The Master Class & Generative Seminar is led by Virginia Reeves, author of The Behavior of Love (Scribner, 2019) and Work Like Any Other (Scribner, 2016), longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize; Booklist named it to its Top 10 First Novels of 2016. She is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at UT-Austin and currently teaches writing and literature at Helena College. She lives with her partner, two daughters, and a three-legged Pit Bull in a house that has survived a major earthquake and a fire. She can't wait to work with you in Santa Fe.

The Nonfiction Workshop is led by Samantha Mann, a Brooklyn-based writer covering queer life, popular culture, mental health, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, Vogue, Elle, TIME, Huffington Post Personal, Bon Appétit, Washington Post Magazine, and Romper. She is the author of the essay collection Putting Out: Essays on Otherness (Read Furiously, 2019), which was added to CLMP's recommended reading list for Women's History Month, and the editor of the anthology I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy (Read Furiously, 2022). Her latest collection is Dyke Delusions. She writes and conducts author interviews for The Rumpus, and she teaches essay writing for WritingWorkshops.com and the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute. She can't wait to work with you in Santa Fe.

The Fiction Workshop is led by Rubén Degollado, author of The Family Izquierdo (W.W. Norton, 2022), which was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, named a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2022, and was a finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction Award. His YA novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters 2020 Award for Best Young Adult Book. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, Texas Highways, The Common, and the anthologies Living Beyond Borders and Nepantla Familias. He has been an educator since 1994 and lives with his wife and three children on a ranch in Texas.

The Master Class & Generative Seminar — Virginia Reeves

Open to writers in every genre, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, this track blends lecture, generative writing, and one-on-one instructor conferences. Virginia Reeves will lead a cohort of 10 through practical craft lectures (the uses of time, structure, and the machinery that makes a piece of writing move), and then straight into the work itself — drafting new pages on the spot, with nine other writers doing the same thing at the same hour. Writers in this cohort have the option — not the requirement — of submitting up to 10 pages in advance for Virginia to read ahead of your private one-on-one conference. Conferences are yours to shape: bring a question about a project you're already deep inside, talk through what surfaced in the seminar, or discuss the pages you submitted in advance. You'll leave Santa Fe with new pages, a set of practices you can keep using, and nine other writers who watched them take shape.

The Nonfiction Workshop — Samantha Mann

For essayists, memoirists, and writers working in any true form — a collection coming together, a memoir you're deep inside, an essay that keeps refusing to end. Samantha Mann leads a cohort of 10 in our standard retreat workshop format: three mornings of close, sustained reading, the whole table turning its attention to one writer's pages at a time. This is the kind of attention writers make the trip for. Ahead of the workshop, you'll submit two manuscripts of up to 5,000 words each. The first is discussed in workshop, with written feedback from Samantha. The second belongs to your private conference with her during the week, reserved for the questions that don't fit a group conversation. Samantha also leads one of the week's afternoon seminars, open to every writer in the program. You'll leave Santa Fe with your work read closely by people who know what they're doing, and a clear sense of what the work needs next.

The Fiction Workshop — Rubén Degollado

For novelists and story writers at any stage — a first draft you've been circling for years, a collection finding its shape, a book you're finally ready to hand to strangers. Rubén Degollado leads a cohort of 10 in our standard retreat workshop format: three mornings around the table, reading slowly, one writer's pages at a time. Fiction rewards this kind of reading more than almost anything else you can do for a manuscript, and it's the one thing a writing life at home rarely provides. Ahead of the trip, you'll submit two manuscripts of up to 5,000 words each. The first is discussed in workshop, with written feedback from Rubén. The second is reserved for your private conference with him during the week — bring the structural problem, the ending that won't land, the question you've been carrying alone. Rubén also leads one of the week's afternoon seminars, open to every writer in the program. You'll leave Santa Fe with your work read closely by people who know what they're doing, and a clear sense of what the work needs next.

Trip Leader Diana Spechler is a novelist and New York Times Columnist. You can find Diana's work in GQ, Esquire, Harper's, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She writes a Substack about travel writing called Dispatches From The Road. She also teaches a popular series of online personal essay classes for WritingWorkshops.com, which you can see here. Diana has also been a nonfiction instructor on our writing retreats to Hawaii, Paris, Asheville, and Dublin. She looks forward to meeting you in Dublin!

Trip Leader Bowie Rowan is a writer, editor, and multimedia artist. Their work has most recently been published by Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and The Los Angeles Review and has been anthologized in the latest edition of Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. Their audio essay, “How to Survive a Fire,” was recognized by the Missouri Review for the 12th annual Miller Audio Prize, and they are a grateful recipient of grants and fellowships from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and The Ragdale Foundation, among others. In a former life, Bowie worked as a science textbook editor in New York City and San Francisco while also working as a cheesemonger and freelance everything. After traveling around the United States for a year with their dog and cat, they landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma where they are currently at work on a memoir in essays about travel, gender, trauma, and the environment.