protect your writing time.

The (Co)Writing Collective cultivates individual creative practice and progress using the time-tested creative tools of inspiration, accountability, and community.

(co)writing collective

Fall session

9/8-11/17/2027

8-9a CT / 9-10a ET / 6-7a PT

w/ author and book editor Susanna Daniel and

Fee: $150 for new members / $75 for returning members

join us for fall 2027

do you have a hard time making time to write?

Each of our Writing Collective sessions

  • Opens with a brief reading to settle in.

  • Offers a prompt to guide your writing, productivity advice, and/or creative inspiration.

  • Holds 50+ minutes of quiet time to write together.

who should join us?

Any writers who might benefit from regular accountability and community are welcome to join us. Each (co)writing session runs for 3 months.

Think of the Writing Collective as creative church: Your only responsibility is show up, listen, and stay in your seat.

the (CO)writing collective meets tue + thu mornings on zoom.

All time zones are welcome.

8-9a CT / 9-10a ET / 6-8a PT

Enroll NOW

We’ll get in touch with details and an invoice within 48 hours of receiving your registration.

Please note that all returning students receive a 10% discount on workshops.

We look forward to getting to know you and your work!

Meet the Instructor

  • Susanna Daniel, author and editor

    Susanna Daniel is the author of three novels. Girlfriending is a spinoff of her award-winning short story, "The Goddess of Illicit Choices," Stiltsville, was awarded the PEN/Bingham prize, and Sea Creatures, was a Target Book Club pick.

    Susanna is the co-founder of the Madison Writers’ Studio with author Michelle Wildgen, and she’s been leading the Book in a Year workshop since 2013. She’s coached and edited more 100+ novelists and memoirists, either from the blank page or from the full draft.

    Susanna is a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the UW Institute for Creative Writing. She’s been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and UCross, and has been published in the Sewanee Review, Newsweek, Slate, One Story, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Significant Objects, Epoch, and elsewhere. Before co-founding MWS, she taught college-level creative writing for ten years.

    You can learn more about Susanna at her website, and you’re welcome to contact her about Book in a Year via email.

  • Michelle Wildgen, author and editor

    Michelle Wildgen is the author of the novels Wine People, Bread and Butter, But Not For Long, and You’re Not You (both available in paperback from Picador), and is the editor of an anthology, Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast (Tin House Books). You’re Not You has been adapted for film, starring Hilary Swank and Emmy Rossum.

    Michelle received her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught fiction and nonfiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. She was a long-time executive editor at Tin House Magazine and former books editor with Tin House Books. Michelle’s nonfiction has included a weekly column on food television as well as individual essays on a wide range of topics: from American Girl doll Rebecca Rubin, Burt Reynolds’ 1970s fan mail, and obscure Wisconsin card games to the craft of writing, fresh mozzarella, deer-hunting for the neophyte, and the number of times one must endure anaphylactic shock before giving up shellfish for good.

    Her fiction, personal essays, and food writing have appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review and “Modern Love” column, O, the Oprah Magazine, RealSimple.com, LitHub, and anthologies such as Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, Dirty Words, Best New American Voices 2004, Best Food Writing 2004 and 2009, Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals, and journals including StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Awards and honors include a scholarship to Bread Loaf, residency at the Hall Farm Center in Vermont, and the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing from Prairie Schooner.

    You can learn more about Michelle’s work at her website, and you can contact her via email.

The fee is $150 for new collective members / $75 for returning members.

Schedule
Sept 8-Nov 17, 2027 / 8-9a CDT

  • Yes! This is your time, to spend however you want — write to one of our prompts, brainstorm ideas, write a poem or a journal entry or a full scene or anything else that would feel right to you.

  • Unlike our traditional workshops, there’s no time built into the Collective to share writing, except that I’ll invite someone to share words of wisdom, challenges and gols, or general impressions at the end of each session. This way, we get to know each other bit by bit as the weeks pass.

  • No. It’s encouraged to keep your camera on only for the first five minutes of the meeting, then briefly at the end.

join us for fall 2027

  • “I struggle to prioritize my writing, but when I commit to a time and place to show up with other writers, I do it! Even better, two hours a week of no-fail writing time leads to more writing because I have some momentum going. It might seem silly to write with others over Zoom, but it has gotten me farther and deeper into a work of fiction than I’ve ever been able to achieve on my own. And if some weeks I only write for two hours, well, that is two hours I wouldn’t have written otherwise.”

    — Shirley S.

  • “This two hours a week is just what I needed. It has really been the anchor, the body doubling and the prompts, to get that part of me lit up again. ”

    — Gypsy T.

  • “The bits of writing advice you give us at the beginning of a session always land perfectly for me. And I like when you ask someone how it’s going at the end. Every time I hear people who are writers talk about writing, I feel renewed in my own desire to get what I think down on paper.”

    — Shirley S.

all you have to do is show up.

*

all you have to do is show up. *

Is the (co)writing collective right for you?

Susanna. is happy to jump on a call to discuss whether the Collective is a good fit for you and your writing life.

Book an appointment or email me to make time.

join us for fall 2027