Weekend of Manuscript Consultations
Looking to polish your work before an agent sees it at The Muse and the Marketplace? Want to get immediate, one-on-one feedback from a Grub instructor? Throughout this Sunday, various members of our creative writing faculty will be meeting individually for thirty minutes with writers who have submitted 25 pages of their work ahead of time. The 25 page writing sample -- usually long enough to include a complete short story, a novel chapter, a substantive personal essay, a short play, a series of poems, or a screenplay excerpt -- is often needed when applying to MFA programs, teaching positions, fellowships, residencies, etc. The session includes yummy coffee and doughnuts.
All consultations will take place on Sunday, February 24th, 2012, between 11am-4pm. Deadline for submissions is 12:00pm on Friday, February 8th. See all details below.Each consultation costs $149. It's a total steal-- normally it would cost $290, so it's a 52% discount! Sign up for as many as you'd like.
What You Get
- An intensive reading of your manuscript by an experienced, qualified reader
- 1-2 pages of thoughtful written feedback, with suggestions for revision and next steps
- Heavy line edits of one page of your manuscript to demonstrate patterns on the sentence, paragraph, and/or word level
- A 25-minute in-person consultation to discuss your work
Genres
- Short Fiction
- The Novel
- The Novella or Short Novel
- Genre Fiction (Thriller, Suspense, Horror, Science Fiction, Romance, Erotica, etc.)
- Poetry
- Memoir
- Individual Essay
- Book-Length Nonfiction
- Feature Writing
- Writing for Radio
- Humor Writing
- The Graphic Novel
- Comics
- Screenwriting
- Playwriting
- Young Adult Fiction
- Children's Literature
How Do I Sign Up?
Send Rowan an e-mail at rowan@grubstreet.org with the following information. Absolute deadline is 12:00pm on Friday, February 8th!
- Your name and number of consultations you'd like
- The name of each consultant you'd like to work with. You may work with the same consultant for different sessions, or choose a variety. Please see available genres and instructors' bios below!
- A bit of context for your piece (2-sentence summary, what draft it is, what you're hoping to do with it, specific feedback you're looking for, etc.)
- Your 25-page submission attached, in the industry standard 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins.
You will receive an e-mail from Grub Street on February 13th with confirmation of the consultant with whom you’ll be working, and at what time. All consultations will take place at Grub headquarters, 162 Boylston Street in Boston. Writers must pay in full, and before the consultation begins, through this secure link.
The Consultants
Ian Bassingthwaighte
Click Here to Read Bio:- Ian Bassingthwaighte's fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Guernica, Glimpse/National Geographic, Tin House online, and more. He holds a degree from the University of Montana and was a Fulbright fellow in fiction to Egypt, where he researched and wrote his first novel, entitled Night Owls Eat Early Birds. It was recently picked up for representation by the Renée Zuckerbrot Literary Agency along with Beware of Loons, his short story collection. During his time in Egypt he was also a Glimpse/National Geographic writing correspondent and was a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative. He's been a reader for McSweeney's and an editor for Opium. He's also been hit by a car, been chased by both an elephant and a swan, and had a jellyfish stuck to his face. You can learn more about him online at www.flimsywhipped.com.
Thematic Interests: Literary or commercial fiction with a strong, unique voice; foreign settings; travel; bold and/or quirky characters; stories told from multiple points of view; stories driven by plot and character; drama driven by comedy; balancing action, description, and dialogue.
Suzanne Cope
Click Here to Read Bio:- Suzanne Cope is an author and writing professor living in the Boston area. She has published articles and essays on local and sustainable food, family, travel, and pop culture in various periodicals, mostly recently in Edible Boston and New Plains Review. Her memoir, Locavore in the City, will be published by Michigan State University Press in 2012. Suzanne is also a doctoral candidate at Lesley University in Adult Learning with a specialization in creative writing pedagogy.
Thematic Interests: Food writing, personal essays, and personal journalism.
Kate Flora
Click Here to Read Bio:- Attorney Kate Flora’s eleven books include seven series mysteries, two gritty police procedurals, a suspense thriller and a true crime. Finding Amy was a 2007 Edgar nominee and has been filmed for TV. Her current projects include Death Dealer, a true crime involving a Canadian serial killer, a screenplay, and a novel in linked stories. Flora’s short stories and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She spent seven years as editor and publisher at Level Best Books. Flora is former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founding member of the New England Crime Bake conference. She has taught writing at Brown, the Cape Cod Writers Conference, for the Maine Writers and Publishers Association, and at many national conferences. She teaches writing for Grub Street in Boston. Her third police procedural, Redemption, will be published in February.
Thematic Interests: Mystery, suspense, true crime.
Ethan Gilsdorf
Click Here to Read Bio:- Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. A poet, teacher, critic and journalist, Gilsdorf has worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer in Paris as well as the U.S. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor, and has been published in dozens of other magazines, newspapers and guidebooks worldwide, including National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Australian Financial Review, USA Today, and Fodor's travel guides. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe and the film columnist for Art New England. His blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and he also blogs for Boston.com's Globetrotting, Tor.com and TheOneRing.net. As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and leads creative writing workshops in journalism, travel and essay writing, and poetry, as well as book promotion and writing career planning workshops, at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro. He speaks frequently at conventions, universities, and book festivals nationwide. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Grub Street. Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.
Thematic Interests: Travel, pop culture, family/medical trauma, childhood, adolescence, food, personal narrative.
Beth Raisner Glass
Click Here to Read Bio:- Beth Raisner Glass is a children's book author, newspaper writer and teacher. She has taught in the Massachusetts public school system, and was Associate Professor of Education at Wellesley College. Her first picture book, Noises at Night, was published to wide acclaim and was featured on the Today Show's "Best Books for Children" segment. Her next picture book, Blue Ribbon Dad, was published in 2010. Her middle grade novel, A Date for Honey Moone is currently under consideration. She received her Bachelors in Education from Lesley College, and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University.
Thematic Interests: Writing for Children through Young Adult: All themes, genres and subject matter welcome. Fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, picture books, chapter books, middle grade, young adult and child memoir.
Jessica Keener
Click Here to Read Bio:- Jessica’s debut novel, Night Swim, (Jan. 2012) was hailed by The Boston Globe as "thrilling and "exhilarating" and The New York Times as "earnest" and "moving." Her short fiction has been listed in The Pushcart Prize under “Outstanding Writers.” Her stories, novel excerpts and essays have appeared in scores of literary magazines and online, most recently: Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, The Nervous Breakdown, Night Train, Eclectica, Wilderness House Literary Review, Design New England and The Huffington Post. Writing awards include: a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant Program, a Joan Jakobson Scholarship from Wesleyan Writers Conference; a Chekhov Prize for Excellence in Fiction by the editors of Wilderness House Literary Review; and second prize in Redbook magazine’s fiction contest. For more than a dozen years she has been a features writer for The Boston Globe, Design New England, O, The Oprah Magazine and other national magazines. She is the co-author of the successful memoir, Time to Make the Donuts, the definitive story of Dunkin' Donuts’ founder William Rosenberg’s extraordinary life, which she sold on proposal. She has taught writing at Boston University, Brown University, and U. of Miami, FL and has been reading and selecting fiction for award-winning Agni magazine since 2007. For additional links and details, explore her website: www.jessicakeener.com and her blog: Confessions of A Hermit Crab.
Thematic Interests: Literary fiction, relationship and emotion-centered issues; lifestyle subjects including health, people profiles, education, business, travel, home design, family, spirituality, music, aging.
Michael Marano
Click Here to Read Bio:- Michael Marano is a literary horror and dark science fiction writer, with stories in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11 and Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge; his first novel Dawn Song won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. He is the former Fiction Editor of the award-winning dark fiction magazine Chiaroscuro and in that capacity has worked one-on-one with authors in the development of their short fiction, some of which have been selected for "Year's Best" anthologies. Stories From the Plague Years, a collection of Marano's new and reprinted short fiction, was published to great acclaim by Cemetery Dance Publications, and was named one of the Top 10 Horror Publications of 2011 by Booklist. Since 1990, he has also been reviewing movies and doing pop culture commentary for the Public Radio Satellite System program Movie Magazine International, syndicated in more than 111 markets in the US and Canada. Mike is a former Writing instructor in the SUNY system, and his non-fiction has appeared in venues like The Boston Phoenix, The Weekly Dig, SuicideGirls, The Independent Weekly, Paste Magazine, and Science Fiction Universe.
Thematic Interests: Genre fiction, including, but not limited to: Mystery, Thrillers, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Western. Popular Non-Fiction and Non-Fiction about pop culture topics and personalities. Magazine and newspaper writing about film, TV, media, music, including reviews and criticism. Personal essays.
Jennifer Mattson
Click Here to Read Bio:- Jennifer Mattson is a former producer for NPR's nationally syndicated program "The Connection" and worked as an editor for National Public Radio. She spent over six years as a producer for CNN, where she was responsible for CNN's daily live newscasts and producing CNN's international coverage. Jennifer came to CNN to work in the Washington bureau's political unit during the 1996 U.S. presidential election. She later moved to Atlanta, where she worked first as a writer and then as a newscast producer at CNN International. Prior to joining CNN, Jennifer worked as a reporter based in Budapest, Hungary covering Eastern Europe, where she reported on a number of regional stories for USA TODAY including a piece on George Soros and the Clinton-Yeltsin CSCE Summit. She has also reported, most recently, from Asia. Her work has appeared in TheAtlantic.com, USA TODAY, The Boston Globe, The Women's Review of Books, AsianCorrespondent.com, Tablettalk.com and CNN.com. She is the former Managing Editor of AsiaSociety.org. Follow her on Twitter at @jennifermattson
Thematic Interests: Memoir, essay, radio reported pieces, spirituality, travel, fiction, radio storytelling, nonfiction, commentary and opinion.
Nina Louise Morrison
Click Here to Read Bio:- Nina Louise Morrison is a playwright, actor, director and dramaturg. Her plays include Mad Props, House Rules, The Red Plague, Constitution and Three Patriotic Acts. She is a Richard Rodgers Fellow, a Shubert Foundation grantee, and an affiliated artist with Free Hands Theatre Company, Boston Bohemia, Playwrights Commons' Freedom Art Retreat and Company One’s Playground. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at the Philadelphia Theater Initiative. Training: MFA Columbia University, the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the New Actors Workshop, and Oberlin College. More info at ninalouisemorrison.wordpress.com.
Thematic Interests: I'm interested in consulting on 10 Minute, One Act and Full Length plays of all genres including comedy, tragedy, historical fiction, one-person shows, musical theatre book writing and everything in between.
Kathleen Willis Morton
Click Here to Read Bio:- Kathleen Willis Morton holds an MFA in Creative Writing. Her first book, The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed, was published by Wisdom Publications. She has been published in Shambhala Sun Magazine, Hip Mama Magazine, and the anthology, Best Buddhist Writing 2009 published by Shambhala/Random House Publications. She can be reached at www.thebluepoppyandthemustardseed.com.
Thematic Interests: Narrative and subject-focused nonfiction, spirituality, food, travel, literary fiction, poetry, memoir.
Ogi Ogas
Click Here to Read Bio:- Dr. Ogi Ogas received his PhD in computational neuroscience from Boston University and was a Department of Homeland Security Fellow. His writing has been published in the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, and Seed Magazine. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker called his first nonfiction book A Billion Wicked Thoughts "a goldmine of information...gripping." He is currently writing his next book with Penguin, A Billion Angry Brains, about the misunderstood emotion of anger. He's also working on Computational Neuroscience, an introduction to the field for laypeople, and The Perfect Grinder, a collaborator with a psychiatrist about the need for more play time in our lives. He writes the Billion Wicked Thoughts blog for Psychology Today.
Thematic Interests: Science, technology, politics, psychology, and medicine.
Catherine Parnell
Click Here to Read Bio:- Catherine Parnell is the author of the memoir The Kingdom of His Will (Arrowsmith Press, 2007), and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Post Road, The Baltimore Review, slush pile, roger, Dos Passos Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Stone’s Throw Magazine, and Consequence Magazine, among others. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers and newsletters. She’s the fiction editor for Salamander and an associate editor for Consequence Magazine. She received her BA from Boston University and her MFA from Bennington College. She teaches writing and literature at Suffolk University, and she recently completed a collection of short stories and is working on a novella.
Thematic Interests: None specified.
KL Pereira
Click Here to Read Bio:- KL Pereira is a teaching artist who lives mostly in her head; she's interested in the creaky, creepy underbelly of life and whatever lies beyond. She holds a BA in Literature and Languages from Bard College, an MA in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Mythic Deliruim, Jabberwocky, The Medulla Review, Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, and other fine magazines, anthologies, chapbooks, and journals. You can read her column: Slaying Genre: A Monthly Column on Horror, Noir, Fantasy, and the Other Red-Headed Step-Children of the Literary World here. Pereira publishes erotic horror under a different name and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction fairy tales, a mytho-punk noir, and some zombie apocalyptica. For more information, visit www.darknesslovescompany.com.
Thematic Interests: All forms of speculative fiction (including horror and other genre fiction), literary fiction, Cross-Genre/Experimental writing (or any writing that plays with form), fiction and nonfiction that is concerned with popular culture (particularly music, television, and film).
Trish Ryan
Click Here to Read Bio:- Trish Ryan is the author of two memoirs, A Maze of Grace: A Memoir of Second Chances (Hachette 2010) and He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After (Hachette 2008). She lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Steve and their genetically improbable mixed-breed dog. You can visit Trish online at www.trishryanonline.com.
Thematic Interests: I love working on stories about relationships, family, and personal transformation.
Shuchi Saraswat
Click Here to Read Bio:- Shuchi Saraswat received her MFA from Emerson College, where she primarily worked on a novel. She is the recipient of The 2012 Gulliver Travel Research Grant from The Speculative Literature Foundation and has received fellowships to Writers Omi at Ledig House and The Writers' Room of Boston and scholarships to Tin House Summer Writers' Workshop and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. While at Emerson, Shuchi served as the nonfiction editor and then the fiction editor at Fringe Magazine, and worked as an editorial assistant in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's adult trade division. She currently helps manage the fiction section and hosts author readings at Brookline Booksmith.
Thematic Interests: International fiction and nonfiction, travel writing, nature writing, family memoir, literary fiction, magical realism fiction, historical fiction, linked stories, novellas.
Katrin Schumann
Click Here to Read Bio:- Katrin Schumann is the co-author of The Secret Power of Middle Children and Mothers Need Time-Outs, Too. She has been featured on the TODAY show, Talk of the Nation and in The Times, as well as other newspapers, magazines and radio, nationally and internationally. Schumann’s latest projects include a historical novel set in the Baltic; a coming-of-age novel ripped from the headlines; a non-fiction book in development; and on-going editorial work for various editors, agents and writers. In addition, for the past ten years she has been teaching fiction and non-fiction—most recently at Grub Street and a local women’s prison—and running parenting focus groups and surveys. Before going freelance, she helped produce talk shows at NPR, where she won the Kogan Media Award. Schumann has been granted writing residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony. Awarded scholarships to Oxford and Stanford Universities, her studies focused on literature, language and journalism. Schumann was born in Germany, grew up in New York City and London, and now lives in Massachusetts.
Thematic Interests: Historical fiction and women's fiction (long and short form), humor pieces, book-length non-fiction or articles relating to family dynamics/parenting, health & wellness, spirituality, and creative non-fiction about almost anything.
James Scott
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Click Here to Read Bio:- James Scott earned his MFA from Emerson College and his BA from Middlebury College. His fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Post Road, One Story, American Short Fiction, and Memorious among others, anthologized by flatmancrooked, and nominated for the Best New American Voices Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. He has received awards from Yaddo, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the St. Botolph's Club, the Tin House Writers' Conference, the New York State Summer Writers' Institute, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. James has worked for various production companies and publications, Bob Vila productions, and the Boston Red Sox. A former fiction editor of Redivider, he currently works for One Story and the magazine Under the Radar. Learn more at www.jamesscottwriter.com.
Thematic Interests: All types of fiction, but lean more towards literary novels and short fiction. Non-fiction interests are pop culture (music, film), sports, and history.
Michelle Seaton
Click Here to Read Bio:- Michelle Seaton has been an instructor with Grub Street since 2000, teaching such classes as 6 Weeks-6 Essays, Tour of the Essay, and Master Narrative Nonfiction. She is also the lead instructor and created the curriculum for Grub Street's Memoir Project, a program that offers free memoir classes to senior citizens in Boston neighborhoods. The project has visited ten Boston neighborhoods and produced three anthologies. Twenty-two participants on Nantucket have also completed a Memoir Project class, and that anthology is forthcoming. Seaton’s nonfiction work has been published in Bostonia, Yankee, Robb Report and The Pinch. Her essay, “How to Work a Locker Room” appeared in the 2009 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading. It is based on her experience covering the National Hockey League for National Public Radio's Only a Game, a program for which she has been a frequent contributor for 14 years. For the show, she has reported on topics ranging from asthma camp to professional wrestling to bird watching. Her fiction has appeared in the Sycamore Review and Quiddity International Journal. She is the coauthor of The Way of Boys (William Morrow, 2009). Her other book projects include The Cardiac Recovery Handbook, coauthored with Dr. Paul Kligfield, Medical Director of Cardiology at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center of the New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Thematic Interests: Narrative nonfiction and narrative journalism, essays, book-length memoirs, and short stories.
Mary Sullivan
Click Here to Read Bio:- Mary Sullivan is the author of two novels, Stay and Ship Sooner, and she has ghostwritten for the Beacon Street Girls series. She has received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Literature, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a St. Botolph's Award. She was also chosen as one of the Borders' Original New Voices. Her young adult book, Dear Blue Sky, is forthcoming from Penguin in May 2012. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their three daughters.
Thematic Interests: I am open to all types of fiction, but I especially like literary fiction, adult and YA. My interests include the environment, parenting, Africa, Iraq, education, homelessness, music, mysteries, and family trauma of all sorts (esp. the young adult as the outsider).
Becky Tuch
Click Here to Read Bio:- Becky Tuch has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Somerville Arts Council, awards from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine, and The Tennessee Writers Alliance, and her fiction has been short-listed for a Pushcart Prize and Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award. Other stories, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Hobart, Quarter After Eight, Folio, HTMLGiant, and elsewhere. In 2011 and 2012 her work was included in The Drum's audio series at The Boston Book Festival. Additionally, she is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website which reviews literary magazines and interviews journal editors. The Review Review has twice been listed by Writer's Digest as "Best of the Best" among 101 Best Websites for Writers. She is also one of the founders of the writing and publishing blog, Beyond the Margins.
Thematic Interests: I'm interested in all literary and commercial fiction but I especially love stories about family life, Jewish families in particular. I also love stories that deal with crime in one way or another-- police work, detective work, legal work, criminal work, etc.