Writers in the Mountains Presents Risking Excellence Intensive

ONLINE — Writers in the Mountains (WIM) presents Risking Excellence: No Fear of Writing with Melissa Holbrook Pierson, a two-day intensive held online Sunday, April 27 and May 4, 2025, from 2 to 4 pm. Once you register and pay, you will be given instructions on how to join the class.

There is no time like now to take on fears large and small—about what “can” and “can’t” be done—that keep your writing from soaring into excellence. In this workshop we will confront the forces, both external and internal, that stifle creativity. Bring your tentative or “weird” ideas, your doubts, your questions about what is possible within your genre. Since cautious work is rarely great work, we will advocate for taking literary risks by reading some boundary-breaking short work before discussing the value of  banishing self-limiting notions of propriety. We will workshop your work-in-progress at any stage it may be, and encourage fearlessness at the level of the sentence all the way up to the conceptual structure of book-length work.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson is the author of five books, including The Place You Love Is Gone and The Perfect Vehicle. A freelance book critic, essayist, and editor, she has taught writing at the Cape Cod Writers Conference and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She has an MA in English Literature from Columbia University and is a submissions reader for the literary magazine The Common. Her website is melissaholbrookpierson.com.

To register, e-mail writersinthemountains@gmail.com. To register online, visit writersinthemountains.org. Class fee is $45. Registration deadline is April 20.

Writers in the Mountains is a 501 ( c ) (3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing. 

Learn more at writersinthemountains.org.