• The Un-MFA Writing Program

    Now that you’ve worked with talented writers, it’s time to work with their editors. Following the proven success of our Non-Fiction classes, The Writers’ Institute launches its Fiction program in 2010 with Jonathan Galassi (President and publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Deborah Treisman (Fiction Editor, The New Yorker), Nathaniel Rich (Senior Editor, The Paris Review) and John Freeman (Editor, Granta). Continue reading →

  • Why the Writers’ Institute?

    The Writers’ Institute was born with a very simple mission: to bring the very best and most celebrated editors in New York City to fifteen of this country’s most talented, aspiring writers. Just take a look at our eminent faculty. Continue reading →

  • Tricks of the Trade

    “An editor can take something that is cluttered and heavy and make it lithe and supple, and ultimately turn it into something enchanting.” (Published on Folio, Spring 2009) Continue reading →

News

The Art of Long-Form Journalism

New York City’s Top Magazine Writers Discuss their Craft Tuesday February 7th, 7-9pm The CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue (Corner of 34th Street) Skylight Room, 9th Floor Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to: WritersInstitute@gmail.com The panel will be introduced and moderated by Christopher Read more…

Fellows Read at the Center for Fiction

On a blustery November night, a crowd of friends, agents, and editors packed the elegant reading room at the Center for Fiction to hear fourteen writers from the Writers’ Institute read from their works. Several of the authors – with professional careers as journalists, academics, Read more…

Tom Waits Takes His Old Fans For a New Ride

Dmitry Kiper, a current fellow in the nonfiction program, reviews Tom Waits’ new album in The Brooklyn Rail: “Bums. Drunks. Prostitutes. Travelers. Nighthawks. Hustlers. Throughout the 1970s—under the spell of Jack Kerouac, Edward Hopper, and Charles Bukowski—Tom Waits told sad, comic tales of the down-and-out. Read more…

‘Address Unknown,’ by Leah Anderst

Leah Anderst, a nonfiction program alum, recently published this essay in The Morning News: “In New York’s St. John the Divine Cathedral, a letter to a dead man, tucked under a plaque near his ashes, offers the first and only clue in a mystery about Read more…

Corporate ‘Campus Reps,’ by Michael Rymer

Here’s the latest Village Voice article by Michael Rymer, “For Corporate ‘Campus Reps,’ Marketing to Classmates Is the Name of the Game”: This week, 150 Columbia University students are preparing to run in their undies. The plan is simple: Rain, shine, or freezing cold, the Read more…

Meet the Agents

Meet three young, enterprising agents who will discuss what it is that an agent does and why agents have become so necessary to the success of today’s writer. Listen to them first, then ask questions you wouldn’t dare ask the agent you’ve been thinking of Read more…

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Testimonials

Dorothy Wickenden offered hours of her weekends working with me on a pitch for an investigative story, Sam Tanenhaus spent part of his Thanksgiving vacation editing a three thousand word book review...read more
-Nathan Thrall
whose work has appeared in The New York Times,
The New York Review of Books
and GQ
By April, when the program ended, my expectations had been exceeded when John Freeman, editor of Granta,bought one of my stories that had been workshopped in his class...read more
-Judith Chicurel
-whose story will appear in GRANTA
If you are lucky and work hard, these professional relationships will endure as you continue to write and to grow as a writer...read more
-Debora Kuan
-whose forthcoming book XING will appear this October
What contact [with many editors] does is demystify them, enabling you to reach them in ways that you otherwise might not...read more
-Albert Fayngold
-who published in The New York Times