Begins week of February 9, 2026
Instructor: Amy Shearn
Location: Online (weekly video meet-up tbd 7-9pm ET)
Fee: $625
A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.
A private conference with the instructor is included.
Start, finish, or polish your autofiction story in this supportive, genre-defying workshop in which we’ll explore the blurry space between novel and memoir that is autofiction. This popular modern sub-genre houses work from writers as varied as Sherman Alexie, James Baldwin, Elif Batuman, Alexander Chee, Teju Cole, Annie Ernaux, Sheila Heti, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ben Lerner, and Ocean Vuong, many of whom we’ll read in this workshop. Open to writers both new to autofiction and long familiar with it, this course will explore the origins and merits of this at-times contentious sub-genre and examine the craft unique to it. Students will read published examples, write to autofiction prompts, and workshop each other’s writing.
This workshop is open to writers working in autofiction, fiction and nonfiction, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.
Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Animal Instinct, Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here.She teaches creative writing at the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and Writing Co-Lab, an experimental cooperative she co-founded. Amy’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, and O: The Oprah Magazine. Amy lives in Brooklyn and, alongside her own writing, she works with writers as a developmental editor, book coach, and retreat-leader.