Announcing the Winter Intensive Workshop - a new program for writers

Hub City Writers Project is thrilled to unveil a new program: The Hub City Winter Intensive. It will be held on the weekend of January 12-14, 2024 at the AC Marriott in downtown Spartanburg, SC.

The Hub City Winter Intensive is a brand-new program that consists of a weekend of dedicated fiction workshops with limited participants (10-12 per class). It is geared toward more experienced writers who are working on a book-length project and will benefit from a dedicated workshop environment. 

Our inaugural Intensive workshop leader will be acclaimed writer Dorothy Allison. Dorothy Allison is the author of the novels Bastard Out of Carolina, a National Book Award Finalist, and Cavedweller; the short story collection, Trash; essays, Skin: Talking about Sex Class & Literature; and poetry, The Women Who Hate Me. She lives in Northern California. Born in Greenville, SC, Allison writes on themes of class struggle, abuse, lesbianism, feminism, and family. 

Acceptance to the Intensive will be by application with an application fee of $15. We ask for one unpublished writing sample of short fiction or an excerpt from an in-progress novel--2,500 words or less. Hub City staff will read these applications and award writers a place in the Intensive. Applicants must be 21+ years old.

Full scholarships for room and board are available for two LGBTQ+ writers. All self-identified submissions will be considered. 

The Intensive starts at 5 p.m. on Friday, January 12 and wraps up at 1 p.m. on Sunday, January 14 and is held in the downtown AC Marriott hotel in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On Sunday morning, Carter Sickels will offer a craft capsule workshop from 9:30-11 a.m. that will explore strategies for writing empathetic, engaging characters—how to create complex, flawed, and deeply human characters, as well as how to write from different points of view. From 11-noon, Hub City Press staff will host a drop-in session on preparing a book for submission to agents and publishers and answer questions about the publishing process.

The Hub City Writers Project’s mission has been cultivating readers and nurturing writers through its independent press, community bookshop, literacy outreach, and diverse literary programming. The Winter Intensive is a brand new program that will fill an important gap from the current literary programming offerings in the Southeast. Learn more about the program and apply now at www.hubcity.org/winterintensive.