Your full workshop package includes: Welcome reception, five-day masterclass, individual teacher consultation, a (BYO) lunch-time session on Paths to Publishing, early evening panels, student readings, and closing reception.
Click here for full program schedule.
Instructor:
Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip; and, most recently, a collection of flash fiction called The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.
Course Description:
Orson Scott Card said that "there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale." Our goal for this course will be to read each other's stories and to help each other, as writers, find one of the thousand right ways to tell them. Whether you regard yourself as a genre fiction writer, a mainstream fiction writer, a realist, a fantasist, or something else altogether, as long as you arrive in Paris with an interest in improving your work and making discoveries, our workshop will offer a welcome environment for you.
We will devote roughly an hour to discussing each student’s manuscript, drawing the writer’s attention to its virtues, flaws, delights, confusions, lulls, and enticements. It's likely that we’ll also read a handful of published stories by masters of the form, authors who approach their work with vision, craft, and a complex and absorbing sense of what it means to be alive, with the goal of examining their stories for whatever creative lessons they might offer us. For writers of all levels.
Preparation:
I’ll ask each of you to submit a single double-spaced short story, between 10 and 25 pages long, by 1 May 2026 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass name along with your materials. Your classmates and I will read your manuscript in advance of our week together, prepare a letter for you, and come to the table prepared to discuss our observations in detail.
Agent Consultations:
Available exclusively to participants who have enrolled in a masterclass, you can register for one or two agent consultations for an additional fee. More information to come.
Cancellation Policy:
In the event of unforeseen circumstances, PWW reserves the right to replace an instructor.
Photo credit: © Benjamin Krain
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of The Family Chao, a winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction. A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of her first collection, Hunger: A Novella and Stories, was recently published by W.W. Norton & Company. She is also the author of All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, which won the PEN Open Book Award. Her short stories have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic and The Best American Short Stories. Since 2006, she has directed the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
This workshop is designed for people who are somewhere in the often-surprising process of writing a novel. It’s my goal to create a constructive and supportive novel writing community in which we will explore key aspects of the form and process. How does a novel differ from real life? What are the parts of a novel and what obstacles does each pose to the writer? What are some of the greatest pleasures and frustrations of writing a novel, and how are they specifically related to the nature of the form? What are some useful methods to keep track of a novel-in-progress, and how can we come to terms with our own habits of productivity?
Participants should send a chapter of up to 6000 words, as well as a one-page synopsis, by May 1, 2026 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass name with your materials. Your classmates and I will read your manuscript in advance of our week together and be prepared to discuss our observations.
Photo credit: © IfeOluwa Nihinlola
Jeannine Ouellette’s lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women’s Literature. Her other books include Mama Moon and The Good Caregiver with Robert Kane, M.D. Her essays and short fiction have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Masters Review. Her bestselling Substack, Writing in the Dark, explores writing as a metaphor for life.
Jeannine teaches writing at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the University of Minnesota. Her craft book, One Word at a Time: A Creative Practice for Transforming Your Writing and Your Life, is forthcoming from Rodale Books.
This workshop will move writers beyond “what happened” toward embodied memoirs that allow readers to not only understand the story but to live it. The memoirist, like the novelist, must articulate the story’s narrative arc and move readers along it with an engaging narrator. This is complex because to narrate memoir is to experience oneself as a trinity: the author at the keyboard, the narrator or constructed persona, and the character whose experiences form the story. This threefold perspective is key to plotting an unforgettable memoir that captures experience and meaning with strong emotive capacities to move readers and live on in their imaginations. For writers of all levels.
In class we will explore:
By May 1, 2026, please send to admin.pww@wice-paris.org:
Your classmates and I will read your submission in advance of our week together and be prepared to discuss our observations in detail.
Photo credit: © Max Ouellette-Howitz
Born and raised in Paris, Gabrielle Demeestère wrote and directed the feature film Yosemite starring James Franco and Henry Hopper, which Variety called “an impressive debut” and was released theatrically and on Netflix. She sold her half-hour comedy pilot Putain! to Topic Studios and has worked as a script doctor for Working Title Films. She is currently in pre-production on her second feature film, Terra, which participated in the Torino Film Lab and Gotham Week Project Market, and is being produced by Luca Borghese (Eddington, A House of Dynamite.)
Gabrielle has taught in the graduate film program at Columbia University, Rutgers, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Tufts, and Syracuse University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Screenwriting at Emerson College in Boston.
Whether you’re writing your first feature-length screenplay or already have some experience as a screenwriter, meeting other writers, exchanging ideas, giving and receiving feedback is an invaluable part of the writing experience.
Our screenwriting masterclass will focus on character, structure, plot, dialogue and subtext, and help you develop your own, unique voice as a screenwriter. Our classes will be devoted to learning about screenwriting concepts, sharing your work with other participants, and writing exercises. The goal is for participants to bring an idea for a feature film or TV and leave the workshop with a visual pitch and the first 5-10 pages of a new screenplay.
Students are asked to send by May 1, 2026 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org an idea for a TV show or feature film for the first class: a one-sentence logline and short synopsis (500 words max).
Choose an active main character and come up with a few key plot points that help establish the character’s main conflict, as well as indicate where the story is heading (you don't have to know the whole story yet). Include a few sentences about why you're passionate about telling this story (why you and why now). Your classmates and I will read your submission in advance of our week together, and be prepared to discuss our observations in detail.
Please include your masterclass name with your materials.
You are also encouraged to read the screenwriting book Into the Woods by John Yorke beforehand.
Photo credit: © Joey Kuhn
Founded in 1987, WICE's Paris Writers Workshop is one of the oldest and most distinguished writers' workshops in Paris. Join us this year for
Novel Master Class: Turbocharge Your Creativity with Nicola Keegan
Novel Master Class: Beginning Your Novel with Lan Samantha Chang
Writing Craft Talk: Settings Across Cultures with Alecia McKenzie
Writing Craft Talk: Fiction Techniques in Creative Nonfiction with Lise Funderburg
Writing Craft Talk: Collage Technique in Poetry: Bridging Languages and Cultures with Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter
Panel Discussion: Navigating the Small Presses with Leland Cheuk, Paul Schmidtberger, David Lewis, and Katharine Sands
June 25, 2021 – June 28, 2021
Online Internationally
€350 Weekend Package
€20 Writing Craft Talks (open to the public)
Free Panel Discussion (open to the public)
(please note schedule is subject to change)
Friday June 25:
3:00 pm - Opening Reception
4:00-5:00 pm - Writing Craft Talk: Settings Across Cultures with Alecia McKenzie
5:15-6:15 pm - Writing Craft Talk: Collage Technique in Poetry: Bridging Languages and Cultures with Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter
Saturday, June 26:
9:00 am-1:00 pm - Novel Master Class: Turbocharge Your Creativity with Nicola Keegan
1:00-2:00 pm - Lunch break
2:00-3:00 pm - Writing Time/Free Time
4:00-6:00 pm - Novel Master Class: Beginning Your Novel with Lan Samantha Chang
Sunday, June 27:
Monday, June 28:
1:30 pm - Closing Brunch
3:00-5:00 pm - Panel Discussion: Navigating the Small Presses with Leland Cheuk, Paul Schmidtberger, David Lewis, and Katharine Sands
7:00 pm - Mixed Reading: students and instructors
Lise Funderburg
Geoffrey Nutter
Jennifer K. Dick
Lan Samantha Chang
Nicola Keegan
Alecia McKenzie
Leland Cheuk
Paul Schmidtberger
Katharine Sands
Association régie par la loi du 1er juillet 1901
Siret 380 703 595 00039
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