Deadline: January 8, 2025
Applications are open for the George R. R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop 2025. The George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop is a seven-day writing boot camp for mid-career journalists who have a burning story to tell in the creative realm and want to cross over into writing fiction.
Medill is committed to identifying talented, established journalists with an idea for a specific fictional project and immersing them in a nurturing and supportive environment. They will provide writing time, reflection, discussion and workshopping of works in progress and collegial interactions. They believe this focused time, space, guidance and mentorship will help these journalists produce exceptional creative works.
The workshop, which will take place in Evanston July 9 to 16, 2025, will focus on writing fiction. The workshop is generously funded by George R.R. Martin. The teachers of this workshop will be award-winning novelists and writing instructors. The aim is to have fellows arrive with an idea for a novel that they will write and workshop and leave with the foundation of solid pages or chapters.
Cost
- Participants will receive funds for transportation from their home base to Chicago (roundtrip economy airfare, or similar), lodging in a single room at a group hotel, and all meals during the program. Participants are responsible for their own incidental expenses – this includes airline luggage fees and ground transportation from their home to the airport as well as within Chicago and Evanston.
Eligibility
- This program is designed specifically for mid-career journalists.
- Applicants should have at least five years of experience in the field, either full-time or freelance.
- This workshop is designed for journalists who have not published a novel or a book-length work of fiction yet. If you have published a novel, you are not eligible to apply. If you have published a non-fiction book or fictional short stories, you are eligible to apply.
Application
In this application form, you will be asked to submit the following items:
- a resume
- a cover letter/mission statement of up to 400 words
- a list of five recent professional or creative achievements
- a description of the specific project you plan to work on while at Medill, noting why the George R.R. Martin workshop would be valuable to you in this creative process
- a work sample of 20-30 pages of fictional prose. This sample MUST come from the novel that you plan to workshop at Medill. It also must be the very beginning of the novel
- the names and contact information of two professional references
For more information, visit George R. R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop.
