2026 PRE-CONFERENCE MASTER CLASSES
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 | NINE ONLINE CLASSES TO CHOOSE FROM
AVAILABLE AS A CONFERENCE ADD-ON or A LA CARTE
$50 each for JRW Members/$75 each for Non-Members
On Friday, September 25, 2026, we will offer nine online pre-conference Master Classes. Each two-hour Master Class takes an in-depth look at a particular topic of interest to writers. Classes are offered for an additional cost to the regular conference fees and are open to conference ticket holders and also as an a la carte purchase if you are not able to attend the in-person conference on September 26 and 27, in Richmond, Virginia.
Online Master Classes will be held via the Zoom platform and will offer participants an opportunity to ask questions and interact with the class instructors. Once registration closes, we will send Master Class registrants the Zoom link(s) to join the Master Classes you have signed up and paid for.
Bonus! Your Online Master Class registration/ticket will include access to the recording and chat capture following the close of your class.
REGISTRATION
You can make your Master Class selections when you register for the main conference or separately (a la carte) using the same registration form. If you are only registering for the Master Classes, you may bypass any non-applicable questions on the registration form. You will receive a recording of any online Master Class you sign up and pay for after the class is over, for a limited time–even if you are unable to attend in real time.
9:00 am – 11:00 am Eastern | Online Master Classes
NEVERTHELESS, YOU PERSIST: BUILDING CREATIVE STAMINA
with Writer, Educator, and Literary Journalist BRIAN GRESKO
Getting your butt in the chair to write can be challenging enough, but how do you keep it there when your creative juices aren’t flowing, and how do you continue coming back day after day, when progress feels slow and your literary goals start seeming like pipe dreams? Persistence and motivation. These attitudes separate the doers from the dilettantes, and fortunately, they can be developed and nurtured – this session will show you how. Through readings, exercises, and discussion, you’ll learn how to banish imposter’s syndrome, overcome writer’s block, and soothe the sting of rejection, and leave with practical tips for fostering creative fortitude and enthusiasm in the face of adversity.
Brian Gresko
| Brian Gresko is the author of the book You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity. Their work has appeared on Slate, The Literary Hub, The Atlantic, and in The Sun Magazine and Poets & Writers Magazine, among numerous other publications. Gresko co-hosts Pete’s Reading Series in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and is co-founder of Writing Co-Lab, an artist-owned teaching cooperative. On Substack, Gresko keeps a column called “The Creative Accomplice,” about writing and the creative life. |
INCITING INCIDENTS: 6 WAYS TO SEIZE AND HOLD YOUR READER’S ATTENTION
with Author and Essayist PETER MOUNTFORD
This master class focuses on a series of simple tricks we can use to quickly infuse our stories with drama and tension. Writers often struggle with a lack of propulsion in their stories or novels (or memoirs). If you’ve pushed your character into seemingly distressing situations—Kevin has terminal cancer and is lonely!—but your reader remains bored, you might need to explore ways to initiate tension. Too often, writers accidentally hide or delay the source of tension that will animate their stories. Or they have a misunderstanding about how tension operates. This session will provide clear and vivid examples and exercises to test the tension-meter in your story.
Peter Mountford
Peter Mountford is the author of the novels A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism (Washington State Book Award), The Dismal Science (NYT editor’s choice), and his latest, a collection of short stories, Detonator (now out from Four Way Books). His work has appeared in the New York Times (Modern Love), Paris Review, Southern Review, The Atlantic, The Sun, Ploughshares, and Guernica. He teaches at University of Nevada, Reno, at Lake Tahoe’s MFA, and through Mountford Writing. |
CHOOSING A PUBLISHING PATH
with Literary Agent SARAH N. FISK
Changes and new opportunities in the publishing industry have made it an exciting time to be an author, but they have somehow also made it one of the most confusing times to be an author. Literary agent and hybrid author Sarah N. Fisk will present the different publishing paths available (indie publishing, trad publishing, both, neither) and openly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Sarah N. Fisk
Sarah N. Fisk is a literary agent at the Tobias Literary Agency, representing MG, YA, and most genre fiction and select nonfiction. Sarah is a former mechanical engineer who made the switch to publishing in 2011. They have worked in the publishing industry as an editorial assistant, author’s assistant, publicist, and art director. Sarah is a former Pitch Wars mentor, board member, and Agent Liaison. They host the podcast Queries, Qualms, & Quirks and are one of the founding members of Disability in Publishing.
11:15 am – 1:15 pm Eastern | Online Master Classes
BE YOUR OWN DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR
with Editor and Book Coach JACQUELINE CANGRO
This class will provide the tools and techniques to help you see your manuscript the way an editor or agent might see it. You’ll use these tools to assess your story’s strengths and weaknesses. Whether your goal is self-publication or securing an agent, you’ll learn what marks your manuscript as the work of a professional. We’ll look at some big picture, story level aspects of your book, then we’ll review the sentence level for things like redundancies and filter words. You’ll learn ways to approach your manuscript, both systematic and strategic, so you can effectively edit. We’ll have in-class exercises and lessons to help you get off to a great start.
Jacqueline Cangro
Jacqueline Cangro worked at Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster for more than twenty years. Now, as an independent developmental editor and book coach, she reviews novel manuscripts in many genres, including romance, historical, YA, women’s fiction, and upmarket, providing writers with feedback to revise their stories. She teaches creative writing at GrubStreet and The Loft, and she’s presented workshops at writing conferences around the world.
NON-FICTION BOOK PROPOSAL BOOTCAMP
with Author and Educator RACHEL WERNER
A nonfiction book proposal details how your book idea has market appeal. It acts as a business plan for your book that persuades a publisher to make an investment in you and your project. If a publisher is convinced by your argument, they will then contract you and pay you to write the book. This bootcamp is an interactive workshop to help begin to draft (or revise) a full proposal for submission—and it is appropriate for writers working on middle grade, YA or adult nonfiction projects.
Rachel Werner
Rachel Werner is the author of the kidlit Floods (Capstone 2022), Moving and Grooving to Fillmore’s Beat (Capstone 2023), and The Glam World Tour (Capstone 2025), as well as several titles in Capstone’s Pebble Explore series such as Ada Lovelace Creates an Algorithm. She also wrote the cookbook Macro Cooking Made Simple (Chartwell Books 2023), in addition to the forthcoming nonfiction YA title Glow & Grow (Bloomsbury 2027). She is on faculty for Hugo House in Seattle, Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she leads curricula to educate writers and content producers in marketing their work. A regular book reviewer for Shelf Awareness, Rachel has contributed print, photography, and video content to We Are Teachers, Highlights Foundation, The Spruce Eats and TheKitchn. She is currently represented by Megibow Literary Agency. |
DESIRE & DENIAL: CRAFTING COMPELLING CHARACTERS
with Award-winning Author and Editor MISHA RAI
There are two necessary elements that go into creating any compelling character: what the character desires and what they are denied. In this class you will learn how to deploy the two D’s as effectively as possible and in the process learn to incorporate in your writing the ideas of subtext and staging of desire. This class includes a combination of lecture, two generative writing exercises, and discussion. You will also have the opportunity to share a small part of a writing exercise with the whole class.
Misha Rai
Misha Rai is a Shirley Jackson Award nominated writer whose prose has been supported by the Kenyon Review Fellowship Program, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, The Whiting Foundation, MacDowell, Ucross, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Norton Island Residency for Writers and Artists, Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency, and the Dana Award in the Novel Category. She currently edits for the Kenyon Review and teaches Creative Writing at Sewanee: The University of the South.
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm Eastern | Online Master Classes
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?: BREAKING DOWN THE CRAFT OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURES & THEIR PURPOSE
with Dragon and Nebula Award Finalist R.R. VIRDI
What are narrative structures, and what purpose do they serve? In this class, we will explore some of the more common narrative structures across mediums, as well as lesser known and foreign ones, to help familiarize you with the best options for constructing your stories. We’ll examine the strengths and weaknesses of various structures, the promises and pay offs presented to the audience, and how choices such as voice and point of view change your outcome. We will discuss how length impacts storytelling structures and how to choose the best scaffolding for your idea. By the end of the class, students will be able to use the examples and structure tools learned to craft a completed short story or prose novel.
R. R. Virdi
R.R. Virdi is a two-time Dragon Award finalist and a Nebula Award finalist. He is the author of two urban fantasy series, The Grave Report, and The Books of Winter. He was born and raised in Northern Virginia and is a first generation Indian-American with all the baggage that comes with. He’s offended a long list of incalculable ancestors by choosing to drop out of college and not pursue one of three pre-destined careers: a lawyer, doctor, engineer. Instead, he decided to chase his dream of being an author. His family is still coping with this decision a decade later.
WRITING YOUR CULTURAL HERITAGE MEMOIR
with Award-Winning Poet and Educator SHONDA BUCHANAN
“Tell me where you’re from and I’ll tell you who you are.” Wallace Stegner, American Places
Culture and heritage can be found in our rituals, roles, upbringing, sayings, photographs, documents, in memory and nonmemory, in religious practices or ceremonies your family kept, or in some cases, ignored. Heritage can be found in how we interact with spouses, loved ones, and society, and what we’ve been taught and/or what we teach our children. Using prompts, this master class will help you unearth hidden memories and produce writing that sings of your family heritage.
Objectives:
This workshop will help participants:
- Learn, explore, and implement the top five Memoir/Creative Non-Fiction techniques.
- Construct heritage-centered memories through prompts and freewriting.
- Incorporate landscape into your memoir.
- Unearth memories hiding in our everyday words, actions, interactions and conversations.
- Produce a piece of nonfiction prose that represents you, your town, neighborhood, and/or country authentically.
Shonda Buchanan
Oxfam Ambassador Shonda Buchanan is the author of The Lost Songs of Nina Simone (winner of the 2026 American Library Association’s Black Librarians Caucus Poetry Award) and the award-winning memoir Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” Associate Professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and faculty in Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, Tab Review, Red Ink Review, Poetry.Daily, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Indian Country Today, Capital & Main, Westways Magazine, Sisters of AARP, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. Three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee and a California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow, Shonda is a USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow and a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Department of Cultural Affairs Master Artist Fellow. An English Language Specialist with the Department of State and PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and Mentor, Shonda’s works-in-progress are America’s Bloodflowers and Children of the Mixed Blood Trail.
QUERY LETTER BOOTCAMP
with Senior Literary Agent ISMITA HUSSAIN
Ismita Hussain
Ismita Hussain is Senior Agent at the New York-based literary agency, Great Dog Literary. She is a native Southerner, avid classics reader, and a polyglot. Ismita pivoted to the publishing industry from a career in healthcare, and her continued passion for disability advocacy led her to be a founding member of Disability in Publishing. Ismita represents an eclectic list of award-winning authors who write literary fiction, upmarket fiction, romance, non-fiction, and YA. The books she represents often comment on contemporary issues, explore the body, and provide an unflinching look at everyday life.