Upcoming Classes

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• Daytime Combo: Fiction and Creative Nonfiction (Christina Ward-Niven)

  • Start
    September 18, 2025
  •  
    1:00 PM
  • End
    November 06, 2025
  •  
    3:30 PM
  • Location
    WriterHouse
  • Spaces left
    0

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  This class will meet in person at WriterHouse for 8 sessions on Thursdays from 1:00 PM-3:30 PM, September 18 through November 6th.
  

  Description:

  In this MFA-style workshop, we will read one story or essay by a published author each week and discuss what makes it tick. How exactly does the piece work? We’ll dig into a wide range of craft topics, as they come up—point of view, characterization, pacing, clarity, mystery, and more. Next, we’ll turn the same lens to our own work, reading and responding to two participants’ pieces per week. Short stories, essays, and/or memoir are welcome. Links to online reading assignments will be provided weekly by the instructor, via email.

  About the Instructor:

  Christina Ward-Niven holds an MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. She also earned a BA in English from William and Mary and an MS in Journalism from Boston University. She worked as a nonfiction writer and editor for several organizations in Washington, D.C., before moving to Charlottesville and shifting her focus to fiction. Her recent work has appeared in Husk Zine, Antioch Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Writers Review, CRAFT Literary, and elsewhere.

  
  

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• Time, Craft, & Culture

  • Start
    September 18, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM
  • End
    November 06, 2025
  •  
    9:00 PM
  • Location
    WriterHouse

  This class meets in person at WriterHouse on Thursdays, September 18 through November 6, from 6:30 to 9 PM.

  Description:

  As writers, we craft our readers' experience of time, creating suspense and adding meaning through such elements as pace and rhythm. We also—inevitably, if unconsciously—engage with cultural models of time through the forms we choose. In this eight-week workshop we'll consider how time operates in prose through readings, discussion, experiments, and workshopping your writing. Topics will include lyric and narrative modes, various shapes for story plots, understanding sentence-level choices, and more. Writers of any genre and experience level are welcome. Join us to spark new ideas and fuel your creativity!

   

  About the Instructor:

  Jenn Gibbs is a writer, editor, and communication Swiss Army knife specializing in prose forms and the creative process. Her stories and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including The Gettysburg Review, Ocean State Review, The Chattahoochee Review, and Literature and Racial Ambiguity. Her obsession with the enigma of time has led her to study ways that narratives shape and are shaped by individual and collective identities. She holds a BFA in Writing Arts from the State University of New York College at Oswego, an MFA in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University, and a PhD in English and American Literature with Creative Writing Emphasis from the University of Utah.

  
  

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• The Novelist's Workshop: A Year Long Class in Novel Writing

  • Start
    October 20, 2025
  •  
  • End
    October 19, 2026
  • Schedule
    20 sessions
  • Location
    WriterHouse

  Registration is closed

  By application only.

  Calendar:

  Class meets on selected Mondays from 6 – 8 PM at WriterHouse.**

  2025: October 20, November 3, November 17, December 1, December 15

  2026: January 12, January 26, February 9, February 23, March 9, March 16, April 13, April 27, May 11, May 18, June 8, July 13, August 17, September 14, September 28, October 19

  **Instructor reserves the right to change dates as needed, with student input, due to unforeseen circumstances

  Class Description:

  Writing a novel can be a long and sometimes mysterious process … but you don’t have to do it alone. With this class, you’ll join a group of other aspiring authors on a year-long journey to help you increase your productivity and hone your craft as you write and revise your work. 

  The class will meet in person regularly over the course of a year, for a total of approximately 20 sessions. (Most meetings will be in person although we may schedule occasional meetings on Zoom.) During this time, the instructor and class will offer you feedback on two submissions of fifty pages each. You will also get a series of lessons on the fundamentals of writing, including creating characters, pacing your story, revising your work, and more. 

  Students are encouraged to already have a manuscript of at least 20,000 words, with a focus on moving forward in their work and revising as needed. In addition to having a support network as they write, students will complete exercises to help deepen their understanding of their work-in-progress and get the chance to ask questions about challenges they face in their work. They’ll also have the opportunity to meet with the instructor one-on-one twice during the year to talk more in-depth about their novels.

  Finally, we will look at selections from classic novel writing how-to guides, including This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley, Spider, Spider, Spin Me a Web by Lawrence Block, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and more. 

  Application Guidelines:

  Prospective students are asked to submit a writing sample of up to 20 pages double-spaced or 6,000 words. Identifiers on pages are ok. Writers may submit work in any genre of fiction, with all levels welcome to apply. Admissions will be made on a rolling basis until the class reaches a maximum of 10 students, with all decisions made by October 6th. Please note, this program is for novelists who are prepared to make a strong commitment to their work; students will be expected to participate in the entire program. Submission deadline is September 25th. Send your writing sample to programs@writerhouse.org.   

  Tuition and Fees

  A nonrefundable deposit is due at the time of application, payable by check ($100) or online (with credit card fees, $103). The deposit will be applied to the cost of tuition for students who are accepted to this program. If you are paying by check, email programs@writerhouse.org to let us know the check is in the mail.

  Tuition is $1,379 payable by check, or you may pay online with a credit card for an additional fee (assessed by the card company) of $40 for a total of $1,419. If paying by check, you must email programs@writerhouse.org to let us know the check is coming. Quarterly payment plans will be available for students who are accepted to the class. Email programs@writerhouse.org to learn more about payment plans. Upon acceptance, the balance of the tuition or the first installment payment will be due within a week to hold your space. 

  About the Instructor:

  Adam Meyer is the author of the novel The Last Domino (Putnam), an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and the Derringer award-winning novella Two Shrimp Tacos and a .22 Ruger among other works.  His short fiction has been nominated for the Shamus Award and appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2024, and he’s edited the short story anthologies Hollywood Kills and In Too Deep.  He’s also written more than two hundred hours of television for Discovery, National Geographic, Lifetime and PBS, including the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Made With Love.

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• Revision

  • When
    November 16, 2025
  •  
    1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
  • Location
    WriterHouse
  • Spaces left
    4

  Register

  This seminar meets in person at WriterHouse on Sunday, Nov. 16, from 1-3 PM.

  Description:

  Writers often hear about “the revision process” as if it’s a singular thing. It’s not. Revising your work entails several processes and sub-processes, from the “30,000 feet” view to macro strategies to micro-editing. If all you’re doing is going over it “from the top” again and again, a manuscript may need up to fifty revisions before it’s ready for submission. In this workshop you’ll learn a more strategic approach that can save you months of work and result in a better book. You’ll learn what those strategies are and begin to put them into practice with your own work, with hands-on guidance from the instructor every step of the way. Participants should bring to the workshop their own work-in-progress (whether rough draft or completed manuscript), either hard copy or electronic version, and arrive ready to revise.

  About the Instructor:

  David Hicks, PhD is an award-winning professor/Creative Writing Director at the nationally ranked Wilkes University MFA graduate program and the author of two novels–White Plains (Bower House Books, 2018) and The Gospel According to Danny (Vine Leaves Press, 2025)–along with an autobiographical children’s book, The Magic Ticket (Fulcrum Books, 2024), all of which were revised using the strategies taught in this workshop. An experienced developmental editor and mentor, David has helped over eighty writers to be published for the first time.

  David will give an author talk and reading from his latest novel, The Gospel According to Danny, at 2nd Act Books in Charlottesville on Sunday, Nov. 16 from 4-5 PM. 

  
  

  
  

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