Join us a day early for a chance to spend an entire afternoon focused on honing your craft.
Each intensive will be led by an expert in their field, and we are thrilled with this stellar line-up of faculty.
We hope to see you there.
Intensive Options:
Picture Book Intensive with editor Frances Gilbert
Behind the Scenes with an Editor. Bring your picture book works-in-progress for a session of live editing and revision, interspersed with informative discussion about best practices, including an editor's thoughts about picture book "hooks" and how picture books are evaluated at acquisitions meetings. Come with lots of questions!
Nonfiction Intensive with editor Carol Hinz
Nonfiction: Revise, Rethink, Reimagine: A Deep Dive into Revision
What is revision and why is it such a critical part of the writing process? And how do you actually revise your manuscript? Bring your draft manuscript and delve into specific and effective revision strategies designed to make your manuscript shine. We'll cover nonfiction from picture books, through middle grade and young adult novels.
Novel Intensive with agent Kristen Terrette
How to Write and Revise a Submission-Ready Novel
As a novelist and agent, Kristen has seen thousands of first pages and hundreds of manuscripts. In this session, she will share what she’s learned and her step-by-step checklist to help you know when to submit, along with practical fixes for common mistakes that everyone can incorporate into their writing process. She’ll also do real-time editing on-screen with select manuscript pages from participants to show you how to apply what you’ve learned to your own work.
Illustrator Intensive with art director Mallory Grigg
Workshop your picture book dummy with a focus on flow and pacing in this hands-on #WIK24 intensive. We will work in small, collaborative groups to slice-and-dice your current work-in-progress and rebuild it together so that it becomes stronger and more compelling for your readers! Two copies of each dummy should be printed out, single-sided, as spreads in advance of the class. They can be any level of finish, loose or tight, but please don't bring original artwork. Ideally, each book has at least 1-2 finished spreads so we can get a sense of the final art style. Each student should bring scissors, tape, tracing paper, and drawing/writing utensils for in-person editing. If you created your dummy on an iPad, that is okay, but we'll be making all edits on paper that you can take back to your digital platform after the class. If you don't have a dummy of your own work, we suggest you take text from a fairy tale in the public domain and create illustrations for it ahead of time.