Meets: Once a month, 2nd Saturday 9-12p CST. Virtual intro June 2025, 10-11a CST. Hybrid (in person and virtual) meetings July 12-Dec. 13, 2025, 9a-12p CST.

Instructor: Michelle Wildgen
Location: Near East Side
Cost: $1195
Enrollment: 5 openings

If you’ve completed a draft of your novel or memoir, congratulations! That milestone is a big one—but by now you probably have realized that it is also just the first in a longer process. To improve your work as much as you can in preparation for querying agents, or simply to meet your own writing goals, you need to evaluate your manuscript as a whole, from its broadest central purpose to its prose on the sentence level. You need readers. And you need thorough, guided feedback from an experienced writer, editor, and teacher who has been through this process before. Best of all, by reading other students’ completed drafts and learning how to give useful feedback to them, you will gain skills you can apply to your own work in the future.

Designed to give students intensive feedback on their book-length projects and the skills to evaluate their own work, each three-hour class will focus on discussion of one student’s entire manuscript, which we all will read beforehand. We will also set aside time to discuss craft issues and writing questions as they arise. You will be part of a writing community facing the same questions and struggles you are.

You will be responsible for reading and discussing the original work of each participant. (Don’t worry, I’ll guide you on how to approach that task.)

Our workshops focus first on what the writer is doing well, then on concrete suggestions for improvement. We’ll discuss why some strategies work and some don’t and how to hone our strengths and identify our weaknesses. We will also discuss writing process and how to handle a long-form project, which is so different from stories and essays.

This workshop is appropriate for writers with workshop experience and a completed book-length draft ready for revision. Please expect to read roughly 350 pages of material every month, to prepare 1-2 pages of written feedback for each class session, and to submit a book-length manuscript. (If your novel or memoir is significantly longer than 350 pages, contact me to discuss.)

PLEASE NOTE: We will have a shorter introductory meeting over Zoom in June 2025, so we can hit the ground running with our first workshop July 12. Workshops will be held 9 am-12 pm July 12, Aug. 9, Sept. 13, Oct. 11, Nov. 8, Dec. 13, 2025.

If you have questions or want to be in the loop about this class, email me!