Class Description
Go on a six-week journey with literary agent Joanne Wyckoff of the Carol Mann Agency to find your book. Perhaps you have a number of essays that you want to turn into a book. Or you’ve written half of a memoir or other nonfiction narrative. Through class discussion and the sharing of manuscript material, students will explore and refine their book concepts or storylines to make sure they’re workable in a book format. The goals of the class are to aid students in finding their book, to discuss book structure, and to guide students in the mechanics of writing a book proposal. We will also discuss the importance of doing market research to determine the uniqueness of a book idea or storyline as well as the importance of developing an author profile through publishing shorter pieces or essays in magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc.. The aim, by the end of class, is for students to have gained a working knowledge of how to write a book proposal and to have written a synopsis/overview of their book and chapter-by-chapter summaries.
This is a course that focuses on narrative nonfiction and memoir. The course is part lecture and part workshop. Students who wish to take this class should have taken writing classes before and should feel comfortable reading and critiquing other students’ work. The class is led by an instructor who has worked extensively as both a literary agent and an editor.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.