's 10-Month Manuscript Program. His essays, articles and stories have appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including Brevity, The Rumpus, Gay Magazine, Atticus Review, Under the Gum Tree, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, december, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Short Reads and others. His work has also been honored in various competitions and received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. A longtime Massachusetts resident, he now lives in Brighton, MA. 

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI teaches in PVWW's Manuscript Program, leading both the Nonfiction Workshop and the  Poetry/Hybrid Workshop. She is a death doula and author of the novels In a 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 widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, West Branch, PANK, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor.

MODERATOR

JOY BAGLIO founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in 2016, and it has since grown to include over thirty instructors and close to a hundred workshops each year, now completely virtual. Her short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, The Missouri Review, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Recent honors include fellowships, residencies, and grants from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf & Sewanee Writers' Conferences, The Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She holds an MFA from The New School, and is at work on a first novel and short story collection.

 Sunday, October 9th (3 - 4pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom •​ Free Event

The Art and Challenge 

of Writing Memoir

A Reading and Conversation with
Sara Rauch and Julie Scolnik
Join author, editor, and Western MA writing instructor Sara Rauch and author, concert flutist, and Mistral Music director Julie Scolnik for a reading from their recent memoirs:  XO (Rauch) an autobiographical essay / memoir investigating mythologies of romantic love, connections to the divine, and the death/rebirth cycle; and Paris Blue (Scolnik), a decades-spanning story about the tenacious grip of first love and a lifelong quest for answers and release. The readings will be followed by a discussion with PVWW Founder Joy Baglio and Assistant Director Kate Senecal about the process of writing memoir/personal essays and the challenging and cathartic themes the book explores, as well as some of the challenges memoirists face in shaping their own narratives. Those who'd like to participate more actively in the discussion are invited to purchase / read XO and Paris Blue in advance of the event and come with questions and thoughts on the books, the ideas they raise, and the memoir-writing process!

SARA RAUCH is the author of What Shines from It: Stories, which won the Electric Book Award. Her prose has also appeared widely in literary magazines journals, including Paper Darts, Meetinghouse, Hobart, Split Lip, and So to Speak. She holds an MFA from Pacific University, and lives with her family in Holyoke, MA. In XO, ​her recent memoir and second book, Sara Rauch is in a long-term, committed relationship with another woman when she begins a low-residency MFA in fiction. Though it goes against the promises she’s made, she finds herself pulled into an intense affair with a married man, a well-known writer in the program. More than an essay about bisexual infidelity and the resulting heartbreaks, XO unfolds Rauch’s story like a map of psychic terrain, allowing the author to explore her longstanding obsessions with romantic love, personal faith and belief systems, and the stories we tell ourselves to get through our ever changing lives. XO was published in spring 2022 by Autofocus.Find her online at www.sararauch.com.

JULIE SCOLNIK is a concert flutist and the founding artistic director of Mistral Music, a chamber music series which since 1997 has been known for its virtuosic artists, imaginative programming, and the personal rapport she establishes with her audiences.  Paris Blue (Koehler Books) is her debut memoir, a story that has lingered in the corridors of her psyche for over forty years, about young love, heartache, and the role of memory in our lives, set against a backdrop of classical music and Paris. Since Julie's treatment and recovery from breast cancer in 2005, she has found ways to play and curate benefit concerts which raise funds for support for underserved women with the disease. She lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and her two cats. They have two adult children, also musicians, pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower and cellist Sasha Scolnik-Brower, with whom she frequently performs. Find her online at www.JulieScolnik.com.

Sunday, September 25 (1 - 3pm ET) • In-Person • Free to Attend

Words in the Orchard

Fall Reading at Park Hill Orchard, in Easthampton MA
This September, join us for a PVWW Fall Reading at beautiful Park Hill Orchard, in Florence MA! The lineup includes many of this season's instructors, local authors, and former PVWW students. Come a little early to get a chance to hear local musician Tracy Grammer, who will be performing from around 12:40 - 1pm before our reading. We'll be on the Willow Stage, and readings will be happening from 1 - 3pm, with an hour afterward for mingling and meeting fellow writers and local community. If you've been craving in-person writerly community, we hope you join us! There really isn't a more magical spot in the valley. 

The Willow Stage, where the reading will happen, is close to the bathrooms and to Park Hill Orchard's farm stand, which offers fresh cider, donuts, seasonal fruit, and other treats. After the reading, stroll around the orchard and see the many artworks embedded and nestled in the trees and groves (Park Hill Orchard hosts "Art in the Orchard" every year, a season-long display of outdoor artworks by local and regiional artists.)

So we can have a sense of attendance and make sure the space can accommodate, please RSVP and let us know if you'll be attending! You can also add the date to your calendar via the RSVP form. We'll be sending out reminders as well as the event approaches. We hope to see you in the orchard!
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Pre-Reading Music


TRACY GRAMMER is a writer, storyteller, multi-instrumentalist, touring singer-songwriter, and actor based in western Mass. She’s also a past participant in PVWW’s Year-long Manuscript Group with Celia Jeffries where she workshopped chapters for a memoir. Learn more at  http://www.tracygrammer.com

Featured Authors

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​SARAH JANE CODY ​is the Director of Marketing at PVWW, in addition to her role as an instructor. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals such as in The Common, Gulf Coast, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She is a contributing prose editor at Pigeon Pages. She was a finalist for Pleiades’s 2018 G.B. Crump Prize in Experimental Fiction. She’s a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College and an alumnus of Tin House’s Summer Workshop. Currently, she’s at work on a novel. Find her online at www.sarahjanecody.com

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

FUNGAI TICHIWANGANA is a writer, journalist, and web developer who has lived in Western MA since 2018. In June 2020 he launched Valley of Writers, a project aimed at sharing tools, ideas and success stories with writers in the Pioneer Valley and beyond. He has managed numerous online projects to support art & culture initiatives and in 2015 was awarded a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard. He is passionate about teaching artists and creatives how to use online tools to expose their work to new audiences. ​
RACHEL LYON is author of the novels SELF PORTRAIT WITH BOY, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize, and FRUIT OF THE DEAD, forthcoming from Scribner in 2024. Her short work has appeared in publications such as One Story, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. An editor emerita of Epiphany, Rachel teaches intermittently for the Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, Bennington College, and other institutions. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and two young children.


​​CELIA JEFFRIES is the author of the award-winning novel Blue Desert, and her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice, and Puerto del Sol. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and La Muse. She holds an MA from Brandeis and an MFA from Lesley University. She is currently at work on a memoir.

​GAIL THOMAS is the author of five books of poetry: Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, among others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Thomas, a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, is a working poet retired from Smith College.

​CAROLINE BELLE STEWART's stories can be found in Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook "Husbandly Things" (Factory Hollow) and co-creator of “Mast Year: A Mystical Field Guide" (Mount Analogue). A recipient of fellowships from Monson Arts and MacDowell, she lives in Western Massachusetts.

​Q.M. ZHANG is the author of the award-winning hybrid memoir, Accomplice to Memory (Kaya Press, 2017), and the founder of MemoryWorks, a creative research and writing practice for individuals and communities who are trying to trace their past and reclaim histories that have been censored, buried, or erased. She is Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review and Associate Professor Emerita of Cultural Psychology & Creative Nonfiction at Hampshire College.

​KATE SENECAL is the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Program. She has received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest and was the winner of Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose’s 2021 Award in Fiction (where her story is forthcoming). Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, Storychord.com, and The Waterwheel Review. She holds an MFA from VCFA.
TZYNYA PINCHBACK writes the Black woman body in nature, in illness, and in joy as a deliberate act. She is author of "How to Make Pink Confetti",  a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.  Her recent poems appear in Deaf Poets Society, Lily Poetry Review, and Mom Egg Review.  She has received fellowships from the Cordial Eye Gallery & Artist Space, Hurston/Wright Foundation, and was finalist for 2020 Plymouth Poet Laureate.Tzynya is a current Writing the Land participant - a project connecting writers to conserved landscapes across the Northeast.
NAILA MOREIRA's middle-grade novel THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN, about two children who bond over their love of nature-watching as they try to save a plot of land in their town, is forthcoming from Walker Books US in fall 2022.  Moreira teaches at Smith College and has been writer-in-residence at the Shoals Marine Laboratory and Forbes Library in Northampton MA.  Her second chapbook, Water Street, won the New England Poetry Club Jean Pedrick Prize. She’s also worked as a journalist, environmental consultant, and Seattle Aquarium docent, and holds a doctorate in geology.

​DREW JOHNSON's stories have appeared in Harper's, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, The Cupboard, Gulf Coast, New England Review, and elsewhere. Reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming at Literary Hub, Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from the University of Virginia.

​ERIKA HIGGINS ROSS is a writer / marriage and family therapist who lives in Western Massachusetts. Her work has been published in Juice Magazine, Mommy Poppins, LA.com, Your Teen Magazine, and Stagebill Magazine. She was a writer-in-residence at The Studios of Key West in March 2022. Higgins Ross was a Warner Brothers Fellowship finalist and a founding member of the all-girl band Big Panty. She is currently working on a novel set in NYC in the 70s, 90s, and current day.
OPAL GAYLE  is the recipient of the 2019 St Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and a finalist in the 2021 Miami Book Fair Emerging Writers Fellowship. She is a member of Gallery of Readers, Valley Society, and Boston Writers of Color, she writes memoir, Essays, short stories, and occasionally sticks her toe in the adult world of poetry. At heart, Opal is a Jamaican girl who has learned to be at home in the world. She holds degrees in journalism, and Spanish and English literature from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Saint Louis University in Madrid, Spain. She currently lives in Bristol, RI where, in addition to her writing, she is a world language teacher of Spanish and French.  

LARA EHRLICH is the author of Animal Wife, which won Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award, judged by Ann Hood, and was published by the press in Sept 2020. She is also the host of Writer Mother Monster, a conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of “having it all” and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. Lara is the director of marketing for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas based in Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and six-year-old daughter. ​

​EMILY BUTLER is the author of Lucid Dreaming, Waking Life: Unlocking the Power of Your Sleep (Toplight Books) and the poetry chapbooks Self Talk (Plan B Press) and Ghost House (Alien Buddha Press, forthcoming). Their work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and elsewhere. You can follow them on Instagram @TheEmilyButler.

​Most authors don't have a master plumbers license and a master's degree. STEVE BERNSTEIN has both. As a kid, he survived the turbulent Bronx streets of the 1960's and chaos at home. Since his early twenties, Steve has been a mentor, teacher, and advocate for teens in trouble. Steve is also a humane educator and animal rights activist who shares his home in Western Massachusetts with Dodger and Jonnie, his non-human family. He's the author of Stories from the Stoop, forthcoming in 2023 from Skyhorse Books.
JOY BAGLIO is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, The Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Recent honors include residencies/fellowships/awards from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and The Speculative Literature Foundation, among others. Joy holds an MFA from The New School. Find her online at www.JoyBaglio.com and Twitter @JoyBaglio.
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Fire & Ice: Reading & Conversation with Celia Jeffries & Dennis Sweeney, spring 2020.
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Fall Fiction Reading, 2020. Featured Authors: Lara Ehrlich, Elwin Cotman, Dennis James Sweeney, and Matthew Lansburgh
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Winter Poetry Reading, 2020. Featured Western MA Poets: Featured: Sara Eddy, Faith Shearin, and Jovonna Van Pelt; (top right: PVWW Founder Joy Baglio)
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Spring Fiction Reading, 2020. Featured Authors: Mary South, Debra Jo Immergut, Jennifer Rosner, and Sara Rauch (top left & middle: PVWW Assistant Director Kate Senecal & Founder Joy Baglio)
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Summer Poetry Reading, 2020: Featured Poets: Anders Carlson-Wee, Karen Skolfield, Rage Hezekiah, and Gail Thomas (top left & middle: PVWW Assistant Director Kate Senecal & Founder Joy Baglio)

Past Virtual Author Readings & Events

​​Welcome! Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop hosts frequent author readings, events, and panels - free and open to the public. At this time, all readings and events are virtual and will be for the foreseeable future. To attend an event, please RSVP, and you'll receive an email closer to the event date containing the link. We also always post the Zoom link on the event listing here, on this page, on the day of the event. 
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RSVP to a PVWW Reading or Event

* indicates required
When you RSVP, you will receive an initial welcome email with the Zoom link to your event. You will also receive a reminder as your event approaches. You can "Unsubscribe" from the Events list at any time with the link at the bottom of your initial welcome email. 
ONLINE • Free, Ongoing

Community Writing Workshops: Ongoing

Fridays: May 6, June 3, July 1, Sept. 2, Oct. 7 (6 - 7:30pm EST) • Free to Attend

​with PVWW Founder-Director Joy Baglio

This FREE, gathering for writers of all levels and genres happens every FIRST FRIDAY of the month and is a great way to get back into the flow of your work in the supportive presence of other writers. We warm up each session with a number of engaging prompts (each session's prompts are based around a theme, so check our theme schedule on the Community Writing event page!), followed by (optional) sharing and discussion. Despite the session's theme, prompts are open and accessible to writers of all genres. This is a great gathering for any writer seeking to make headway on their own writing projects as well as gain support and solidarity from the group. Discussion and sharing will happen in the last half hour. Please Note: Community Writing is NOT a feedback-centered workshop. It is a generative gathering, a place to write alongside others, as well as connect and share with other writers. It's also drop-in friendly, and usually a larger group than the standard weekly workshop. If you're looking for a smaller workshop group that meets regularly with a focus on craft instruction and/or feedback, check out our other classes (listed below). No group size limit. 
RSVP Directions: Please RSVP just ONCE, even if you plan to attend more than one session, as we will add you to the Community Writing mailing list and email you the link to all sessions the day before. Link is always the same. Open to all! Teen writers welcome.

​Friday, June 17 (7 - 8pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom • Free & Open to All
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Tiger Solstice:  

Re-centering Your Writing Vision for 2022

This lunar new year marked the “year of the tiger,” a time of boldness and making progress on our work by leaps and bounds! The buzz words are strength, vitality, and growth, and the theme song is, obviously, “Eye of the Tiger”. But after the past two years of uncertainty, if you’re feeling a little lost in your writing life? You are not the only one. If you’ve gotten off track on your writing intentions or if you’d just like to recenter yourself this summer solstice, you’re in the “write” place. Join us for an hour of intention setting with ritual theater, writing, and simple arts and crafts to meet the new year with a roar!

The session will include ritual journaling, specifically looking back on the past six months to see what’s working, what isn’t, what we’d like to leave behind, and what we want to take with us or invite in for the rest of the year. We’ll also create a sigil or “logo” that can help to remind us of our intention throughout the year, as well as a small collage or “vision board” that can help set the inspirational tone for our writing practice or a specific project. We’ll finish by breaking into small groups and sharing our discoveries, insights and hopes. There will also be an invitation to buddy up with other writers so you can check in with each other over the next few weeks and see how your intentions are going. RSVP at the link on the top of this page!
RACHEL ROSE TEFERET is a marketing copywriter by day, novelist and poet by night. Her work has been published by Subprimal Poetry Art, Zoetic Press’ NonBinary Review, Page & Spine, Black Rabbit Quarterly, Slink Chunk Press, Manawaker Podcast, and won first place in the September 2021 Storytwigs micro fiction contest. Teferet is also a member of PVWW’s yearlong novel revision course and a longtime volunteer for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). She shares her musings and helpful writerly things on lettersandfeathers.wordpress.com and on Twitter as @art4earthlings.

Absolutely no artistic skills needed! All activities will be simple, fun, and require these basic supplies:
  • A magazine to cut up for collage
  • Scissors
  • Glue or tape
  • One big lid and one small lid (like a plastic yogurt tub lid and a narrow-mouth mason jar lid) for tracing two concentric circles
  • Two pieces of paper
  • A paper bag
  • Colored markers or pens (or just a plain black pen is fine too)

​Friday, April 22 (7 - 8pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom
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A Celebration of PVWW Poets, featuring
​
Join us online (Zoom) on April 22nd to celebrate National Poetry Month with readings from these celebrated PVWW poets: Gail Thomas, Fungai Tichawangana, Mary Warren Foulk, Carolyn Zaikowski, Naila Moreira, Adam Grabowski, & Tzynya Pinchback! After the reading, the event will open up to Q&A and discussion with the authors. Moderated by Joy Baglio. 

​Friday, April 22 (7 - 8pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom
​

A Celebration of PVWW Poets, featuring
​
Join us online (Zoom) on April 22nd to celebrate National Poetry Month with readings from these celebrated PVWW poets: Gail Thomas, Fungai Tichawangana, Mary Warren Foulk, Carolyn Zaikowski, Naila Moreira, Adam Grabowski, & Tzynya Pinchback! After the reading, the event will open up to Q&A and discussion with the authors. Moderated by Joy Baglio. ​

The below Zoom Link for the Spring Poetry Reading on Friday, April 22 will go live at 7pm EST:

About the Featured Authors


​Experiential Gifts for Writers, by Writers!

Need gifts for the writers in your life?

Give A PVWW Digital Gift Card!

Gift Cards never expire, are for your desired amount chosen upon checkout, and can be used for any of PVWW's virtual workshops & classes. A festive digital gift card will be emailed to the recipient upon checkout. 

APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN UNTIL UNTIL JANUARY 3

​Year-Long Manuscript Program

Intensive, year-long workshops for writers of book-length projects

    KATE SENECAL       •       DORIAN FOX        •    CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI   •    SARA RAUCH  

        Novel                             Memoir            Poetry/Hybrid & Nonfiction       Short Story

Sunday, December 19th (4 - 5pm) ONLINE via Zoom

END-OF-YEAR READING, featuring

RACHEL LYON          DREW JOHNSON     JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN   JAMES SCOTT

Join us and these celebrated authors for a festive, end-of-year reading, followed by a discussion with the audience about the writing life, process, and more. Moderated by Joy Baglio.


​About the Featured Authors


​Host

JOY BAGLIO is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in journals such as Tin House, Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, among others. She has received awards from Vermont Studio Center, Yaddo, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Speculative Literature Foundation. She holds an MFA from The New School and is at work on a first novel and short story collection. 
RACHEL LYON is the author of SELF PORTRAIT WITH BOY, which was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. Her short work has appeared in One Story, Longreads, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among other publications. Editor-in-chief of Epiphany and a fiction instructor for Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Catapult, and elsewhere, she lives in Brooklyn NY and Ashfield MA.

DREW JOHNSON's stories have appeared in Harper's, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, The Cupboard, Gulf Coast, New England Review, and elsewhere. Reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming at Literary Hub, Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from the University of Virginia.

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN is the award-winning author of five books of fiction and poetry, including the celebrated novel Song of the Shank, which was a front-page review in both The New York Times Book Review and The San Francisco Chronicle. Allen’s other accolades include The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for Fiction, The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, a grant in Innovative Literature from Creative Capital, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, a residency at the Bellagio Center, and fellowships at The Center for Scholars and Writers, the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Allen is the founder and editor of Taint Taint Taint magazine. In 2023, Graywolf Press will publish his collection of stories Fat Time.  Allen makes his home in Johannesburg, where he is at work on several projects, including the memoir Mother Wit. Find out more about him at www.authorjefferyrenardallen.com

JAMES SCOTT is the author of the novel The Kept, from Harper, and his short fiction has been short-listed for the Pushcart Prize and nominated for the Best New American Voices. He has received awards from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Millay Colony, the Saint Botolph Club, the Tin House Summer Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. ​James currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife, daughter, and dog. 

Experiential Gifts for Writers, by Writers!

Looking for gift ideas for a writer?

Give A PVWW Digital Gift Card!

Gift Cards never expire, are for your desired amount chosen upon checkout, and can be used for any of PVWW's virtual workshops & classes. A festive digital gift card will be emailed to the recipient upon checkout. 

 Sunday, November 14th (4 - 5pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom •​ Free Event

Sustaining Your Book-Length Project
Panel Discussion with the PVWW Year-Long Manuscript Program Instructors

     JOY BAGLIO    •   KATE SENECAL   •   DORIAN FOX   •      SARA RAUCH   •   CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI

It's maybe the question everyone embarking on a book-length project asks at some point in the process: How do you keep going? How is it humanly possible to sustain a project of this length over years? How do books get finished? There is no easy answer to this, and no one path toward book-completion, but something we know for sure can help with the challenges of sustaining lengthy projects is community around them, as well as learning about what's helped others, and an openness to experimentation. This panel brings together some of the PVWW Year-Long Manuscript Program faculty to discuss the challenges of putting together a book-length manuscript as well as strategies and approaches that have worked for them. They will draw on their own experiences as well as their experiences leading a cohort of writers through the process of book-creation, over the course of a year. There will be lots of opportunities for questions and comments from the audience, and we hope this becomes a lively discussion with lots of involvement from all who wish to participate in the discussion. Moderated by Joy Baglio. 

To attend / RSVP: We remove the link to RSVP on the day of the event, though to attend, click the below Zoom link, which will go live on Sunday November 14 at 4pm EST.


​About the Panelists

KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Group Program. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the former fiction editor of Storychord. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com. In addition to her work at PVWW, she teaches writing at Grub Street and Umass, Amherst. She is at work on a first novel.

​SARA RAUCH leads PVWW's Year-Long Short Story Manuscript Group. She's the author of the short story collection What Shines From It, and her prose has appeared in Hobart, Gravel, Split Lip, So to Speak, Luna Luna, and more. She holds an MFA from Pacific University. She lives with her family in Holyoke MA. 

​CELIA JEFFRIES holds an MA from Brandeis and an MFA from Lesley University and is the author of the novel Blue Desert (2021). She is the current (2021) leader of the Year-Long Memoir Workshops at PVWW, and teaches both memoir and fiction writing frequently. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice, and Puerto del Sol, among others. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and La Muse. She is currently at work on a memoir.

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI leads both the Year-Long Nonfiction Manuscript Group and the Year-Long Nonfiction Poetry/Hybrid Manuscript Group. She is a death doula and author of the novels In a 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 widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, West Branch, PANK, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor.

DORIAN FOX’s essays, articles and stories have appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including Brevity, The Rumpus, Gay Magazine, Atticus Review, Under the Gum Tree, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, december, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Short Reads and others. His work has also been honored in various competitions and received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. A longtime Massachusetts resident, he now lives in Brighton, MA. He will lead the 2022 Year-Long Memoir Workshop at PVWW.

Moderator

JOY BAGLIO founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in 2016, and it has since grown to include over thirty instructors and close to a hundred workshops each year, now completely virtual. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Joy has received fellowships and scholarships from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf & Sewanee Writers' Conferences, The Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She holds an MFA from The New School, and is at work on a first novel and short story collection.
Course Outline / What Will Be Covered
In addition to workshopping in the final four weeks, each week the group will focus on a separate craft topic. 

Week One - Quality of Details / Language
We will look at the many ways language and detail does important narrative work in flash, including implying backstory, pointing toward the heart/emotional core of the piece, creating thematic echoes, and more. 

Week Two - Narrative Time
Through discussion of several masterful pieces and short in-class exercises, we'll explore the different ways flash fiction writers manipulate narrative time. We'll talk about the different effects that result when time is condensed, blurred, sparsely sampled, fragmented, ballooned, etc. 

Week Three - Openings
We'll examine and talk about a number of brilliant flash fiction first lines, with an eye toward how they very quickly ground us in a place, while also setting up conflict, stakes, character, etc. We'll discuss the most important elements a flash opening should have, and what can be cut or condensed. 

Week Four - Endings
We'll talk about what some of the best options for an ending in flash fiction are, including how to leave the reader with that sought-after sense of "linger" that great flash pieces achieve.

Week Five - Playing with Structure
Because of the brevity of the form, flash pieces often experiment with different structures, including "borrowing" from forms such as lists, letters, calendars, receipts, etc. We'll look at some creative and fun examples of these "hermit crab" pieces, discuss the relationship between form and content, then try our hand at a few of our own. 

Week Six - Revision
Flash fiction is created, ultimately, in the revision process. It's where everything expendable is cut out, lengthy descriptions are tightened into their barest essentials, and each word or phrase must earn its place. We'll talk about strategies and tips for cutting/condensing, as well as work through some guided in-class revision exercises together.


WORKSHOP GOALS
  • Understand the essentials of what flash fiction is and how it differs from other forms, through reading and discussing texts.
  • Generate a number of new flash pieces you're excited about in response to engaging, fun prompts.
  • Experiment with new styles, approaches, and forms in your fiction.
  • Gain confidence, inspiration, and accountability from a small group of fellow writers.
  • Receive thoughtful, supportive, and insightful feedback from the group and instructor.
  • Grow your skills as an editor of your own work, in particular cutting a piece down to its barest essentials. 

12 Months: Begins March 2, 2022 • ​Meets first Wednesdays on Zoom (6 - 9pm EDT) • $1900Year-Long Short Story Workshop​with Sara RauchThis group is designed for short fiction writers who are interested in diving deeply into the craft of short fiction and producing several new stories over the course of the year. Each month, we’ll undertake in-class and at-home generative exercises designed to help hone your understanding of what a short story is and how it functions as a contained unit. We will also keep in mind the revision process and various methods to approach revising short fiction as we go. By the end of the year, participants can expect to have solid drafts of between six and twelve short stories. Over the course of the year, we will give each other intensive feedback on drafted stories, as well as spend time studying and discussing published short story collections (approx. 6 collections, plus occasional individual stories). Students will be encouraged to keep a “project journal” throughout the year, which will provide a place to record ideas, capture inspiration, work through important questions about your work, and document the creative process. Alongside your own writing, we will cover specific elements of craft, such as characterization, plot, scene building, dialogue, details, world building, setting, structure, and more. Craft essays will supplement our in-class lessons and provide further understanding of how the various elements of craft interact with one another on the page. Finally, as we wrap up the year, we will talk about the world of literary magazines and best practices for pursuing publication of individual stories as well as what the process of putting together a story collection entails. For more details about what this course entails, including overall features of the program such as monthly accountability buddies, instructor meetings, and general program structure and info, see the above "About the Program" section, as well as the "Important Program Information" sections below. ​Limited to 10 writers.

​About the InstructorSARA RAUCH is the author of What Shines from It: Stories, which won the Electric Book Award. Her prose has also appeared widely in literary magazines journals, including Paper Darts, Meetinghouse, Hobart, Split Lip, and So to Speak. She holds an MFA from Pacific University, and lives with her family in Holyoke, MA. Find her online at www.sararauch.com.
​Monthly Course Outline and Craft Topics Covered
  • MARCH (2022): What is a Short Story + Crafting a Scene + Reading Like a Writer: ​In this first class, we will discuss various definitions of the short story form; the basics of how to craft a scene; and how to read fiction with a writer’s eye.
 
  • APRIL (2022): Beginnings + Point of View: This month, we’ll cover the various ways to begin a short story as well as the options available to you for point of view and how each option might influence how a story is told.
 
  • ​MAY (2022): Characterization & Plot: We’ll discuss how characterization and plot go hand-in-hand in literary fiction (arguably, in all good fiction regardless of genre) and different ways you might dovetail the two craft elements together in your work.
 
  • JUNE (2022): Characterization Deep Dive: This month, we’ll dig deeper into the act of creating memorable characters.
 
  • JULY (2022): Dialogue: Following on our characterization intensive, in this class we’ll discuss dialogue do’s and don’ts. We’ll also explore how to utilize dialogue in scene and how to approach “unusual” dialogue.
 
  • AUGUST (2022): Worldbuilding + Setting: This month, we’ll talk about how to develop the architecture of your story worlds, the importance of specificity in settings, and how to use time and rules effectively to create the place where your stories play out.
 
  • SEPTEMBER (2022): Details, Details + Show and Tell: This month, we’ll cover the importance of detail in your writing, and how to use them well in your stories. We’ll also take on the old “show, don’t tell” adage and discuss ways in which showing and telling can be balanced over the course of a narrative.
 
  • OCTOBER (2022): Structures, Part One: In this class, we’ll talk about the importance of a solid story structure, as well as cover the basic shapes of the most common, linear, story structures.
 
  • NOVEMBER (2022): Structures, Part Two: Following on our previous class, this month we’ll focus on unusual story structures, such as spirals, radials, meanders, and other non-linear shapes a story might take.
 
  • DECEMBER (2022): Endings: This month, we’ll discuss how different types of endings function, as well as figuring out how to “land” an ending (choosing the right type and getting it on the page).
 
  • JANUARY (2023): Revision: Though we will be touching upon revision techniques throughout the year, this class will focus on revisions great and small: approaches, ideas, learning to trust your writerly instinct about what needs to be cut, a different way of thinking about the common advice to “murder your darlings,” and more. 
​
  • FEBRUARY (2023): Story Meet World! Advice & How-to + Lit Mags + Putting together a collection: For our final class, we’ll talk about making the leap from writing to publishing, and we’ll cover some best practices for submitting to literary magazines, dealing with the inevitable rejections, celebrating successes, and being a good literary citizen; we’ll also discuss some ideas on how to assemble a short story collection.

Workshops This Month

at  Pioneer  Valley  Writers'  Workshop

Making the Iceberg

Worldbuilding

in Science Fiction

with James Cambias

2 Weeks: Saturdays, May 7 & May 14 (1 - 4pm EST)
Limited to 10 Writers • Live on Zoom
Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

Reading Like a Memoirist:

Notes of a Native Son​

with Celia Jeffries

4 Weeks: March 31 - April 21 (10am - 12pm EST)
Limited to 10 writers • Live on Zoom • $300
Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

The Poetry Chapbook:

Creating and Publishing

with Gail Thomas

3 Weeks: Saturdays, May 13 - 27 (10am - 12pm EST)
Limited to 10 writers • Live on Zoom • $200

Writing the Novella

with Olivia Kate Cerrone

3 Hours: Saturday, February 26 (1 - 4pm EST)
Limited to 12 writers • Live on Zoom • $60
Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

Windows, Peepholes, Portals

Intro to Flash Fiction

with Carolyn Zaikowski

6 Weeks: Tuesdays, March 1 - April 15 (6 - 8pm EST)
Limited to 10 writers • Live on Zoom • $325
Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

Revision Strategies

For Prose Writers 

with Kate Senecal

8 Weeks: Wednesdays, May 11 - June 29 (6 - 8pm EST)
Limited to 10 writers • Live on Zoom • $400
Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop

Fall 2021 Writing Across Borders ​Fellow 

Uchenna Awoke

UCHENNA AWOKE grew up in rural Nigeria (where he still lives). He remembers the day his mother emptied the only oil lamp his family used so he would stop writing—she saw it as a waste of kerosene, but more importantly, she believed it would lead him into trouble. Self-educated as a writer, Uchenna’s short stories have appeared in Transition, Elsewhere Lit, Trestle Ties and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center in 2018 and 2019 respectively, where he worked on completing a first novel manuscript. We are excited to welcome him virtually to PVWW this fall as our first Writing Across Borders featured reader. He gave a live (virtual) public reading on 10/24/2021 and will continue to be involved with PVWW this season. PVWW is raising funds to help Uchenna and his family relocate out of a dangerous rural part of Nigeria, currently experiencing violence and attacks. 

Read an interview with Uchenna conducted by journalist Fungai Tichawangana.
​​

Sunday, November 21 (1 - 2:30pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom - Free Event
​

Year-Long Manuscript Program 

Virtual Open House & Reading!

Intensive, year-long workshops for writers of book-length projects

    KATE SENECAL       •       DORIAN FOX        •    CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI   •    SARA RAUCH  

                 Novel                                          Memoir                          Poetry/Hybrid & Nonfiction                Short Story
​
Join us for our festive virtual Year-Long Program Open House, featuring short readings by some of the talented writers of our 2021 cohorts, as well as a brief introduction to our Year-Long Manuscript Program. The open house is also a great  opportunity to meet the program instructors, current students, as well as ask questions and learn more about the program.

The Year-Long Manuscript Program (in novel-writing, memoir, nonfiction, and poetry/hybrid) offers small, intensive, year-long workshops for writers in any genre working on a book-length project who seek community, support, and guidance in a rigorous MFA-level program. All year-long workshop meet monthly (virtually) over the course of twelve months and offer many other ways of support in between meetings, including a virtual classroom space and monthly accountability buddy system. The program welcomes applications from October 1, 2021 - January 3, 2022. Applicants are notified of their status by the end of January, and all workshops begin in March. 
​


One-Day

​Craft Classes
​

These classes run two or three hours and focus on particular writing-related craft, techniques, process, or practical topics. They often emphasize the development and honing of specific skills, through craft instruction, analysis of published work, discussion, and in-class writing exercises. One-day classes are an opportunity to dip a toe into writing instruction (if you're new to writing), get a burst of inspiration and about a particular topic, and be part of a supportive writing group for an afternoon! Unless stated, they DO NOT entail outside reading or the opportunity to receive feedback on your work. Limited to 12 writers (in most cases).


​Multi-Week

Workshops


These longer workshops meet weekly for the stated number of weeks and in most cases offer the opportunity to receive feedback on your work from the instructor and group (unless the course description emphasizes generative writing, the study of a particular text, etc.) Multi-week workshops usually include weekly deadlines, reading and/or writing assignments, and most do require at least a few hours of work per week, outside of class. They are always supportive and encouraging in nature and a great way to build a regular writing practice and cultivate your own writing community. Limited to 10 writers.

Year-Long

Manuscript

​Program
​

The PVWW Year-Long Manuscript Workshop Program is for writers in all genres (fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry/hybrid) who are working on book-length manuscripts. These workshops are for serious writers looking to make a year-long commitment to finishing a draft of their book, in the supportive and rigorous presence of a small group. Workshop groups meet virtually on a monthly basis, and writers receive regular feedback from the group and instructor. The program includes a number of other support structures, including one-on-one conferences with the instructor, accountability buddies, and a virtual classroom space. Applications are open annually October - December, and the workshops begin each year in March.

NEXT UPCOMING WORKSHOP

ONLINE 

Worldbuilding in science fiction is like an iceberg: most of it is under the surface, out of sight. Only a small fraction sticks up into the light, but without the rest to support it, that fraction would sink. In this two-part workshop, writers will be guided through the basics of science fiction worldbuilding via an in-class team project, with a focus on alien beings and worlds. This workshop is perfect for writers in the field of fantastic fiction (or those interested in exploring), game designers who want to make their settings more effective, and fans of author James Cambias who want to see how the magic trick really works. No math or science beyond high school algebra is required. Limited to 10 writers.

JAMES CAMBIAS is a professional science fiction writer and game designer, with five novels and eight full-length game sourcebooks published, along with two dozen short stories, and scores of game articles and collaborations. 
​​
Sustaining Your

Book-Length Project

Panel and Discussion with the
​PVWW Year-Long Program Instructors


​It's maybe the question everyone embarking on a book-length project asks at some point in the process: How do you keep going? How is it humanly possible to sustain a project of this length over years? How do books get finished? There is no easy answer to this, and no one path toward book-completion, but something we know for sure can help with the challenges of sustaining lengthy projects is community around them, as well as learning about what's helped others, and an openness to experimentation. This panel brings together some of the PVWW Year-Long Manuscript Program faculty to discuss the challenges of putting together a book-length manuscript as well as strategies and approaches that have worked for them. They will draw on their own experiences as well as their experiences leading a cohort of writers through the process of book-creation, over the course of a year. There will be lots of opportunities for questions and comments from the audience, and we hope this becomes a lively discussion with lots of involvement from all who wish to participate in the discussion. Moderated by Joy Baglio. Please Note: This is not the final lineup of panelists!
JOY BAGLIO founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in 2016, and it has since grown to include over thirty instructors and close to a hundred workshops each year, now completely virtual. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Joy has received fellowships and scholarships from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf & Sewanee Writers' Conferences, The Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She holds an MFA from The New School, and is at work on a first novel and short story collection. 

KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Group Program. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the former fiction editor of Storychord. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com. In addition to her work at PVWW, she teaches writing at Grub Street and Umass, Amherst. She is at work on a first novel.

​SARA RAUCH leads PVWW's Year-Long Short Story Manuscript Group. She's the author of the short story collection What Shines From It, and her prose has appeared in Hobart, Gravel, Split Lip, So to Speak, Luna Luna, and more. She holds an MFA from Pacific University. She lives with her family in Holyoke MA. 

​CELIA JEFFRIES holds an MA from Brandeis and an MFA from Lesley University and is the author of the novel Blue Desert (2021). She is the current leader of the Year-Long Memoir Workshops at PVWW, and teaches both memoir and fiction writing frequently. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice, and Puerto del Sol, among others. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and La Muse. She is currently at work on a memoir.

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI leads both the Year-Long Nonfiction Manuscript Group and the Year-Long Nonfiction Poetry/Hybrid Manuscript Group. She is a death doula and author of the novels In a 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 widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, West Branch, PANK, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor.


​About the Panelists

Sustaining Your

Book-Length Project

Panel and Discussion with the
​PVWW Year-Long Program Instructors


​It's maybe the question everyone embarking on a book-length project asks at some point in the process: How do you keep going? How is it humanly possible to sustain a project of this length over years? How do books get finished? There is no easy answer to this, and no one path toward book-completion, but something we know for sure can help with the challenges of sustaining lengthy projects is community around them, as well as learning about what's helped others, and an openness to experimentation. This panel brings together some of the PVWW Year-Long Manuscript Program faculty to discuss the challenges of putting together a book-length manuscript as well as strategies and approaches that have worked for them. They will draw on their own experiences as well as their experiences leading a cohort of writers through the process of book-creation, over the course of a year. There will be lots of opportunities for questions and comments from the audience, and we hope this becomes a lively discussion with lots of involvement from all who wish to participate in the discussion. Moderated by Joy Baglio. Please Note: This is not the final lineup of panelists!


​About the Panelists

JOY BAGLIO founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in 2016, and it has since grown to include over thirty instructors and close to a hundred workshops each year, now completely virtual. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Conjunctions, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Joy has received fellowships and scholarships from Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf & Sewanee Writers' Conferences, The Elizabeth George Foundation, among others. She holds an MFA from The New School, and is at work on a first novel and short story collection. 

KATE SENECAL is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and the Director of PVWW's Year-Long Manuscript Group Program. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the former fiction editor of Storychord. She's received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. Kate’s fiction has been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com. In addition to her work at PVWW, she teaches writing at Grub Street and Umass, Amherst. She is at work on a first novel.

​SARA RAUCH leads PVWW's Year-Long Short Story Manuscript Group. She's the author of the short story collection What Shines From It, and her prose has appeared in Hobart, Gravel, Split Lip, So to Speak, Luna Luna, and more. She holds an MFA from Pacific University. She lives with her family in Holyoke MA. 

​CELIA JEFFRIES holds an MA from Brandeis and an MFA from Lesley University and is the author of the novel Blue Desert (2021). She is the current leader of the Year-Long Memoir Workshops at PVWW, and teaches both memoir and fiction writing frequently. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice, and Puerto del Sol, among others. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and La Muse. She is currently at work on a memoir.

CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI leads both the Year-Long Nonfiction Manuscript Group and the Year-Long Nonfiction Poetry/Hybrid Manuscript Group. She is a death doula and author of the novels In a 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 widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, West Branch, PANK, Dusie, Huffington Post, and Everyday Feminism. She holds an MFA from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor.

  Sunday, October 24 (4 - 5pm EST) • Free to attend • Online 

Writing Across

​​B  o  r  d  e  r  s


​Reading & Conversation 

with Nigerian Writer
​
Uchenna Awoke
FREE & OPEN TO ALL! ONLINE

YEAR-LONG MANUSCRIPT GROUP 

Open Houses & Info Night

Featuring Members of the 2020 Year-Long Manuscript Group Program

Photos from last year's Info Night & Reading, in our Williamsburg MA building. Note: Both upcoming Info Nights will be virtual!
Join us for one or both of our festive, virtual Manuscript Group Open Houses & Readings, featuring the talented writers of our Year-Long Manuscript Group Program (in fiction, memoir/nonfiction, and poetry/hybrid). Both events will begin with a thirty-minute reading, followed by a brief presentation on our Year-Long Manuscript Group program. The program welcomes applications from October - January, and new groups will begin in March of 2021. The Manuscript Groups at PVWW are small, intensive, year-long workshops for writers in any genre working on a book-length project. They meet monthly (virtually) over the course of a year and offer many other ways of support in between meetings as well.  The second half of the evening will be an opportunity to ask questions of all three instructors as well as the current manuscript group participants, meet fellow writers, and celebrate with the PVWW community. 

Mark Your Calendars!

Sunday, November 21st, 2021 (1 - 2pm EST):
• Short readings featuring current members of our Year-Long Manuscript Program (readers in all genres)
• Open House: Discussion & Q&A with manuscript group instructors, students, and program directors. 

WE ARE NO LONGER COLLECTING RSVPs! FEEL FREE TO JOIN US AT THE LINK BELOW, REGARDLESS OF RSVPing OR NOT:

Zoom Link to Our Saturday, January 9th Reading & Open House (6 - 8pm EST)

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Sunday, June 27th (5 - 6pm) ONLINE via Zoom - Free to Attend!
​

Fantastic Worlds: Reading & Conversation
​

  BRENDA PEYNADO             SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU


​We couldn't be more excited to feature these two authors on the vanguard of genre-bending storytelling! Both weave elements of fabulism, science-fiction, myth, and fairytale into stories that resonate deeply with our times. 

We'll listen to a short reading from each of the authors, followed by a discussion which will also incorporate questions and comments from the audience. Moderated by PVWW Founder/Director Joy Baglio. 


​About the Featured Authors

SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU is the author of the forthcoming novels, HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK (2022) and GIRL ZERO (William Morrow/Harper Collins and Bloomsbury UK) and the story collection, WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE (Black Lawrence Press), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year Award, an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016, and a notable book at Buzzfeed. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, and has been listed as notable in Best American Non-Required Reading and the Best Horror of the Year. He teaches creative writing and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, their cat Kalahira, their real dog Fenris, and a robot dog named Calvino.
​
BRENDA PEYNADO is a Dominican American writer of fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays. Her writing style ranges from lyric essays, magical realism, fabulism, science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, to some perfectly realistic exaggerations thrown in the mix.
Her short story collection, THE ROCK EATERS, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in March 2021. Her work appears in Tor.com, The Georgia Review, The Sun, Threepenny Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review online, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.  Her stories have won a Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune, an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize; inclusion in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction anthologies, two Vermont Studio Center Fellowships, and other awards. After a BA in Computer Science from Wellesley College, she worked as an IT auditor for IBM. She graduated with her MFA in fiction from Florida State University, where she held a Kingsbury Fellowship and was Fiction Editor of The Southeast Review. In 2014, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to the Dominican Republic to write a novel about the 1965 Guerra de Abril. She received her Ph.D. in fiction from the University of Cincinnati, where she taught screenwriting, fiction, and science fiction & fantasy writing.
Currently, she teaches fiction and screenwriting at the University of Central Florida’s BA and MFA programs.
​

Reviews, Praise, & Buzz About Our Featured Authors

“Ghosts, Godzilla, shapeshifters, snow babies; [SEQUOIA] NAGAMATSU's fantastical characters are nonetheless grounded in modern-day conflicts, creating a fascinating and haunting mix of science and myth, past and present. These are stories of gods and monsters walking among us, told with wit, longing, and wisdom.”
— TIMOTHY SCHAFFERT, AUTHOR OF THE SWAN GONDOLA
"Sixteen genre-bending stories as substantial as they are superbly crafted. Melding science fiction, fantasy, fable, and legend with atmospheric prose, [BRENDA PEYNADO'S] stories touch on a wide range of topics: immigration, race, climate change, the inexorable millennial hustle, influencers, gun culture, and the fraught, electric urgency of friendship between adolescent girls...A sparkling, strange, and enthralling debut from a vivid new voice in contemporary fiction."
- KIRKUS REVIEW
“In these perfectly stirring stories, SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU constructs a cartography of eye-stinging wonder.”
— MICHAEL MARTONE
“A rich tangle of the familiar and the beautifully new. These are bright inventions, but they will also satisfy our longing for the stories we have always loved. ”
— RAMONA AUSUBEL
“These stories deftly breathe new life into the myths and pop culture of an older Japan, bringing them into the modern world and directing them in unexpected ways. It’s hard to tell if [SEQUOIA] NAGAMATSU holds nothing sacred, or if he holds everything to be. In either case, the effect is the same: these are deft atmospheric romps that a hell of a lot of fun but also worm their way under your skin before you know it. An addictive and compelling debut.”
— BRIAN EVENSON
​
"[BRENDA] PEYNADO probes the limits of reckoning with such dilemmas as otherness, loss, and love in her glorious debut, a collection of inventive and fabulist stories."
- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY



​RACHEL LYON

DREW JOHNSON

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN
​
JAMES SCOTT

NEXT UPCOMING AUTHOR EVENT

Fantastic Worlds:

Reading and Conversation

with Brenda Peynado 
& Sequoia Nagamatsu

Sunday, June 27 (5 - 6pm EST) • Online via Zoom

LEARN MORE / RSVP • Free & Open to All!
A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first generation experiences to xenophobia.

These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattle-like angels who live on their roofs, believing that their “thought and prayers” will protect them from the world’s violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. “The Great Escape” tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past amongst beautiful objects she’s horded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded.
With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying and marvelous nature of humanity.
​
ADVANCED FLASH FICTION
6 weeks
This workshop is designed to give experienced flash fiction writers the opportunity to give and receive feedback on multiple pieces in progress. Each writer will receive feedback from the group and instructor on at least two pieces (up to 1000 words each), through a Workshop Google Doc (for written comments), followed by a discussion in class on the piece. Instead of remaining silent, writers will be an active part in the conversation about their work, with a focus on concrete revision options. Each week, we will also cover relevant craft topics, though this will be informed by the pieces we workshop that week. In addition to workshopping, we'll look at published flash fiction by writers like Jamaica Kincaid, Lydia Davis, Kathy Fish, and many contemporary flash writers with an eye toward key craft elements such as language, detail, narrative time, sentence-level craft, among others. We'll also spend time talking about literary magazines and where to send polished flash pieces after revision, and participants will also engage in a literary magazine research and sharing activity. Throughout the six weeks, each writer will have the opportunity to conference one-on-one with the instructor after their final workshop, to talk more in depth about their work and next steps. Writers should plan on 2 - 4 hours of reading and classmate feedback each week. Several essays and example pieces which we will be discussing on the first day will be emailed to the group a week before the first class. For experienced flash fiction (or memoir) writers. Admission by application, or permission of the instructor.  
OUTLINE YOUR NOVEL: BUILD A STORY WITH SOLID BONES
2 Hours
​Perhaps you've wondered how novelists keep track of so many character arcs, plot twists, unfurling mysteries, and other narrative elements, while also crafting these various threads into elegant, well-paced and developed narratives? Perhaps you're feeling the unwieldiness of your book as it grows, unsure of how to move forward, or maybe it's going great and you're excited to dive even deeper into the mechanics of your plot. Whatever the reason, there are myriad reasons to pause in the process and spend some time developing an outline, or strengthening the one you have: Outlines allow you to juggle the multiple threads of your story in a way that will later make the process much easier, allowing you to more easily develop mysteries and other exciting twists, and to above all save time in the writing process. Outlines are also where MUCH of the creativity and imaginative fun of novel-writing happens, contrary to popular belief. First, we'll talk about the three-act structure and how to use it in clearly fleshing out our novels. Then, through a series of guided in-class outlining exercises with a focus on figuring out your story's "spine" (and increasing complexity from there), participants will be given time to work on developing their own outlines. Lastly, we'll talk about strategies for moving forward with your three-act outline and how to use it to best help you in the writing process. Writers will leave the workshop with a first draft of a three-act outline. For novelists at any stage of the process. Ideal for writers who have a clear story in mind, and who have already thought through major events of their story. Also useful for those with first drafts. All levels. 

FINAL MULTI-WEEK WORKSHOP OF THE SEASON

ONLINE - 1 spot left

Reading Like a Writer: Studying Craft 

in Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles

4 Weeks: Wednesdays, December 2 - 23(6 - 8 pm EST) • $200

In this course we'll spend four weeks learning about the craft of fiction writing through reading Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles together. Miller masterfully demonstrates an efficient but complex, emotionally rich, character-driven plot structure by re-envisioning a familiar tale from a unique perspective. Each meeting will feature discussion of Miller's use of the fundamental elements of storytelling, and how we can learn from them as writers; generative writing exercises related to the reading, and optional verbal sharing of work participants do in-class. For the first class: Read approximately the first third of the book, or as much as possible up to this point. 
KATE SENECAL received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2013. She is the former fiction editor of Storychord, the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writer’s Workshop, a fiction instructor for 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. Her fiction is published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com.

Thursday, October 29th (6:30 - 8pm) ONLINE via Zoom

FALL FICTION READING, featuring

DENNIS JAMES SWEENEY  •   ELWIN COTMAN   •   LARA EHRLICH  •  MATTHEW LANSBURGH

Immortals, ghosts, rogue Darwinists, women who transform into deer or are born with wings - these are some of the fascinating and unlikely characters who roam the pages of the four fantastical and genre-bending authors featured in our upcoming Fall Fiction Reading! You won't want to miss them, especially so close to Halloween! After the reading, the event will open to Q&A and discussion with the authors. Moderated by Joy Baglio. 

We are no longer accepting RSVPs, but feel free to join us with the Zoom link and info below, which will be active beginning at 6:15pm EDT, on Thursday, October 29th.


​About the Featured Authors

DENNIS JAMES SWEENEY is the author of the chapbook Ghost/Home: A Beginner’s Guide to Being Haunted, as well as three other chapbooks of poetry and prose. His first full-length book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the 2020 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and is forthcoming from Autumn House Press in 2021. His writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, Five Points, Ninth Letter, The New York Times, and The Southern Review, among others. A Small Press Editor of Entropy and former Fulbright Fellow in Malta, he has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

​ELWIN COTMAN is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He's the author of two collections of speculative short stories, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, and Hard Times Blues. His work has appeared in Grist, Weird Fiction Review, Black Gate, The Thought Erotic, The Southwestern Review, and Cabinet des Fees, among others (see publications). He was a participant in the 2012 Low Lives Performance Festival. In 2009, Cotman was a core member of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers Cooperative, a DIY writers space in Pittsburgh. He has curated many readings and reading series. His third collection, Dance on Saturday, will be published in summer 2020 by Small Beer Press.

​​LARA EHRLICH is the author of the short story collection ANIMAL WIFE (Red Hen Press, September 2020), which won Red Hen’s Fiction Award, judged by Ann Hood. Lara’s stories are published in F(r)iction, Hunger Mountain, StoryQuarterly, The Normal School, and elsewhere, and she has received scholarships from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Midwest Writers Workshop, and the Garret on the Green. Lara lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter, and she is the director of marketing for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven.

MATTHEW LANSBURGH's collection of linked stories, Outside Is the Ocean, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award and the 2018 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as One Story, New England Review, Glimmer Train, Ecotone, Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, and Epoch, and has been shortlisted in the Best American Short Stories series. Recent honors include fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Visit him online here.
​
​

Reviews, Praise, & Buzz About Our Featured Authors

"ELWIN COTMAN is one of the most original new voices you will encounter—he is a synthesizer of the domestic and the fantastic, of soaring myth and the grittiest realities, of lewd dialect and high lyricism. His stories are profound engagements with suffering of every stripe—they will also make you hoot with laughter. I was amazed by the force of Mr. Cotman's pinwheeling imagination." — KAREN RUSSELL, author of Swamplandia!
"The stories in [LARA EHRLICH's] Animal Wife are gorgeous and heartbreaking. They glide into each other, refract, and expand outward again, echoing seasons and change and longing. They cause astonishment and wonder.”
​—KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things
"MATTHEW LANSBURGH has a keen eye and ear, and he puts them to great use in this lovely and, frankly, mesmerizing linked collection. Outside Is the Ocean is a gem." ─ ANDRE DUBUS III, Judge, Iowa Short Fiction Award 
"MATTHEW LANSBURGH is a writer whose mind houses labyrinths underground but also towering cathedrals; even in ruins, they open onto sky." ─ SALAMANDER 
"Inventive, incandescent stories, rich in strangeness. ELWIN COTMAN's writing is a tonic to ward off drabness and despair." — KELLY LINK, author of Get in Trouble ​
“Sensual and intelligent, with gorgeous prose, [LARA EHRLICH's Animal Wife] made me dizzy…”
—ANN HOOD, Judge, Red Hen Press Fiction Award
"These stories, and [LARA] EHRLICH, are remarkable, and the collection is a standout in a season full of amazing new releases." - Literary Hub
“[DENNIS JAMES SWEENEY's Ghost/Home] operate as compassionately examined intricacies of living in a wounded body…A tender embrace, this text will haunt you and heal you. A remarkable work; I couldn’t recommend this more.” 
—JANICE LEE
FREE & OPEN TO ALL!

YEAR-LONG MANUSCRIPT GROUP 

INFO NIGHT, OPEN HOUSE, & READING

Featuring Members of the 2020 Year-Long Manuscript Group Program

Photos from last year's Info Night & Reading, in our Williamsburg MA building. Note: Both upcoming Info Nights will be virtual!

Two Info Nights/Readings in December & January

Join us for one or both of our festive, virtual Manuscript Group Info Nights & Readings, featuring the talented writers of our Year-Long Manuscript Workshop Group program (in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry). Both events will begin with the reading, followed by a brief presentation on our Year-Long Manuscript Workshop Group program. The program welcomes applications from October - January, and new groups will begin to meet in February/March of 2021. All groups meet monthly (virtually) over the course of a year and are for writers in any genre working on a book-length project.  Afterward, there will be an opportunity to talk with instructors and former manuscript group participants, meet fellow writers, and celebrate with the PVWW community! Not interested in our 2020 manuscript groups? Come celebrate the end of the year with us anyway and enjoy the reading!
​
Saturday December 12th (3 - 4:30pm EST):
​• 6 - 6:30: Reading features Celia Jefries' & Carolyn Zaikowski's Nonfiction & Poetry/Hybrid Manuscript Groups
 • 6:30 - 7:30: Discussion & Q&A with manuscript group instructors (Kate Senecal, Celia Jeffries, Carolyn Zaikowski)

Saturday, January 9th, 2021 (6 - 7:30 pm EST):
• 6 - 6:30: Reading features Kate Senecal's Fiction Manuscript Groups
• 6:30 - 7:30: Discussion & Q&A with manuscript group instructors (Kate Senecal, Celia Jeffries, Carolyn Zaikowski)

Mark Your Calendars!

​Welcome! Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop hosts frequent author readings, events, and panels - free and open to the public. At this time, all readings and events are virtual and will be for the foreseeable future. To attend an event, please RSVP, and you'll receive an email closer to the event containing the link. 

​Thursday, August 27th (6:30 - 8pm EST) ONLINE via Zoom
​

SUMMER POETRY READING, featuring
​

     RAGE HEZEKIAH    •    GAIL THOMAS    •    ANDERS CARLSON-WEE  •   KAREN SKOLFIELD

Click on the images to learn more about each book!
​
Join us online (Zoom) on August 27th to celebrate the recent work of four outstanding poets: Rage Hezekia, Gail Thomas, Anders Carlson-Wee, and Karen Skolfield. After the reading, the event will open up to Q&A and discussion with the authors. Moderated by Joy Baglio and Kate Senecal. Zoom link to attend event:

About the Featured Authors

RAGE HEZEKIAH is a New England based poet and educator, who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The MacDowell Colony, and The Ragdale Foundation, and is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Foundation's Emerging Artists Award. Her chapbook Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press) is a 2018 Vella Chapbook Award Winner. Stray Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2019) is her debut full-length collection of poems. Rage’s poems have appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, TriQuarterly, ZYZZYVA, and several other journals and anthologies. You can find more of her work at ragehezekiah.com. 

In her debut collection of poems, Stray Harbor, Rage Hezekiah "helps us remember what it is like to discover the world for the first time. It is a tender meditation on how we learn to love our family and how we learn to love ourselves. Rage Hezekiah has given us a stunning debut, one that signals we’re only at the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable literary life." (Clint Smith, author of Counting Descent)

GAIL THOMAS is the author of four books of poetry: Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley, and Finding the Bear. Odd Mercy, chosen by Ellen Bass, won the Charlotte Mew Prize of Headmistress Press, and Waving Back was named a Must Read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and Honorable Mention by the New England Book Festival. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, Italian Americana, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Individual poems have won national prizes, and she has been a fellow at The McDowell Colony and Ucross. You may read more about her work at www.gailthomaspoet.com. 

​“These are poems of authority and grace, alive with the pulse of desire and the mystery of our deep connections." (Joan Larkin). Robin Becker says of her work:  “Thomas brings precise observation and earned wisdom to poems in which the ‘bitter and the sweet entwine.” 

​ANDERS CARLSON-WEE is the author of The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection as well as the 2019 Connecticut Poetry Circuit Selection. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, BuzzFeed, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the 2017 Poetry International Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. Anders holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University and lives in Cincinnati. www.anderscarlsonwee.com

These poems are "Trenchantly observed and moving" (The Kenyon Review), with "Uncanny lyric aptitude" (The Sewanee Review). "Carlson-Wee has a true gift for narrative. The Poems carve arcs toward illumination" (Rain Taxi Review of Books). These are "Poems that will outlast us" (Maggie Smith).

KAREN SKOLFIELD’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton, 2019) won the Barnard Women Poets Prize and is a Massachusetts “Must Read” selection. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry, and she is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; she’s the poet laureate for Northampton, MA for 2019-2021. 

​In her second book of poetry, Battle Dress, U.S. Army veteran Karen Skolfield offers a rare glimpse of a female soldier’s training and mental conditioning. Called "A terrific and sometimes terrifying collection - morally complex, rhythmic, tough-minded, and original" (Rosanna Warren, 2018 Barnard Women Poets Prize citation). Author Brian Turner says of the collection: "These are the poems of a soldier, a warrior, a woman in uniform, as well as a wide-ranging examination of violence in thought and in action.”

When: Thursday, August 27th (6:30 - 8pm)
Where: Online, via Zoom video conference 

MY CLASSES

Hooked from the First Line: The Art of the Opening ​
The best writers establish authority immediately. It's that feeling you have as a reader when you know you're in capable, experienced hands. The result? You, the reader, are hooked! But how does a writer establish authority? What do successful beginnings have in common? In this online class, we'll look at a range of different openings with an eye towards how they establish authority from the first line. In addition to discussing the many different strategies for successful beginnings, we'll try our hands at writing a few opening lines of our own. Class size: Limited to 15 writers ​

Sentences That Sing: Writing Intensive for Prose Writers

Whether you write novels, short stories, or flash fiction, if your sentence-level writing is not absolutely solid, the most brilliant ideas and stories will topple under faulty foundations, and ultimately fail to hook readers. In order to captivate readers, your sentences must not only be clear, specific, and wield the power of figurative language to their advantage, they must achieve a level of flow, rhythm, and ease that invites readers into the experience and pulls them along effortlessly. Each week we'll cover a major topic in sentence-level writing, as well as practice our own sentence level writing. Class size: Limited to 12 writers ​​​

FLASH FICTION INTENSIVE
Have you ever told a story to a group of people and had the whole room silent, waiting to see how it would end? You might be a natural at

What is flash fiction? Well, to start, it's super-short fiction that distills story down to its essence. Flash takes everything we love about compelling stories - the complexity, nuance, characters, themes, tension, stakes - and delivers it all in an impossibly short high-wire act that leaves us deeply affected and that resonates long after. But how do we go about writing, crafting, and cutting our stories into these sparkling fictional (or memoiristic) gems? Each week, we will highlight different key elements in the creation of flash fiction, and through short craft talks, example texts, discussion, and generative in-class exercises, we'll explore the flash form in all its versatility. Every week, there will be an opportunity to share writing done in class or for homework for brief, encouraging, on-the-spot feedback. 


Advanced Flash Fiction
Workload: Writers should expect weekly writing assignments (500 word limit) and short weekly readings. Participants will receive comments on two pieces from the group, as well as extensive feedback from the instructor.  Class size: Limited to 10 writers 
SUMMER POETRY READING, featuring

  RAGE HEZEKIAH     •    GAIL THOMAS   •     ANDERS CARLSON-WEE   •   KAREN SKOLFIELD

Thursday, August 27th (6:30 - 8pm) at ONLINE via Zoom video conference

WINTER POETRY READING @ PVWW, featuring

JOVONNA VAN PELT

JOSHUA MICHAEL STEWART

SARA EDDY 

FAITH SHEARIN

Thursday, November 19th (6:30 - 8pm) at ONLINE via Zoom video conference

Join us online (Zoom) on November 30th to celebrate the work of four local Western MA poets: Jovonna Van Pelt, Joshua Michael Stewart, Sara Eddy, and Faith Shearin. After the reading, the event will open up to Q&A and discussion with the authors. Moderated by PVWW Founder/Director Joy Baglio. No need to RSVP as all emails have already been sent. The link to the Zoom event is posted on our Facebook Event Page. 

About the Featured Authors

When: Thursday, November 19th (6:30 - 8pm)
Where: Online, via Zoom video conference 

JOVONNA VAN PELT is a member of Straw Dog Writers Guild and, from her home base in Greenfield, a frequent contributor to Valley open mics and word stage performances. Jo has been a repeating finalist in the Poet's Seat competition; her work is included in the Compass Roads anthology edited by Jane Yolen. Unrelated Questions is her first published collection.

​JOSHUA MICHAEL STEWART has published poems in the Massachusetts Review, Salamander,
Brilliant Corners, Talking River Review, and many others. His first full-length collection of poems, Break Every String, was published by Hedgerow Books in 2016, and his latest collection, The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums, is forthcoming from Human Error Publishing. Visit him at www.joshuamichaelstewart.com

SARA EDDY is Assistant Director of the writing center at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Some of her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in the Threepenny Review, the Baltimore Review, and Spank the Carp. Her chapbook of poems about bees and beekeeping, Tell the Bees, was released in October of 2019 by A3 Press, and another chapbook of poems about food, Full Mouth, will come out from Finishing Line Press in October of 2020.  She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with a teenager, a black cat, a white dog, and three beehives. 

FAITH SHEARIN's books of poetry include: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Moving the Piano, Telling the Bees, Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), Darwin's Daughter and Lost Language (forthcoming, Press 53). She has received awards from Yaddo, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Recent work has been featured on The Writer's Almanac and included in American Life in Poetry. ​
SUMMER POETRY READING, featuring

RAGE HEZEKIAH • GAIL THOMAS

ANDERS CARLSON-WEE• KAREN SKOLFIELD

In her debut collection of poems, Stray Harbor, RAGE HEZEKIAH "helps us remember what it is like to discover the world for the first time. It is a tender meditation on how we learn to love our family and how we learn to love ourselves. Rage Hezekiah has given us a stunning debut, one that signals we’re only at the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable literary life." (Clint Smith, author of Counting Descent)

The centerpiece of Odd Mercy, GAIL THOMAS' fourth and latest book of poems, is “The Little Mommy Sonnets,” a crown of sonnets that carries us poignantly through the life and death of the poet’s mother, as well as their complicated bond over time. “These are poems of authority and grace, alive with the pulse of desire and the mystery of our deep connections." (Joan Larkin). Robin Becker says of her work:  “Thomas brings precise observation and earned wisdom to poems in which the ‘bitter and the sweet entwine.” 
​
In the poems of The Low Passions, ANDERS CARLSON-WEE traces the fringes of the American experiment through the eyes of a young drifter. Pathologically frugal, reckless, and vulnerable, the narrator of these viscerally compelling poems hops freight trains, hitchhikes, dumpster dives, and sleeps in the homes of total strangers, scavenging forgotten and hardscrabble places for tangible forms of faith. These poems are "Trenchantly observed and moving" (The Kenyon Review), with "Uncanny lyric aptitude" (The Sewanee Review). "Carlson-Wee has a true gift for narrative. The Poems carve arcs toward illumination" (Rain Taxi Review of Books). These are "Poems that will outlast us" (Maggie Smith).

In her second book of poetry, Battle Dress, U.S. Army veteran KAREN SKOLFIELD offers a rare glimpse of a female soldier’s training and mental conditioning. Through the narratives of a young soldier, her older counterpart, and her fellow soldiers, Skolfield searches for meaning in combat preparation, long-term trauma, and the way war is embedded in our language and psyche. Called "A terrific and sometimes terrifying collection - morally complex, rhythmic, tough-minded, and original" (Rosanna Warren, 2018 Barnard Women Poets Prize citation). Author Brian Turner says of the collection: "These are the poems of a soldier, a warrior, a woman in uniform, as well as a wide-ranging examination of violence in thought and in action.”
Click on the images to learn more about each book!

FALL FICTION READING @ PVWW, featuring

Thank you to our Fall Fiction Reading featured authors! And our wonderful audience! 

$5 throughout the months of March, April, May, & June

SPECIAL ONLINE WRITING SESSIONS

IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

NEXT ONE-DAY CRAFT CLASS
​

3 spots left!

NEXT MULTI-WEEK WORKSHOP

Prose Poems That Sing

6-Week Intro to Memoir

​with Gail Thomas 

​with Celia Jeffries

Saturday, March 14 ( 1 - 4pm) in Williamsburg

Mondays, March 23 - April 27 (6 - 8pm)

Thank You to All Who Attended Our End-of-Year

Reading, Open House, & Manuscript Group Info Night

Thanks to all who attended our end-of-year Reading, Open House, & Info Night on December 15th! It was a wonderful evening! A special shout-out to the talented writers/authors of our first Year-Long Fiction Manuscript Group, five of whom read from their manuscripts! Thanks as well to our generous instructors and all of the writers and friends who joined us in our classroom!
FREE & OPEN TO ALL!

FICTION READING, OPEN HOUSE, &

MANUSCRIPT GROUP INFO NIGHT 

Featuring Members of the 2019 Fiction Manuscript Group:

Nerissa Nields • Susanne Dunlap • Chris Geier • Adam Holmes • Chris Fox

Join us in our cozy classroom in Williamsburg, MA on Sunday, December 15th for an Open House, Manuscript Group Info Night, & Reading (featuring Kate Senecal's 2019 Fiction Manuscript Group). Doors open at 3:30 and the reading begins at 4pm, followed by a brief presentation on our Year-Long Manuscript Group program. The program begins in January 2020 and all groups meet monthly over the course of a year and are for writers (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) working on book-length projects. Afterward, there will be an opportunity to talk with instructors and former manuscript group participants, meet fellow writers, and celebrate with the PVWW community! Light refreshments will be served. Not interested in our 2020 manuscript groups? Come celebrate the end of the year with us anyway and enjoy the reading!
​
Sunday December 15th (3:30 - 5:30pm) in our Williamsburg MA Classroom

Reading, Open House, & Manuscript Group Info Night

Featuring Members of the 2019 Fiction Manuscript Group:

Adam Holmes • Nerissa Nields • Chris Geier • Susanne Dunlap • Chris Fox

​When: Sunday, December 15th (3:30 - 5:30pm)
Where: The Commons, Williamsburg MA

Join us in our cozy classroom in Williamsburg, MA on Sunday, December 15th for an Open House, Manuscript Group Info Night, & Reading (featuring Kate Senecal's 2019 Fiction Manuscript Group). Doors open at 3:30 and the reading begins at 4pm, followed by a brief presentation on our Year-Long Manuscript Group program. The program begins in January 2020 and all groups meet monthly over the course of a year and are for writers (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) working on book-length projects. Afterward, there will be an opportunity to talk with instructors and former manuscript group participants, meet fellow writers, and celebrate with the PVWW community! Light refreshments will be served.

Not interested in our 2020 manuscript groups? Come celebrate the end of the year with us anyway and enjoy the reading!

Featured readers: Susanne Dunlap, Nerissa Nields, Chris Geier, Adam Holmes, and Chris Fox

Directions: Our classroom is inside The Commons, a coworking space on the top floor of the Helen E. James school building, right in the center of Williamsburg. Our street address is 16 Main St, Williamsburg, but the building number and Commons sign can be hard to see. It's the only multi-story brick school building right in the Williamsburg town center. There is a small parking lot, and you can enter through the side door, which will be propped. (Elevator is available as well.) Follow the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop signs!

Year-Long Manuscript Group Info Night & Open House

Featuring Members of the 2020 Fiction, Nonfiction, & Poetry Manuscript Groups

Adam Holmes • Nerissa Nields • Chris Geier • Susanne Dunlap • Chris Fox

​When: Sunday, December 15th (3:30 - 5:30pm)
Where: The Commons, Williamsburg MA

Join us in our cozy classroom in Williamsburg, MA on Sunday, December 15th for an Open House, Manuscript Group Info Night, & Reading (featuring Kate Senecal's 2019 Fiction Manuscript Group). Doors open at 3:30 and the reading begins at 4pm, followed by a brief presentation on our Year-Long Manuscript Group program. The program begins in January 2020 and all groups meet monthly over the course of a year and are for writers (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) working on book-length projects. Afterward, there will be an opportunity to talk with instructors and former manuscript group participants, meet fellow writers, and celebrate with the PVWW community! Light refreshments will be served.

Not interested in our 2020 manuscript groups? Come celebrate the end of the year with us anyway and enjoy the reading!

Featured readers: Susanne Dunlap, Nerissa Nields, Chris Geier, Adam Holmes, and Chris Fox

Directions: Our classroom is inside The Commons, a coworking space on the top floor of the Helen E. James school building, right in the center of Williamsburg. Our street address is 16 Main St, Williamsburg, but the building number and Commons sign can be hard to see. It's the only multi-story brick school building right in the Williamsburg town center. There is a small parking lot, and you can enter through the side door, which will be propped. (Elevator is available as well.) Follow the Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop signs!

6 Weeks: Thursdays, Sept. 12 - Oct. 17

6 - 8pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $350
This workshop - designed to accommodate both new and intermediate writers - is for anyone seeking a supportive, weekly writing group, feedback on work in progress, a jumpstart on writing a short story for the very first time, and the opportunity to learn and grow via in-depth craft instruction. We'll explore foundational elements of craft through analysis of published short stories and in-class writing exercises that will lead to each participant having a finished first draft of a short story. 

6 Weeks: Tuesdays, Oct. 8 - Nov. 12

10am - 12pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $350
​Patricia Hampl says “Memoir is not what happened...It is what has happened over time, in the mind as it attends to these tantalizing, dismaying, broken bits of life history. Such personal writing is...‘an attempt.’ It is a try at the truth.” In this workshop, we will generate new writing, examine masters of the craft, confront the challenges of writing ‘the truth of the self’ and work together in a supportive environment to write and revise.

6 Weeks: Tuesdays, Oct. 8 - Nov. 12

6 - 8pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $350
Have you vowed to yourself that you'll write more...and that you will reclaim your writer’s life and practice once and for all? In this fun, supportive, and generative deep-dive into the short story form, you'll create six new short stories using prompts on specific aspects of craft: Linear and nonlinear narrative, voice, character/dialogue, narrative themes, and epistolary fiction.

3 Weeks: Sundays, November 3, 10, & 17

1 - 3pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $175
​For most poets revision can be daunting, and yet it is the most important step for creating work that resonates with readers. This workshop will provide tools for discovering what your poems need. We'll explore issues of craft including line breaks, tense, voice, form, and imagery. Each session will focus on giving and receiving feedback on poems that you want to improve in an atmosphere of respect. Between sessions you will revise and polish.

3 Hours: Saturday, September 28

1 - 4pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $60
Writing is often seen as a practice that originates in the mind. But we use our entire selves to write! Illness, disability, and other facts of our bodies affect our writing in more ways than we can name. This course will examine both how to write about the body, encouraging students to delve into instances when corporeality might enter our work; and how to write with our bodies, engaging practices in which we write with awareness of our embodied selves. 

6 Hours: Saturday, October 12

10am - 5pm in Williamsburg MA • All Levels • Cost: $120
Do you write (or aspire to write) fiction unencumbered by what’s “realistic”? Are you inspired by fairytales, mythology, fantasy, science fiction, ghost stories, or dreams? Do your characters sometimes have magical abilities? This workshop is for writers interested in exploring modes of storytelling other than realism while simultaneously learning how to strengthen all of the traditional elements of fiction. 

3 Hours: Saturday, October 26

1 - 4pm in Williamsburg MA • All Level • Cost: $60
In this workshop, we'll explore the dichotomy of all writing: What we say vs. how we say it. To do this, we'll delve into the intricacies of style, syntax, and all those significant (sometimes forgotten) grammar rules. Through examination and discussion of sentence-level mechanics, we'll wade into the structure of our sentences and work toward strengthening our grasp of how they can work at their highest potential. 
What separates talented writers from truly accomplished ones is revision—the risky business of questioning all that has been done. How does a writer move from a first draft to the final one? Bring that piece you’ve been struggling with, that piece that feels complete but hasn’t gotten published yet. Join us in exploring and writing into the heart of your story.
 Writing dynamic dialogue is an art—and a bit like magic. Done well it sounds as natural as real conversation when, actually, it’s not! This workshop unveils the mystery of the illusion, offering a wealth of tips for crafting clever, relevant, and powerful dialogue designed to develop characters, convey emotion, and move the story forward. For inspiration, we’ll study great examples from the masters, both in fiction and film, before diving into a round of fun dialogue-writing exercises and prompts.
“Essay,” “memoir,” “creative nonfiction”: these terms can be slippery and difficult to define. This workshop takes that slipperiness as its premise, exploring styles that fall outside traditionally conceived notions of nonfiction while still rooting themselves in factual events. Nonfiction that transforms into poetry, fiction that approaches factuality, and writing that slips between genres will all be read and practiced in this workshop.  Students are encouraged to bring a real-life event you have been considering or writing about...
We Are Fundraising NOW through December 15th, 2018

Help Us Build Our Writing Across Borders Program!

Every Donation Makes a Difference!
Your contribution will directly allow one or more writers with financial need to attend a workshop of their choice! 
Writing Across Borders Fellows Receive a cash stipend, are featured in a public virtual reading (or if this is impossible given their situation, we will work with them to do what is needed); as well as 

Multi-Week Workshops

One-Day Craft Classes

Year-Long Manuscript Groups
  • Fiction Fundamentals (6-weeks)
  • Short Story Intensive (6-weeks)
  • Intro to Memoir (6-weeks)
  • Building Blocks of Story (4-weeks)
  • Revising Your Poems (3-weeks)
  • Speculative Fiction
  • The Importance of Grammar
  • The Dish on Dialogue
  • Revision Is Risky Business
  • Let Your characters Lead the Way
  • Suspense & Momentum
  • Flash Fiction Intensive
  • Fiction Manuscript Group
  • Nonfiction Manuscript Group
  • Poetry Manuscript Group

Open Community Writing

Come write with us in our Williamsburg MA classroom, third Friday of every month! Tea, snacks, writing prompts. Free & open to all.
​AUTHOR PHOTOS (product)

​Hour-long photo session with photographer Eric Fernandez of Eric Fernandez Photography. In a friendly and relaxed environment, Eric will work with you to capture a range of stunning character portraits that best showcase your unique self. Great for authors, writers, artists, actors, and other professionals. 

​Scheduling:
In the comments section during checkout, please tell us what days/times work best for you, and we'll be in touch shortly to set up a specific date!


$5 Online Writing Sessions

Revision Strategies (8 Weeks) - Kate

​To revise is to see in a new way. To see something differently, you have to ask it and yourself how it wants to be seen. This 8-week workshop is for writers who have finished a draft of a full length manuscript, short story, or essay and are looking for ways to see their projects in a new way and take them to the next level. This course frames revision as a process of inquiry, and promises to help make the revision experience tangible and specified to each project's individual needs. Each class meeting will offer a set of revision exercises geared toward a specific craft element. We'll discuss how to revise with an eye on character development, narrative voice and point of view, structure, conflict development, narrative tension, scene and summary balance, sentence structure, dialogue and more. The workshop is interactive, exercise-based, but writers will not get feedback on their work. There will be ample opportunity to problem solve as a group, discuss our experiences experimenting with revision exercises, and build community. Online, via Zoom Video Conference

Playwrighting
In this discussion-based playwriting workshop, we’ll take a big, ole, deep dive into what makes a captivating play. We start off with in-class writing exercises, and a look at the works of legendary playwrights Sam Shepard and Tina Howe. From there, the stage is all yours. For the majority of the course, we focus the spotlight on students bringing in 1-3 scenes to be read aloud, then receiving dramaturgical feedback from both myself and the class. My belief is that this is the most revelatory way to discover if the play truly translates from the page to the stage. No need to stress if you haven’t begun a play. Those who haven’t, write 1-3 scenes outside of class to bring in by the 2nd week. There are very few rules to the art of playwriting, and I find this results in an unbound freedom. Open to beginner and intermediate playwrights, including writers with a background in any kind of writing who’ve always wanted to write that play, are more than welcome here.


ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Selected as one of "50 Playwrights To Watch" by the Dramatists Guild Magazine, ROSE MARTULA is a former winner of the NYC Young Playwrights Festival. A recipient of two Audrey Skirball Playwriting Awards, she was nominated for the LARK Pony Fellowship in its inaugural year, and was a semi-finalist at PlayLabs at The Playwrights Center in MN, the Princess Grace Awards & The Chesterfield Film Project. Martula co-wrote with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Lanford Wilson, an adaptation of his play, Balm And Gilead, the year before his passing. She most recently wrote/directed & edited the web series It Girls.


WRIRevision Exercises for Short Stories & Novels (Kate Senecal)
This writing exercise-based online session is for writers who are in revision stages of a manuscript in progress or a short story or essay. Together we'll do exercises to help us revise our work with an eye on beginnings and endings, point of view, story arc,  structure, and character development. ​Class size: 20 spots.

WRITING ILLNESS & THE BODY (DENNIS JAMES SWEENEY)
As Virginia Woolf writes in “On Being Ill,” the experience of illness seems to evade description. How is it possible to write the infinite fact of a body? This class will expand on the themes of last fall’s “Writing Illness and the Body” with a look into the function of writing in our own personal lives, especially as it confronts an illness, disability, or other embodied fact. We will ask not only what writing can do to help us, but also how it can work beyond questions of help and healing. What does it mean to carve an embodied life into words? Why do we want to engage in writing about disability and illness? And how do we go on when we simply can’t anymore, when we have run out of writing? ​

Writing Your Life (Debra Jo Immergut)
What's your story? Create a written record for yourself, for loved ones, or for publication. This encouraging, nonjudgmental session is open to writers of all experience levels and ages. We'll discuss how to turn bits and pieces of personal history into compelling stories. I'll give a number of prompts and ideas that will help you transform your memories into memoir. At approximately 90 minutes, the session will combine craft lecture with a generative prompt or two, plus group discussion. ​Class size: 25 spots.

Ask the Editors: The Path to Publishing Short Fiction
This informational session with former West Branch associate editor and PVWW Director Joy Baglio and Emily Everett, managing editor at The Common, will cover topics related to getting your short stories and flash fiction out in the world. We'll talk about the submissions process (including the different kinds of literary magazines out there), cover letters, what editors care most about, getting your work to stand out in the slush pile, dealing with rejection, and what happens after an acceptance.​ We'll also discuss our goals, as well as the different paths open to short fiction writers. Come with any and all questions related to these topics. Open to all short fiction writers interested in learning how to get their work out there, including those already published. Informational, lecture-based, with Q&A time. Class size: 30 spots.

Short Story Builder (Kate Senecal)
This prompt-based online session is designed to get the ball rolling on three new short stories! We will do one hour and fifteen minutes of writing in response to prompts, and then spend the rest of the session sharing and then brainstorming ideas about each other's stories. Open to writers of all genres, levels, and backgrounds. Class size: 20 spots.

Launching Your Novel: Agents, Query Letters, & Publishing
This informational workshop will cover the different ways of launching your book into the world! We'll begin by talking about some of the different avenues authors can take, from traditional book deals to indie presses to self-publishing; we'll talk query letters, tips for landing an agent, and other opportunities that can lead to career breakthroughs, including developing a platform for yourself as a writer, conferences and workshops, and growing your network. ​We'll also discuss our book publishing goals, and how these should inform the path we take. Come with any and all questions related to these topics. Open to all prose writers, including previously-published and self-published authors. ​Informational, lecture-based, with Q&A time. Class size: 25 spots.

Jump Start Your Memoir (Celia Jeffries)
A memoir is, in essence, a ‘slice of life.’ Our lives can seem like large, myopic odysseys that can be difficult to navigate when writing a memoir. What to include? What to leave out? Where to start? Where to end? This 90-minute session is a place to explore those questions. I will offer a short craft lecture on the art of memoir and provide a number of prompts and ideas to help you in your explorations.  ​Class size: 16 spots.

So You Have a Novel-in-Progress? Let's Talk: Novelists' Check-In & Support Group
Whether you're struggling through a first draft that feels like an untamed beast or trying to prune the weeds out of your fourth draft, this online discussion group will allow writers to share their experiences on the front lines of novel-writing. We'll talk process, craft (in particular issues of structure, POV, narrative time, character, plot, among others), as well as motivational strategies and wisdom to inspire ourselves to keep going. ​Group size: 16 spots.

Whether you're struggling through a first draft that feels like an untamed beast or trying to prune the weeds out of your fourth draft, we're there with you. We feel the joy. The pain. We know what it's like to be trudging through the seemingly endless stretches of novel-writing. This online discussion group will allow writers to share their experiences on the front lines of novel-writing. We'll talk process, craft (in particular issues of structure, POV, narrative time, character, plot, among others), as well as motivational strategies and wisdom to inspire ourselves to keep going. ​

Basics of Scrivener (Eric Max Williams)
For writers interested in getting started with or learning more about Scrivener, a word-processing program designed for authors and writers of longer manuscripts. Join fiction fiction/software writer Eric Max Williams for this informational session. ​​
ERIC MAX WILLIAMS is a fiction and software writer. He aims to distill his years using and beta testing Scrivener to demonstrate workflows for both short-form and longer writing. We’ll also cover Scrivener revision and outlining strategies. His goal is to help you finish your story before he finishes his own (but only by a day or two). He promises it’s not that scary.



OUR FALL 2019 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE IS HERE

Check out our Complete List of One-Day Craft Classes, Multi-Week Workshops, & Yearly Manuscript Groups

Spring Fiction Reading, at PVWW! 

Thanks to our wonderful Zoom audience and to our inspiring featured authors!

Summer Poetry Reading @ PVWW! 

Thanks to our wonderful Zoom audience and to our inspiring featured poets!

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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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