Announcing the Novel Immersive for LGBTQ+ Writers
By Writer Unboxed | February 12, 2022 |
We’re so pleased to bring you this announcement from WU contributor Milo Todd, who has developed what sounds like a magnificent program for the LGBTQ+ community. Read on, in Milo’s own words.
After 2.5 years of planning, I’m excited to announce the Novel Immersive for LGBTQ+ Writers, a remote, 9-month, all-queer writing workshop and lecture program!
Being in an all-queer writing workshop space was a life-changing experience for me. In the summer of 2019, I attended the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers. For one week, approximately sixty queer writers across countries, races, backgrounds, and genres traveled to Otis College in Los Angeles for the same goal: to be understood.
It was the closest I’d ever experienced magic in the real world. It was a fundamental joy I didn’t realize I was missing, to be able to relax my shoulders, my jaw, to remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth. For one week, I felt like I got to be a person.
After returning home to Boston, I realized opportunity for a professional-level, queer-only literary space was nearly nonexistent outside of this retreat. While I knew I couldn’t create the same physical, in-person components as Lambda Literary, I knew I could at least create space where the layers of socio-cultural burden were stripped away from workshop and craft, providing opportunity for queer writers to finally stop explaining themselves so they could finally start writing.
Since 2019, I’ve been observing, listening, and planning. What I’ve come up with is, I feel, a program that not only serves the majority of the queer novel writing community, but additionally serves an untapped space in most creative writing programs.
For LGBTQ+ writers, a lack of queer-focused guidance, support, and community in writing workshops can stifle or even stall progress for novels. Taking place remotely over nine months, the Novel Immersive for LGBTQ+ Writers is a program uniquely designed to fill this void and help queer writers complete or make significant progress towards completing a draft of their novel in a supportive community. LGBTQ+ writers will leave this immersive with a finished and/or more polished draft, a trajectory for getting published, and a supportive queer writing community that they can hold onto long after the program is over.
Capped at ten students, the program is divided into three phases prioritizing craft lectures, workshopping, and community building. In addition to classic lectures on craft topics such as point of view, tension, and characterization, this program will also include craft lectures related to socio-cultural struggles, such as relatability, believability, inviting in outsiders, and navigating the publishing industry as a marginalized author.
Workshopping will be conducted in the non-silencing format that allows for participation from authors. The intensive will also include guest speakers with a focus on intersectionality to ensure that queer writers from all walks of life feel represented and heard.
GrubStreet will have a virtual open house on Tuesday, February 22nd from 6:00-7:00pm EST. The deadline to apply to the program is Monday, March 28th by 11:59pm EST. Applying is free and scholarships are available!
I’m so proud to finally launch this program, especially despite many pandemic-related setbacks and struggles. I firmly believe in creating learning environments where students feel safe sharing their work, feedback, worries, and goals. The publishing world is a difficult place at the best of times, starting with the individual workshop experience, and I believe information and community support can break down gatekeeping and help queer writers succeed in their goals.
I saw what these experiences did for me. Now I want to do what I can to bring them to others.
Learn more and sign up HERE.
This sounds very interesting to me. Thanks for your hard work in making this happen.
This program sounds amazing! Congrats on launching this much-needed intensive.
Milo, this sounds GREAT. Good luck with this program!