Dates: begins March 18, 2026
Instructor: Julia Fierro
Location: Meetings via video every OTHER Wednesday 6:30-9pm ET
Fee: $1575 | $1475 for returning Sackett writers
This generative class open to novelists, memoirists, and writers working on story and essay collections.
A writing sample is not required but recommended for this class.
The Manuscript Generator is our most productive class. Every other week you will submit up to 5,000 words of your manuscript to the instructor and she will provide you with notes. You’ll also have the opportunity to receive feedback from your fellow writers on your project synopsis or outline, scene exercises, and your manuscript’s opening pages. The two-hour bi-weekly meetings will be the chance for you to discuss your projects and engage with writing prompts in shared group writing time. The instructor also offers a one-on-one consultation at the end of the course to discuss your manuscript in depth.
Class meets six times over a period of twelve weeks.
Julia Fierro is the author of the novels The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth. She is one half of Cassidy Lucas, pen name of writing duo Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger. Santa Monica, their first book together, was published by Harper in October 2020. Their second novel, The Last Party, set in Topanga Canyon on the westside of Los Angeles, was published in April 2022.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Julia founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in 2002, now a creative home to over 15,000+ writers and named “New York City’s best writing class” by Time Out New York, the L Magazine, and Brooklyn Magazine; and a “Top Alternative to MFA programs” by Poets & Writers. Workshops are offered throughout NYC and online. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Buzzfeed, Glamour, Psychology Today, and other publications, and she has been profiled in The Observer and The Economist.
Julia has been an editor and writing coach since 2003, providing in-depth developmental feedback for authors of literary and commercial fiction. Books that she has worked on include books published by Penguin Random House, Riverhead, Simon and Schuster, Viking, Scribner, Harper Collins, Little A, Houghton Mifflin and more. She has traveled nationwide to give talks about writing, the teaching of writing, crafting creative communities, and publishing. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children, and her father/gardening partner. She is at work on her fifth novel, a literary genre-bender set in Southern Italy during the WWII liberation.