creative writing uc riverside

Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts

Gluck creative classroom - creative writing.

Creative Writing

One of the most fundamental acts for establishing individual identity is the confidence to write "I am." The physical act of putting pen to paper and choosing words to express the original thoughts in their minds gives students confidence to be themselves, to imagine their future selves, and to plan how to pursue those dreams. Gluck Creative Writing Fellows design workshops that engage participants' creativity using language to express their thoughts, feelings, and understanding of the world. Creative Writing Fellows offer workshops in different aspects of creative writing, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

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Fiction / Non Fiction

Play and Screenwriting

About the UCR Department of Creative Writing

The Department of Creative Writing at UCR offers the only Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing in the University of California system and MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. It is a growing and dynamic program made up entirely of established writers and poets. Courses at UCR are designed for all students in the language arts, and they emphasize developing each student's skills and talents. Through writing fiction, poetry, nonfiction and/or drama, students examine language and meaning both as practitioners and as readers as they develop and hone essential writing techniques.

Every writer needs to develop a critical sense to augment creative ability. For this reason, the Creative Writing Department offers two types of courses. Workshop courses are seminars that focus on writing and on the discussion of student work. Reading courses for writers focus on aspects of literature presented from a writer's point of view. Frequently they employ writing in imitation as one of several approaches to understanding the craft of writing. Upper division workshop courses are offered at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels in poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Several reading courses link two genres such as fiction and poetry, and poetry and drama.

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Areas of Study

• Screenwriting and Playwriting
• Literary Analysis

Minimum Criteria to Declare

• Good Academic Standing
• Ability to complete the degree within 216 units
• If upper-division courses have been taken, a minimum upper-division GPA of 2.0
• Completion of all lower-division in the minor and the minor must be declared at least two quarters prior to graduation
• A minimum upper-division minor GPA of 2.0

Requirement Worksheet

Please select the major or minor you are interested in

Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA

Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts

Degree Requirements

Everyone (core curriculum).

All students will complete 7 quarters of academic study. Six quarters of workshops & seminars. One quarter of thesis development where you finish work on your final creative manuscript.

Six low-residency workshop courses

CWLR 211 (E-Z). Low-Residency Genre Workshop (2) Workshop with Residency. Focuses on the production of original work. Includes introductory study of the chosen genre. Emphasizes technique structure, style, and form. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 16 units.

CWLR 212 (E-Z). Low-Residency Genre Workshop (4) Workshop. Focuses on the production of original work. Includes introductory study of the chosen genre. Emphasizes technique structure, style, and form. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 16 units.

Six low-residency seminars

CWLR 201 (E-Z). Low-Residency Seminar in Literature, Theatre, and Film (4) Seminar with Residency. A study of a period, style, author, or issue in relation to literary, theatrical, or film history. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 20 units.

CWLR 202 (E-Z). Low-Residency Seminar in Literature, Theatre, and Film (2) Seminar. A study of a period, style, author, or issue in relation to literary, theatrical, or film history. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 20 units.

Six low-residency cross-genre workshops

CWLR 221 (E-Z). Low-Residency Cross-Genre Workshop (2) Workshop with Residency. Focuses on the production of original work. Includes introductory study of chosen cross-genres. Emphasizes technique structure, style, and form. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 12 units. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 12 units.

CWLR 221 (E-Z). Low-Residency Cross-Genre Workshop (2) Workshop. Focuses on the production of original work. Includes introductory study of chosen cross-genres. Emphasizes technique structure, style, and form. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 12 units. F. Fiction; N. Nonfiction; P. Poetry; S. Screenwriting; T. Playwriting. Each segment is repeatable as its content changes to a maximum of 12 units.

Seven units of thesis and one unit of professional development

CWLR 299. Research for Thesis (1-7) Thesis. Research for and preparation of the thesis. Graded Satisfactory (S) or No Credit (NC). The course is repeatable.

CWLR 200. Professional Fundamentals.

Five in-person residencies

Each student is required to attend five in-person residencies. Learn more about the residencies . 

Fiction 

As an MFA student emphasizing in fiction, you are expected to compile a significant amount of both creative and academic writing and are encouraged to finish a full manuscript.

As a fiction major, you will complete:

• A thesis with a minimum of 120 pages (although we encourage you to complete an actual full manuscript, which is typically more than 200 pages)
• This is accompanied by lectures (online and in residency)
• Your reading list is devised in consultation with your professor and will contain works that directly correlate with your creative aims
• A lecture during your final residency on a topic relevant to your course of study, as part of your professional development curriculum
• Three longer critical works (two 10-page papers and one 20-page paper based on an area of interest in your cumulative readings, creative work, and outside study)

As an MFA student emphasizing in nonfiction, you are expected to compile a significant amount of both creative and academic writing and are encouraged to finish a full manuscript.

As a nonfiction major, you will complete:

• A thesis with a minimum of 120 pages (although we encourage you to complete an actual full manuscript, which is typically more than 200 pages). This manuscript can be a memoir, essay collection, creative nonfiction, single-or-multi topic examination or historical work. All genres and forms are welcome.

Playwriting 

Throughout the program, you will complete several plays and an intensive critical study of the form.

As a playwriting major you will complete:

• A full feature play (approximately 100 pages)
• or several one-act plays (totaling approximately 100 pages)
• An extensive study of the craft of playwriting including reading and viewing several plays each month, and reading critical and analytical books on the craft of playwriting (about 15 to 20 plays per quarter)
• A lecture during your final residency on a topic relevant to your course of study as part of your professional development curriculum (the topic will reflect your course of study, creative work, and area of interest and will usually be reflective of your cumulative critical papers)
• Three longer critical works (two 10-page papers and one 20-page paper based on an area of interest in your cumulative readings, creative work, and outside study (these will be assigned by your professors)

Screenwriting

Throughout the program, you will complete several scripts and an intensive critical study of film or TV.

As a screenwriting major, you will complete:

• A full feature script (approximately 100 pages) or
• Two one-hour spec television scripts (approximately 50 to 60 pages each, generally a pilot and a first episode) or
• Four half-hour television scripts (approximately 30 pages each, generally a pilot and three subsequent episodes)
• An extensive study of the craft of screenwriting including viewing several films and/or TV shows, reading several scripts each month, and reading critical and analytical books on the craft of screenwriting (about 15 to 20 films/scripts/books per quarter)
• A lecture during your final residency on a topic relevant to your course of study as part of your professional development curriculum (the topic will reflect your course of study, creative work, and area of interest and will usually be reflective of your cumulative critical papers)
• Three longer critical works assigned by your professors (two 10-page papers and one 20-page paper based on an area of interest in your cumulative readings, creative work, and outside study)  

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Creative Writing Department

I’m a transfer student that got admitted for creative writing. What’s it like? Pros and cons? Professors to take or avoid? I have visited and enjoyed my experience, but I would really like to hear a student perspective on it. I met Alex Espinosa and he made a wonderful impression on me, but I don’t know how the rest of the department is.

• Theatre, Film and Creative Writing
• Faculty and Staff

Creative Writing Faculty

Taryn Birdsall

Lecturer: poetry.

Anna Caritj

Assistant professor.

Martin Corless-Smith

Natalie Disney

Adjunct faculty: creative writing.

Christopher Eaton

Lecturer: creative writing.

Clyde Moneyhun

Professor: creative writing program.

Sara Nicholson

Assistant professor: poetry, creative writing.

Mitch Wieland

Director of the mfa program in creative writing, department of theatre, film and creative writing.

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Professor kimberly juanita brown writes about the absence of black soldiers in civil war photos.

"The photographic archive of the war is one of astounding substance and meaning but also astounding absence."

John Reekie, "A Burial Party," Cold Harbor, Virginia, 1865. Source: Wikimedia Commons

On Juneteenth, an article by Professor Kimberly Juanita Brown, "The Absence of Black Soldiers in Civil War Photos Speaks Volumes," was published on The MIT Press Reader . You can read the article here .

Books | UC Riverside professor Alex Espinoza grapples…

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Books | uc riverside professor alex espinoza grapples with lucha libre in ‘sons of el rey’, the l.a.-based author will appear on the southern california news group webinar series bookish with mike madrid on friday, june 21 at 5 p.m..

One of those young fans was Alex Espinoza , a professor at UC Riverside and its  Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing . The author, who was born in Tijuana and raised in Southern California, grew up watching luchador movies, in which the masked fighters took on a wide range of villains.

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“They were these sort of comic book superheroes, the movies with El Santo and all of them, fighting zombie women and witches and wolf people,” Espinoza recalls. “We had this local Spanish language station, and we used to always watch them. They were so cheesy, but they were so entertaining.”

Espinoza was living in the Central Valley when he realized the sport could form a backdrop for a novel. “I knew that I wanted to explore the link between performance and violence,” he says. “I thought, ‘Nobody’s really taken lucha libre and given it a literary spin.’”

That was the origin for “The Sons of El Rey,” Espinoza’s third novel, and his first in 11 years. It follows Ernesto Vega, a dying luchador with a secret; his son, Freddy, who is trying in vain to save his father’s gym; and Freddy’s son, Julian, a professor who finds himself being racially fetishized by other gay men. 

The novel, Espinoza says, “came about from the desire to explore the link between performance and masculinity as it relates to male toxicity. I wanted to pay homage to this rich tapestry of the art of performance, how it’s a sport that blends athleticism and script. It’s the best of everything, and it’s a metaphor for life.”

Espinoza, who will appear on the Southern California News Group webinar series Bookish with Mike Madrid on Friday, June 21 at 5 p.m., talked about his latest novel via Zoom from Los Angeles, where he lives. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Q: What kind of research did you do into the lucha libre scene in 1960s-era Mexico City? 

At first, I started with the movies, because that’s a really important cultural touchstone. Then I took several trips to Mexico City and actually went to the Arena México, where it started, and I watched many lucha libre matches there. I spoke to scholars, people who I knew who had studied the sport. And then on this side of the border, I attended lucha libre matches in swap meet parking lots and community centers. I interviewed some people who run a school for lucha libre, the Santino brothers , who are here in Southern California. And I tried to study as much as I could about the origins of the sport, about how it fuses Greco-Roman wrestling with freestyle wrestling, and its beginnings in terms of the first promoters, Salvador Lutteroth, who was kind of the grandfather of lucha libre.

And of course, I got into the exóticos, the drag performances of lucha libre from the early days. The first drag luchador was an individual named Gardenia Davis, and he used to come out throwing gardenias to the audience, and he was kind of considered the first exótico back in the ‘40s and ‘50s. There was a fighter named Murciélago Velázquez, whose shtick was that he would release bats into the audience. He was one of the first rudos. He would come out and everybody would boo, and he would release these bats out into the auditorium and people would scream and run. He had been a boxer, and he lost his eye in a fight, so he had a prosthetic eye. He and his opponent during a match had agreed that they were going to stage this fight to where his opponent hit him, and then the eye popped out because they wanted the audience to get really freaked out, and then the audience to think like, “Oh my God, this técnico popped his eye out.”

There’s a lot of performance, a lot of exaggeration, but also a lot of athleticism. People really do get hurt. One of the things I wanted to emphasize with the fact that this is athleticism, that it’s just as legitimate as any kind of sport. For some reason we see it as lesser, but it’s just as athletic and dangerous as any of those contact sports. I wanted to pay homage to that.

Q: Ernesto almost splits his personality into these two people, Ernesto and El Rey Coyote. What do you think he gets out of having this alter ego that he’s carefully constructed?

It’s a form of drag for Ernesto; it’s a form of escape. He’s constantly wrestling with his sexuality. And I think with that character, he gets the freedom and flexibility to really be who he wants to be, to be more alive than anything. I didn’t intend for that to happen. It just emerged throughout the process of writing it. But the more I wrote about him, the more I realized that the alter ego would really provide an opportunity for me to interrogate the character in ways that he can’t interrogate himself. He’s really struggling with his own identity and sexuality, and with the choices that he’s made in his life, the way he grew up. So he adopts this persona who is very sure of himself, who knows his role, who knows his place, and who can do and say things that Ernesto never could or do.

A lot of the men of that generation struggled a lot with expectations. I’m sure that there were people in my family who probably struggled with their sexuality but really couldn’t express it because it wasn’t socially acceptable. So they married and accepted that and had a lot of internal turmoil. I wanted for Ernesto to have an opportunity to express that, but at the same time wrestle with the decisions and know that he ultimately is a product of that culture, and his children are going to live very different lives, but at the same time, they’re still going to wrestle with their own demons. 

Q: His grandson, Julian, has to deal with both racism and homophobia, this double-barreled bigotry.

Julian is trying to figure out his position as a gay man navigating this new queer world, a landscape where racism does play a part in it. You look at apps like Grindr, where men are trying to curate a kind of sexual experience, and in the same way that his father and his grandfather had to fulfill certain roles, he’s also finding himself having to fulfill certain sexual roles. And through that, he sort of loses himself a little bit and begins to question the expectations that are placed on him and the way in which men are fetishizing him the same way that they fetishized his father and his grandfather.

He is really struggling, not just with his cultural identity and the expectations that were placed on him by his father and his grandfather, but also his sexual identity, in a very different way than his grandfather did. We know his grandfather’s also gay and had this secret love affair, but there were different struggles for different eras and different times. More than anything, I wanted to express that Ernesto’s struggles as a queer man are very different from his grandson’s struggles as a queer man, because his grandson is living a very different reality.

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Department of Creative Writing

The Department of Creative Writing University of California, Riverside 900 University Avenue ARTS 121 Riverside, CA 92521

E-mail:  [email protected] Steve Erickson ,  Chair & Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing E-mail:  [email protected] Marcelina Rose Ryneal Financial & Administrative Officer Office: ARTS 126 Phone: 951.827.5491 E-mail:  [email protected]

Elaine Chacon Office Location: INTN 3033A E-mail:  [email protected] Advisor for students with names: A – Hi

Anthony Gonzalez Office Location: INTN 3033B E-mail: [email protected] Advisor for students with names: Ho – M

Jennifer Paramo E-mail: [email protected] Advisor for students with names: N – Z

Advising Hours

Walk-In Hours: Mon-Thurs, 1-330 PM* * Hours are subject to change

Benicia Mangram Administrative Coordinator Office: ARTS 129 E-mail: [email protected]

Melanie Ramiro Performing Arts Marketing Specialist Office: ARTS 119 Phones: 951.827-3245 E-mail: [email protected]

Inquiry for MFA program:

Lovey Plaha , Coordinator Phone: 951.827.5568 E-mail: [email protected]

For prospective freshman students:

Office of Relations with Schools 1120 Hinderaker Hall Riverside, CA 92521 Phone: 951.827.4531 E-mail: [email protected]

For prospective transfer students:

Transfer and Reentry Services H101 Bannockburn Riverside, CA 92521 Phone: 951.827.5307 E-mail: [email protected]

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Department of English

M.f.a. creative writing.

English Department

Physical Address: 200 Brink Hall

Mailing Address: English Department University of Idaho 875 Perimeter Drive MS 1102 Moscow, Idaho 83844-1102

Phone: 208-885-6156

Email: [email protected]

Web: English

About the M.F.A. in Creative Writing

Career information is not specific to degree level. Some career options may require an advanced degree.

Current Job Openings and Salary Range

in ID, WA, OR, MT and HI

Entry-Level

Senior-Level

• Career Options
• Advertising and Promotions Manager
• English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary
• Public Relations Specialist
• Technical Writer
• Writer or Author
• Poet, Lyricist or Creative Writer

Regional Employment Trends

Employment trends and projected job growth in ID, WA, OR, MT & HI

*Job data is collected from national, state and private sources. For more information, visit EMSI's data sources page .

• Degree Prep

Our students arrive as accomplished writers and readers, and while many have not yet published their stories, poems and essays, most will do so during their time in the program. An undergraduate English degree is not mandatory — our students come from diverse cultural, geographical, and artistic backgrounds, and at different times in their professional and personal lives. If you’re ready to write, apply now .

• Degree Roadmap

Ours is a three-year program, over the course of which each student works toward assembling a manuscript of publishable quality. In addition to regular workshops in a student's given genre, our program requires 18 credits of literature courses and traditions seminars be completed during the program. Some recent offerings:

• Genre-Crossing
• Women and Poetry
• Geographies of Nonfiction
• The Raptures of Research in Fiction Writing
• Traditions of Lifewriting
• Independence and Inquiry: A Nonfiction Techniques Studio
• Scholarships

The College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences provides annual scholarship awards totaling approximately $1,600,000. For information on specific scholarships, please email  [email protected] .

You can find general need- and merit-based scholarships on the Financial Aid Office's scholarships page.

Teaching Assistantships carry value up to $26,000; other departmental scholarships can supplement this by $2,000 or more annually. 

To learn more about FAFSA deadlines and processes, available scholarships, and financial aid program types and eligibility requirements, please visit the University of Idaho  Financial Aid Office .

• Hands-On Learning

Teaching assistantships are awarded on a competitive basis. The program also offers fellowships for summer workshops and writing retreats.

• Job Openings and Salary Range
• Employment Trends

Mastering the Art of Creativity

Polish your craft and develop your voice as a professional writer in a program that features intensive theoretical and practical training across genres. Enjoy a supportive learning environment with an award-winning faculty and benefit from opportunities to be published and mentored through the Distinguished Visiting Writers Program.

• Our M.F.A. program is three years. We offer full and equitable funding for all students through Teaching Assistantships and tuition waivers.
• We admit two to four students per genre each year (nine students per cohort, on average). Our program is small by design, ensuring that community and mentorship are central to the experience of our degree candidates.
• All admitted students gain real-world skills through classroom teaching.
• We offer flexible degree paths in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction, and encourage cross- and multi-genre study or single-genre study, depending on a student’s artist goals.
• Our faculty value student-centered classroom spaces where mentoring, community, and reciprocity are tightly held values. All classes are taught by working writers who have a passion for teaching.
• The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series brings field-leading authors to campus to read from their work, interface with students and the community, and lead MFA seminars.
• Fellowship opportunities include participating in Writing in the Wild at Taylor Ranch in the Frank Church Wilderness Area; University Fellowships at the Centrum Writers Conference; the Hemingway Fellowship for fiction writers; and the Academy of American Poets University Prize.
• Students have the opportunity to serve as editors for our esteemed national literary journal Fugue.
• Over the past three decades, our distinguished alumni have published over 100 books with our country’s finest trade, independent, and university presses. Students and alumni are the lifeblood of our storied MFA program.

Meet Our Faculty

M.F.A. English Faculty

Meet Our Students

M.F.A English Students

More From Forbes

A writing room: the new marketplace of writer classes, retreats, and collectives.

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A Writing Room is one of the fast-growing writer collectives. The four co-founders (left to right): ... [+] Reese Zecchin, Director of Production; Jacob Nordby, Director of Writer Development; A. Ashe, Creative Director; Claire Giovino, Community Director.

The past decade has brought an explosion in the number of books published each year in the United States (an estimated three to four million annually). In turn, this explosion is bringing a growing and evolving marketplace of writer classes, retreats and collectives. It is a marketplace creating new jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities—both for mainstream tech, marketing and managerial workers, as well as for writer/artist denizens of America’s bohemia.

The Drivers of Growth in Book Publishing

The number of book sales in the United States remains healthy, though it has leveled off in the past four years. In 2020, 756.82 million book unit sales were made in the US alone. This number climbed to 837.66 million in 2021, before falling slightly to 787.65 million units in 2022 and 767.36 million units in 2023.

What has changed dramatically has been the number of books published. Steve Piersanti of Berrett-Koehler Publishers estimates that three million books were published in the US, up ten times from the number only 16 years ago . Other estimates put the number of published books annually at closer to four million .

The main driver of this growth in books published has been self-publishing. According to Bowker , which provides tools for self-publishing, an estimated 2.3 million books were self-published in 2021. Up through the 1990s (now the distant past in publishing), writers of all types of books, fiction and nonfiction, were dependent on convincing publishing houses to publish their work. As the technology for self-publishing and print on demand grew in the early 2000s, writers could publish on their own, and a very large number of Americans began to do so.

Fueling growth also is the level of affluence and discretionary income that an increasing segment of American society is reaching. For centuries, theorists across the political spectrum have envisioned a society, freed from basic economic needs, pursuing creative activities, with writing as a primary activity. In The German Ideology , Karl Marx could write about the economy of abundance in which individuals pursue writing as one of a series of daily activities—hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, write criticism in the evening. John Maynard Keynes in a 1930 essay, “ Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” , envisions a time a hundred years forward (2030) in which writing is no longer the province of the upper classes. Contemporary theorists on the future of work, such as John Tamny, similarly see a blooming of creative and artistic activities by the average citizen.

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Here are all the heat records broken in early summer heat waves, dana white is ‘not thrilled’ with long-time ufc contender, a writing room, and the emerging marketplace of writer training.

A marketplace of writing coaches, classes and retreats expanded throughout the late twentieth century and first years of the twentieth century. Published authors and even recently-minted graduates of MFA programs hung out shingles for individual coaching and small classes. Colleges expanded their writing programs and certifications, and writer retreats multiplied. Co-working and literary event spaces were established in major cities ( The Writers Room in New York, The Writers Grotto in San Francisco). But the marketplace continued to bump up against geographic and logistical limitations.

Then, along the came the internet, and its evolution.

Today, hundreds of businesses throughout the country offer assistance to aspiring writers. Many continue to offer some in-person assistance through coaching, classes or retreats. But as in other fields, the internet has allowed for a nationwide (worldwide) reach that these businesses are taking advantage of to scale. The major pre-internet writer assistance companies, such as The Writers Studio , added online courses and instruction, and the early internet-based companies from the 1990s, such as Writers.com (a pioneer in the internet field), steadily expanded their offerings. New enterprises are springing up on a regular basis, including the writer collectives.

A Writing Room is one of the fastest growing of the writer collectives, and its suite of services illustrate the how the field is evolving.

A Writing Room has its roots in the writing classes that novelist Anne Lamott had been teaching for some years, and her interest by the early 2020s in creating a larger on-going community of writers. Lamott connected with a team of four entrepreneurs who had experience with previous start-ups and expertise in online tools. In early 2023 they set out to develop A Writing Room.

Novelist Anne Lamott, one of the partners in A Writing Room.

A Writing Room launched in June 2023, and followed a few months later with an inaugural writers retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Though hastily arranged, the retreat attracted more than 400 in person attendees and over 1600 attendees online. In the first half of 2024, the company set up a membership structure of monthly and annual memberships. Within months, over 550 writers had joined.

The products that members can access are aimed in part at teaching the craft of writing. In a recent author discussion (with close to 400 participants joining online) Lamott discussed the craft of writing with novelist Donna Levin . Both started publishing in the 1980s. They noted how much publishing and the role of the writer have changed, but emphasized the fundamentals that have remained over their forty years, related to craft and the responsibility of the writer: the daily commitment, the careful development of plot and characters, the numerous rewrites (as many as you think you need, and one more).

A Writing Room offers a series of on-demand courses, online discussions with authors and publishing professionals, and daily writing prompts, built around writing as craft. It further offers instruction on the paths to and options for publication, building a following of readers.

At its center, A Writing Room is about being part of a community of writers, giving and receiving regular feedback from other members, as well as feedback from writing mentors and coaches. In an interview earlier this year, Lamott explained:

The great myth about writing is that it's an entirely solitary activity. This really isn't true. Every book I've ever written has been with a lot of help from my community. I wouldn't be the writer I am today — and wouldn't even want to write — without people to share the process and finished work. Writing is a process, but it doesn't have to (and really shouldn't be) done in total isolation.

The writing process can feel overwhelming. It often does for me. Believe me, a trusted writing friend is a secret to life.

Other emerging writing collectives also emphasize community and cooperation. Levin underscored this point in the recent online discussion: “Writing can be such an isolated activity, and to some extent needs to be. You want to seek out a community that can give you the support you need and also the honest feedback.”

How the New Marketplace is Evolving and Jobs Created

The founders of A Writing Room know that the marketplace for writer assistance is fast changing, and they need to be quick to adapt to increased competition. Already, several developments are driving change in the field:

· The entrance of major online education companies (i.e. Masters Class , Coursera, Udemy ).

· Faculty recruitment of writers with built-in audiences of sizeable twitter and other social media followings.

· Partnerships with the major publishers and agencies, who hold out the promise of publication to participants of the classes, retreats and collectives.

· Specializations by race and ethnicity, gender, geography and genre.

· Market segmentation, and attention to higher income consumers.

A number of these developments reflect the changes in the broader publishing world and are likely to continue. Overall, the marketplace itself will be expanding, as publishing technology advances, along with discretionary income.

The jobs being generated by this new marketplace are a mix of tech, administrative, and writing coach positions. At A Writing Room, recent hires include a community liaison, video editor, customer support, and a “beta reader” providing feedback to writers on their drafts. The hiring process is sweeping up into jobs not only workers who have been in the regular economy, but also residents of America’s bohemia: writers and artists who previously were outside of (and often scornful of) the market system. What can be better than that.

In his 2023 book, The Novel, Who Needs It , Joseph Epstein, former editor of American Scholar , offers a paean to fiction as above all other intellectual endeavors that seek to understand human behavior. But what he says of fiction is true of other writing (memoir, history, even forms of self-help) that arouses the mind.

Yes, there are way too many books published each year, and yes only a very small percentage of writers will earn any significant income from their writing. But who knows what individual book will succeed commercially or critically, or add to our shared knowledge or wisdom. And really, why not encourage the craft of writing. How much does America benefit from most of the paper-pushing, meetings and e-mails that now pass for work in our economy of affluence.

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