Dear Friend,

One Story’s annual Summer Writers’ Conference is being held July 23rd through 30th this year. I hope you’ll apply to join me for my favorite week of the year at One Story. We’ve been running the conference now for over a decade; 2023 will be our third year hosting it virtually.

Like many other organizations, One Story went virtual during Covid. While we missed gathering in Brooklyn for our summer conference, we also soon discovered many unexpected positives to this new format. Because of these advantages, we’ve chosen to remain online for 2023.

Here are a few reasons why I love teaching at a virtual conference:

Reach. We’ve been able to expand the conference’s reach to writers who are parents or caretakers, writers whose jobs don’t allow for travel, or writers who simply don’t have the means to travel to New York City for a week.

Our teachers. We aren’t restricted to New York City-based panelists, lecturers, and teachers. This widens the pool of talented instructors for the conference. In past years, Ruth Ozeki led students in a meditation/writing exercise, Dantiel W. Moniz used Alice Walker to teach emotional depth in prose, Nat Mesnard gave a craft lecture on writing for video games, and Don Lee discussed his path to publishing his recent story collection. This year, Jai Chakrabarti, Manuel Gonzales, Rachel Lyon, and I will each be leading an intensive, eight-person fiction workshop. Students will also gather as a group during the week to experience craft lecturers from published authors and panels on the publishing industry, featuring a group of accomplished professionals from across the country.

Recorded lectures, panels, and talks. It’s a busy week, so we record all group lectures and panels and make them accessible to our conference participants for a full year after the conference ends. With this added flexibility, if you miss a live event, you can go back and watch it on your own schedule.

An enhanced workshop experience. With the use of closed captions, virtual white boards, and group chats, I’ve found that online workshops have a high level of engagement. Shyer students can type their thoughts in the chat (bringing greater equality to the conversation), writers being critiqued can access a transcript post-workshop (helping them with their revision), references to books, articles, music etc. can be easily attributed and linked. It’s like we’re taking notes as a class, together, and those ideas and inspirations are saved and shared by all. The end result is a group that quickly bonds and friendships that continue on after the conference is over.

The camaraderie in the chat. My hands-down favorite part of the online experience is the group chat. In workshop, it creates a friendly side-bar of conversation, with ideas, commentary and links that enhance the experience of the writer being critiqued. At our student readings (the most inspirational and FUN events of the week), the audience is able to react in real time, posting favorite lines and responding enthusiastically to the text as they listen. It’s like our own private watch party (but literature instead of TV!) And at the end of the event, the readers have a transcript full of praise and support.

We’ve met so many talented writers over the past two years online, logging in from across the country and the world, bringing a fresh perspective and energy to our One Story community. I know that 2023 is going to be just as spectacular. Applications are open now through April 19th. We hope you’ll join us!

Cheers,

Hannah Tinti
Exeuctive Editor

P.S. Can’t devote a full week to a conference? You can still apply for our Online Fiction Workshop with Shannon Sanders!

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One Story is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supported by readers like you and by grants from organizations including The National Endowment for the Arts, Amazon, and The Whiting Foundation.