Fiction Camp

Jump-start your writing year by spending an invigorating week at Writers & Books. Perfect for getting those gears turning, each evening will feature a different teaching artist. In this course, we’ll sharpen the skills necessary to make our fiction sizzle and pop off the page. This instructive workshop will include generative exercises to help you improve your fiction, and is perfect for beginning writers and advanced writers alike looking to hone their skills in the topic areas.

Joel Lesses’s passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science, and psychology shared and disparate in the human experience.  Joel was nominated for Best Poet in 2013 and 2014 in Buffalo’s Artvoice and won the award in 2014. His poetry has been published in various magazines, newspapers, and anthologies; currently he facilities Ground and Sky Rochester Reading Series and taught for many years numerous workshops and classes in the Western New York region, his manuscript Odyssey of Autumn’s Breath is a work-in-progress.

Brian Wood holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University. He has served as the Managing Editor of Reed Magazine, as well as Fiction Editor for POST. His work earned him a Ludwig Scholarship for Excellence in Creative Writing, as well as James Phelan Awards for Short Fiction and Familiar Essays. Most recently, his story collection was a finalist for the BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize. He has ghostwritten five published books, but good luck getting him to tell you about them.

Alex Sanchez has published eight novels with Simon & Schuster, including the American Library Association “Best Book for Young Adults” Rainbow Boys and Lambda Award-winning So Hard to Say. His novel Bait won the Tomas Rivera Mexican-American Book Award and the Florida Book Award Gold Medal. Currently he’s writing a graphic novel for DC Comics. He has a master’s in counseling, worked for many years as a youth and family counselor, and now works as an author, teacher, and freelance developmental editor.  Find out more at www.AlexSanchez.com

David B. Seaburn has written six novels, the most recent being Parrot Talk (2017), which placed second in fiction for the TAZ Author’s Awards. His novel, Charlie No Face (2011), was a Finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award in General Fiction (2011). Seaburn is a regular contributor of personal essays to The Psychotherapy Networker magazine. He also writes a blog for Psychology Today magazine entitled, Going Out Not Knowing. During his academic career, he publishing over sixty papers and two co-authored books. He is a retired marriage and family therapist, psychologist and minister. He is currently working on his seventh novel, I Think I Died Today.

J. Mulrooney’s An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity made him a finalist for the Campbell award for best new writer of science fiction and fantasy in 2017. He has also published a book of short stories and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His earliest writing job was to print “I will not be disrespectful in class” fifty times on a sheet of paper. Since then, his plots have improved considerably.