Sackett Street Writers

8,000+ creative writers since 2002 in NYC & ONLINE

1-day Publishing Intensive: Perfecting Your Nonfiction Book Proposal – 6.18

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A writing sample is not necessary to apply for this workshop.

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51ocLHHmaQL._AA160_Writers participating in this 3-hour workshop will bring in a short section of prose to revise on-site at a microlevel, zoning in on the paragraph, line, and words utilized to propel a piece forward. Examples in various genres will be supplied and reviewed for word choices and structure before critiquing each participant’s material as a group. Time will be spent on in-class revision based on feedback and sharing revised portions. This class is intended to help those with work that may need a closer edit for consistency and voice.

Begins: June 18, 2016
Day/Time: Saturday 2pm – 5pm
Instructor: Brian Gresko
Location: Bookcourt Bookstore (Cobble Hill)
Fee: $75.00 (includes 10% coupon for an 8-week class)

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8-week ONLINE Personal Essay & Memoir I/II – begins 5.7.25

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Instructor: Ly Tran
Dates: begins May 7
Location: Online (wkly video meetup WED 7:30-9:30pm ET)
Fee: $750 ($700 for returning writers)

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Through group discussion of student work, plus that of published authors, writers in this workshop will examine the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The focus will be on learning to understand and use a full range of literary techniques in order to tell a truly compelling nonfiction story. Topics such as the use of dialogue, the creation of scene, attention to style and how to craft structure from true events will be discussed. Participants will also spend time talking about the particular responsibilities that come with writing creative nonfiction. In-class writing prompts will be used to inspire and motivate students to produce new work.

Our online class platform includes thoughtful craft lessons to inform and inspire writers, a class homepage for discussions, book recommendations and more, and an in-line commenting tool that allows for supportive and constructive feedback.

This workshop is open to writers working on memoir and personal essays, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

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Ly Tran is the author of the memoir, House of Sticks, chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by NPR and Vogue, and won the New York City Book Awards Hornblower Award. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, Yaddo, and Millay Arts.

8-wk ONLINE Writing Sprints generative class (all genres) – begins 5.8.25

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Begins: May 8, 2025
Instructor: Piper Weiss
Location: Online (wkly video meet-up THURS 7-9pm ET)
Fee: $600 | returning writers receive a $50 discount

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info. 

Writing Sprints is an exercise-intensive course designed to “unstick” writers struggling to start or continue new projects, boosting writing productivity.  The course relies heavily on writing exercises (for both fiction & nonfiction writers).  Students will produce a ton of new work in this class, and receive feedback on that work from the instructor and his or her classmates. This class is for writers of all levels looking for inspiration and motivation.

This workshop is open to writers working in all genres, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW

Piper Weiss is the author of the memoir You All Grow Up and Leave Me, named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Marie-Claire, Town and Country and PopSugar, and listed among the top true crime reads by Buzzfeed, CrimeReads and Elle Australia. She had previously served as an editor at the New York Daily News, and as editorial director at HelloGiggles, in addition to writing for print, TV and film. She was a fellow at VCCA and earned her BA in the Writing Seminars program at Johns Hopkins University.

6-week ONLINE Writing Autofiction – begins 5.20.25

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Dates: begins May 20, 2025
Instructor: Amy Shearn
Location: Online (weekly video meet-up Tues 7-9pm ET)
Fee: $575 ($545 for returning writers)

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

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 fiction and nonfiction, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

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Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here, as well as the forthcoming Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, the Yale Writers’ Workshop, and Writing Co-Lab, an experimental cooperative she helped found. Amy’s work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children.

8-week Personal Essay & Memoir I/II – begins 5.14.25 – Soho

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photo credit: Bek Andersen

Instructor: Nadja Spiegelman
Dates: May 14 | Wednesdays 7-9pm
Location: Soho
Fee: $850 | returning writers receive a $50 discount

A private conference with the instructor is included.

A writing sample is not required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Through group discussion of student work, plus that of published authors, writers in this workshop will examine the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The focus will be on learning to understand and use a full range of literary techniques in order to tell a truly compelling nonfiction story. Topics such as the use of dialogue, the creation of scene, attention to style and how to craft structure from true events will be discussed. Participants will also spend time talking about the particular responsibilities that come with writing creative nonfiction. In-class writing prompts will be used to inspire and motivate students to produce new work.

This workshop is open to writers working on memoir and personal essays, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW

Nadja Spiegelman is the author of the memoir I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This, as well as four children’s books, including the award-winning Lost in NYC. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Newyorker.com, and more. She has worked as the editor-in-chief of Astra Magazine, at The Paris Review, and created a print cinema magazine for Metrograph. She is currently special features editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

8-week Master Fiction Intensive – begins 5.6.25 – Carroll Gardens

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Instructor: Ted Thompson
Dates: begins May 6 | meets Tues 7-9pm
Location: Carroll Gardens | 243 Smith St
Fee: $1100 / $1000 for returning Sackett writers

A writing sample is required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a brief sample of your writing.

Our Master Fiction Workshop is a selective class aimed at writers looking to polish their work for publication. Class is taught by our most experienced advanced fiction instructor whose students have gone on to attend top MFA programs and win prestigious awards. Class time is spent on in-depth discussion of student work and typed feedback from the instructor is included, as well as a private conference.

Writers should have extensive writing and writing class/workshop experience.

A private conference with the instructor is included.

APPLY NOW

Ted Thompson is the author of The Land of Steady Habits, which was published by Little, Brown and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. The novel was adapted by Nicole Holofcener for a feature film starring Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco and Connie Britton, released in 2017. His short stories have been published in Tin House, American Short Fiction, One Teen Story and Best New American Voices, and he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Ted has proudly taught for Sackett for over thirteen years, as well as at Amherst College and in the Brooklyn College MFA program. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

6-wk Writing Sprints: A Generative Class (all genres) – begins 5.8.25 – Carroll Gardens

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Instructor: M Lin
Dates: begins May 8 | meets once a wk | Thurs 7-9pm
Location: Carroll Gardens
Fee: $575 | $550 for returning Sackett writers

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Writing Sprints is an exercise-intensive course designed to “unstick” writers struggling to start or continue new projects, boosting writing productivity.  The course relies heavily on writing exercises (for both fiction & nonfiction writers).  Students will produce a ton of new work in this class, and receive feedback on that work from the instructor and his or her classmates. This class is for writers of all levels looking for inspiration and motivation.

This workshop is open to writers working in all genres, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW

Born and raised in Beijing, Mengyin Lin is a Chinese writer living in the US. Mandarin is her mother tongue and she writes in English as her second language. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College where she won the Himan Brown Award and a BFA in Film from New York University. Her work is published or forthcoming in Ploughshares, The New York Times, Guernica, swamp pink, Joyland, Epiphany, Fence, Pleiades, and Best Debut Short Stories 2023. She is the winner of 2023 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest, 2023 swamp pink Fiction Prize, 2023 Pen/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and 2022 Breakout Writers Prize. Her work has been supported by Tin House, Bread Loaf, VCCA, KHN Center for the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation, and more.

8-wk Advanced Fiction – begins 5.7.25 – Park Slope

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Instructor: Beth Morgan
Dates: begins May 7th | Wed 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope
Class fee: $850 | returning writers receive a $50 discount

A writing sample is required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a brief sample of your writing.

Our Fiction II/III Workshop is aimed at writers looking to create a regular practice and master the essentials and are looking for a community of peers ready to offer insightful, impartial feedback on works in progress. Class time is spent on in-depth discussion of student work, and analysis of published writing to inspire and inform.

Writers should have writing and writing class/workshop experience.

APPLY NOW

Beth Morgan is the author of A Touch of Jen, which she has also adapted for the screen. A Touch of Jen was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named a best book of the year by The Rumpus. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, The Baffler, and The Kenyon Review online.

6-wk Writing Sprints: A Generative Class (all genres) – begins 5.20.25 – Park Slope

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Instructor: Sarah Herrington
Dates: begins May 20 | meets once a wk | TUES 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope
Fee: $575 | 550 for returning Sackett writers

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Writing Sprints is an exercise-intensive course designed to “unstick” writers struggling to start or continue new projects, boosting writing productivity.  The course relies heavily on writing exercises (for both fiction & nonfiction writers).  Students will produce a ton of new work in this class, and receive feedback on that work from the instructor and his or her classmates. This class is for writers of all levels looking for inspiration and motivation.

This workshop is open to writers working in all genres, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW

Sarah Herrington is an essayist, poet, editor and teacher. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Modern Love, Anxiety, Solver Stories and OpEd columns, the LATimes, SFChronicle, Tin House, Slice, NYLON, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Interview, Entropy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Poets and Writers magazine, Oprah magazine and other publications. She’s the author of four books on yoga and spirituality. She holds MFAs from New York University and Lesley University and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.

6-week Personal Essay & Memoir I/II – begins 5.26.25 – Bed-Stuy

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Instructor: Alexandra Butler
Dates: May 26 | Mondays 7-9pm
Location: Bedford-Stuyvesant
Fee: $650 | returning writers receive a $25 discount

A private conference with the instructor is included.

A writing sample is not required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Through group discussion of student work, plus that of published authors, writers in this workshop will examine the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The focus will be on learning to understand and use a full range of literary techniques in order to tell a truly compelling nonfiction story. Topics such as the use of dialogue, the creation of scene, attention to style and how to craft structure from true events will be discussed. Participants will also spend time talking about the particular responsibilities that come with writing creative nonfiction. In-class writing prompts will be used to inspire and motivate students to produce new work.

This workshop is open to writers working on memoir and personal essays, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW

Alexandra Butler is the author of Walking the Night Road, a memoir published by Columbia University Press, and a book of poems, Circling the Same, published by Moran Moran. She has written for the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement. Alex co-wrote two short films, Ivy Holland, produced by Tribeca Films, and The Song is You, featured in The New Yorker magazine’s Screening Room Series. She works as a script consultant in both film and the art world. She is currently at work on a novel titled Bone Break Marble and a collection of short stories. You can read more about her in The New York Times: Introducing a Poet Who Works in 3-D. Alex holds a Master of Social Work from Columbia University and is a therapist in a bilingual group practice in her hometown of New York City.

8-week Personal Essay & Memoir II/III – begins 6.2.25 – Park Slope

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Instructor: Rax King
Dates: begins June 2 | Mondays* 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope
Fee: $850 | returning writers receive a $50 discount

A private conference with the instructor is included.

A writing sample is recommended for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a 3-5 page sample.

Through group discussion of student work, plus that of published authors, writers in this workshop will examine the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The focus will be on learning to understand and use a full range of literary techniques in order to tell a truly compelling nonfiction story. Topics such as the use of dialogue, the creation of scene, attention to style and how to craft structure from true events will be discussed. Participants will also spend time talking about the particular responsibilities that come with writing creative nonfiction. In-class writing prompts will be used to inspire and motivate students to produce new work.

This workshop is open to writers working on memoir and personal essays, and writers should have both writing and workshopping experience.

APPLY NOW

Rax King is the James Beard award-nominated author of the essay collections Tacky and Sloppy and co-host of the podcast Low Culture Boil. Her writing can be found in Glamour, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her toothless Pekingese.

6-week Fiction II/III (intermediate & advanced) – begins 5.29.25 – Park Slope

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Instructor: Kyle MCarthy
Dates: begins May 29| Thurs 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope
Class fee: $650 | returning writers receive a $25 discount

A writing sample is required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a brief sample of your writing.

Our Fiction II/III Workshop is aimed at writers looking to create a regular practice and master the essentials and are looking for a community of peers ready to offer insightful, impartial feedback on works in progress. Class time is spent on in-depth discussion of student work, and analysis of published writing to inspire and inform.

Writers should have writing and writing class/workshop experience.

APPLY NOW

Kyle McCarthy is the author of the novels Everyone Knows How Much I Love You (Ballantine, 2020) and Immersions, forthcoming from Tin House in winter 2026. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, American Short Fiction, n+1, and elsewhere.

7-week Master Fiction Intensive – begins 7.7.25 – Carroll Gardens

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Instructor: Ted Thompson
Dates: begins July 7 | meets Tues 7-9pm
Location: Carroll Gardens | 243 Smith St
Fee: $975 / $875 for returning Sackett writers

A writing sample is required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a brief sample of your writing.

Our Master Fiction Workshop is a selective class aimed at writers looking to polish their work for publication. Class is taught by our most experienced advanced fiction instructor whose students have gone on to attend top MFA programs and win prestigious awards. Class time is spent on in-depth discussion of student work and typed feedback from the instructor is included, as well as a private conference.

Writers should have extensive writing and writing class/workshop experience.

A private conference with the instructor is included.

APPLY NOW

Ted Thompson is the author of The Land of Steady Habits, which was published by Little, Brown and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. The novel was adapted by Nicole Holofcener for a feature film starring Ben Mendelsohn, Edie Falco and Connie Britton, released in 2017. His short stories have been published in Tin House, American Short Fiction, One Teen Story and Best New American Voices, and he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the MacDowell Colony. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Ted has proudly taught for Sackett for over thirteen years, as well as at Amherst College and in the Brooklyn College MFA program. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

6-week Advanced Fiction – begins 7.9.25

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Instructor: Beth Morgan
Dates: begins July 9 | Wed 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope – 237 5th Ave
Class fee: $650 | returning writers receive a $30 discount

A writing sample is required for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info and a brief sample of your writing.

Our Fiction II/III Workshop is aimed at writers looking to create a regular practice and master the essentials and are looking for a community of peers ready to offer insightful, impartial feedback on works in progress. Class time is spent on in-depth discussion of student work, and analysis of published writing to inspire and inform.

Writers should have writing and writing class/workshop experience.

APPLY NOW

Beth Morgan is the author of A Touch of Jen, which she has also adapted for the screen. A Touch of Jen was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named a best book of the year by The Rumpus. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, The Baffler, and The Kenyon Review online.

6-wk Writing Sprints: A Generative Class (all genres) – begins 7.10.25 – Park Slope

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Instructor: Amy Shearn
Dates: begins July 10| meets once a wk | THURS 7-9pm
Location: Park Slope
Fee: $575 | $545 for returning Sackett writers

A writing sample is not required (but welcome) for this class. Please fill out an application with your contact info.

Writing Sprints is an exercise-intensive course designed to “unstick” writers struggling to start or continue new projects, boosting writing productivity.  The course relies heavily on writing exercises (for both fiction & nonfiction writers).  Students will produce a ton of new work in this class, and receive feedback on that work from the instructor and his or her classmates. This class is for writers of all levels looking for inspiration and motivation.

This workshop is open to writers working in all genres, and writers at all levels of skill and experience are welcome to join.

APPLY NOW