What is the Narratively Book Incubator?

It’s a chance for small groups of writers to receive close, personal guidance, feedback, and one-on-one mentoring from a very accomplished book author; attend a carefully curated roster of expert panels and Q&As with agents, editors and other industry insiders; and work in community with each other to write your book in 2026.

Who can join for the Summer Session?

This session is for writers who have made substantial progress on their book and want to develop all the tools and confidence needed to help you stay on track as you reach the finish line—and yes, start the daunting but rewarding process of revising.

You don’t need to be at any particular word-count or chapter-mark in your writing process in order to join; as long as you’re at the place where you’ve written a substantial part of the book and want the guidance and accountability to get it finished. In biweekly group lessons and monthly office hours with the instructor, you’ll assess your progress and zero in on how to hone your manuscript.

When does the section for new writers meet?

Our section for new writers starting in Summer, led by Claire Rudy Foster, takes place on Thursdays from 7pm to 8:30pm ET on the following days:

• July 9, July 23, August 6, August 20, September 3

This section will be limited to just 6 new writers.

Can I join one of the other sections?

Our other sections are currently waitlist-only, but we may have one or two spots open up.

• Shawna Kenney: Mondays 5:30pm to 7pm ET

  July 6, July 20, August 10, August 17, August 31

• Kern Carter: Tuesdays, 1pm to 2:30pm ET

  July 7, July 21, August 4, August 18, Sep. 1

• Audrey Clare Farley: Wednesdays 7pm to 8:30p.m. ET

  July 8, July 22, August 5, August 19, Sep. 2

• Claire Rudy Foster: Sundays 12pm to 1:30pm ET

  July 12, July 26, August 9, August 23, August 30

More information about all of these talented instructors can be found on the main Book Incubator page and in the recording of the Meet the Mentors chat.

How do I sign up?

Head to the main Book Incubator page and make sure you’ve read the full program description. Then fill out our Writer Intake Form and we’ll reach out ASAP.

What if I’m still not sure?

If you’re thinking of joining and want to talk it over with me first, grab some time on my calendar or drop me a line at brendan@narratively.com.

So….what exactly is it again?

Check out all the details here!

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I’m fascinated by the way we writers can use something as abstract as prose to capture something as concrete and tangible as lived human experience.

It’s an interesting process. When I’m writing fiction, first, I imagine a character doing and/or feeling something, or in memoir, I remember an experience of my own. Then I put words on the page to recreate that experience for my readers, who ultimately feel their own tangible emotional response to that description of that character’s lived experience. There’s a kind of triangulation that happens between author, character, and reader, where each plays their own part in bringing the story to life.

This fascination cross-germinates for me in my theater and film background. Before I was a writer, my primary creative outlet from age ten to thirty was theater, including work as a stage manager, director, choreographer, and producer. I love to mine the ways in which these performance-driven disciplines can inform my writing process.

Which is not to say that the two are thoroughly analogous. Performing arts have a visual component—a way of showing, versus telling—that prose doesn’t have. Prose, in turn, can take us inside a character’s head in a way that theater and film performances can’t.

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But anywhere I can borrow from one discipline to inform the other, I want to know about it. For instance, I’d say that developing scenes, whether for the page or the stage, often revolves around the same questions:

What does my character want, and how can I best show that to the audience?

Or, put another way: How do I externalize the character’s internal experience?

All of this brings to mind a conversation I once had with a writer. She was struggling with plot, and specifically, the sense that it had lagged in the middle of her story and that nothing was happening. It’s a common issue for writers. I started my response with that most basic question:

Me: What does your character want?

Writer: She wants to be at peace.

Me: Yes, and…that’s fairly abstract. What, more specifically, does she want?

Writer: She wants to stop hurting.

Me: Yes, and…that’s what she doesn’t want. What is something that she does want?

Writer: She wants to ride at liberty. [This refers to a kind of saddle-free horseback riding, which figured into the plot of this writer’s story.]

Me: There it is.

Without refuting any of what this writer knew about her character — everything she said was true — I was prompting her toward something external that she could write toward; a desire for her character to act on as she was also pursuing those other, more abstract wants: to stop hurting, to be at peace.

From the perspective of plot, the “on camera” story here was the character’s pursuit of riding at liberty. That’s not to dismiss the importance (and necessity) of the character’s internal life, but it’s that externally focused desire, and plot, and action, through which the intangibles of character arc and theme are often communicated.

For me, the most frequent aha moments about how to externalize the internal in my writing have come from hearing my work read out loud by others and talking through those desires and actions.

That’s exactly what we do during my Theater Camp for Writers workshops. The bulk of our time is spent on scene work. Writers submit excerpts from their work in progress, and other workshop participants play the parts of the characters and narrators from those pages. It can offer a unique lens on the revision process, putting everyone directly inside the story and gaining insights from the readers who are living out those scenes in our workshop. It’s also informative for many writers to work on others’ submissions in this way as much as on their own.

Ready to Try it Out? Join us for Theater Camp for Memoir Writers on Saturday, June 27. Only 10 seats available. No theater experience required!

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But we also know inboxes are sacred, so I want to take a minute to make sure you all know you can personalize your Narratively Academy subscription.

Just go here to customize your settings and choose which updates you do—and don’t—want to receive from us. You can choose to keep receiving email updates from each of the following sections, or just get the ones that are relevant to you:

• 🎥 Open Book: Recordings of our live video interviews with authors and editors.

• 🛠️ StoryCraft: Written articles about the craft of writing and the business of publishing.

• 🎓 Classes: Announcements of new and upcoming Narratively Academy classes.

• 💡 Pitches + Prompts: Monthly flash essay contests, plus Narratively.com calls for pitches and prize announcements.

• 💬 New chat threads: The #WeeklyWin every Friday, plus more direct conversations with your writing peers.

• ✍🏽Wednesday Writers’ Room: Lightly guided sessions to write in good company.

Speaking of Writers’ Room, tomorrow is somehow already Wednesday, when we all get together to commit to our writing projects and work together in community.

Twice every Wednesday, at 8am ET and again at 11am ET / 8am PT, Writers Room offers the chance to write alongside other writers, share what you’re working on, get inspiration and be held accountable.

Click here to join on Zoom

(If you are asked for a passcode, enter 824784)

Want to get text messages every week when Writers’ Room is about to start?

• Click here to (very easily) sign up for text messages for the 8am ET Writers’ Room

• Or here to get text messages for the 8am PT Writers’ Room.

Want to add Writers’ Room to your calendar—and get an email when it’s about to start?

• Add 8am ET to your calendar.

• Add 8am PT to your calendar.

Happy writing!

Lately, I have been devouring pieces on craft — I just can’t get enough. Currently on my bedside table, threatening to tip over the already stacked-too-high pile of memoirs and such, are To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopate, Crafting the Personal Essay by Dinty W. Moore, and Tell It Slant by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola. My computer, too, boasts way too many open tabs full of writing advice to share with my students in which an author perfectly articulates something that can be hard to explain.

One such post that I recently shared with my Personal Essay Incubator class comes from Marion Roach Smith: “Have I Got a Definition of Show, Don’t Tell? You Bet I Do.” In it, she shows us — by sharing a very detailed act of love she was the proud recipient of — the difference between the two. Her post got me thinking about acts of love in my own life — the everyday ones, like all the times my partner takes my car to the store so he can fill it up with gas on the way home, to the bigger ones, like when my mom took a second job as a teaching mentor my senior year of high school to help with my college tuition. What about you? What was an act of love someone did for you, big or small, that has stayed with you?

Submit a piece on this topic of up to 300 words for the chance to have it published on our sister site, , and to receive a free year-long subscription to both Narratively and Narratively Academy. Submissions are due Tuesday, June 16, and you can expect to hear back from us soon after with the results. We can’t wait to read what you’ve got!

Submit Here!

Need essay inspiration?

Check out the winners of our past flash essay contests here.

Read Our Flash Essays

PLUS: Don’t miss our brand-new short essay series, Stories from the Ground Up, which just went live on Narratively.com!

Read "Stories from the Ground Up"

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In this intimate six-week workshop class, Sara will guide writers through how to approach personal experiences and trauma related to religion, and you’ll start to share your own story with an instructor and peers who appreciate the unique nature of religious trauma and can help you represent it with accuracy and compassion.

If this sounds like the class you’ve been waiting for, don’t wait any longer! Class starts this Thursday, June 11 and there are just two remaining seats available.

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The best thing I did this week was my chat with , the writer behind one of the most impressive feature articles I’ve read this year, the epic story, “A Family Secret No More,” published in The New York Times a few weeks ago.

In her story, Susan explores the dual life stories of her grandfather, George, who lived in the Jim Crow South as a Black man, and his lighter-skinned brother, Edward, who moved to Chicago and “crossed the line” to live as White. It’s a remarkable reported essay that I can only imagine took an immense amount of researching, reporting, and navigating complicated family dynamics to put together.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Susan’s story yet, here’s a gift link for you to catch up this weekend. Click play above to dive into our full conversation about how Susan put this incredible piece of storytelling together.

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Jeff’s incredible story, The Man Who Got America High, appeared in Narratively and was optioned by Fox Searchlight, and his story about the McDonald’s Monopoly fraud became the subject of a historic bidding war, won by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for a record $1 million. With more articles in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other publications—30+ of which in development for film and television—Jeff has been called “the most optioned writer working today”—after Stephen King.

He also happens to be a very nice and relatable guy, which you’ll see in the video above!

Jeff’s new course, Magazine to Movie—How to Write True Stories That Get Optioned, is a true masterclass. This 10-part self-guided course is available for you to dive into any time. It encompasses:

• Over two hours of video workshops and lessons

• Handouts, sample structures, reading lists and more

• Detailed interviews with Jeff about the business of publishing.

As you make your way through the 10 chapters, you’ll work through the full arc of long-form narrative nonfiction: how to find a story worth telling, how to research it with the rigor of an investigator, how to structure it so it moves like a film, how to pitch it to editors, and how to protect your intellectual property when the entertainment industry takes notice.

By the time you finish this class, you’ll have a framework for finding your next story, the tools to structure it with cinematic precision, and a clear understanding of how to pitch, protect, and option your work to the entertainment industry.

Cost: $200

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Paid Narratively Academy members get 20% off all classes, including this one. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to become a member—or to get the paid member promo code if you already are a member.

This class is right for…

• Magazine writers hoping to turn their work into film and television

• Journalists ready to write longer, more ambitious pieces

• Authors who need to know how the entertainment industry works

• Anyone who wants to write stories that belong on the big (or small) screen.

  Sign Up

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the 10 chapters of this course.

Chapter 1: Find Blockbuster Ideas

• Unearth forgotten stories using surprising research methods

• Turn a small historical newspaper story into an irresistible longform hit

• Learn how a single question can unlock incredible local legends hiding in plain sight

Chapter 2: Research Like A Pro

• Hunt through courthouse transcripts and newspaper archives

• Use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to make PDF documents searchable

• Set up a bulletproof evidence recording system

Chapter 3: Organize Your Sources

• Build a serial number system for every source and an archive that makes fact-checking straight-forward

• Create a phone log to track every call, wrong number, and voicemail

• Handle foreign language sources quickly and accurately

Chapter 4: The Art Of Cinematic Writing

• Apply fascinating narrative structures to make non-fiction stories feel as fun as fiction

• Transform any true story into a cinematic experience with clear acts and narrative turning points

• Understand the power of the midpoint

Chapter 5: Simplify Your Schedule

• Use simple spreadsheets and Gantt charts to break 10,000-word stories into manageable daily targets

• Write with forward momentum and create drafts without backtracking

• Avoid writer’s block and blank page paralysis

Chapter 6: Get Your Facts Straight

• Build your story structure with facts BEFORE writing a single word

• Annotate every quote and fact with footnotes as you go

• How to stop fact-checking becoming a nightmare

Chapter 7: Self-Edit Longform Stories

• How to avoid your words feeling familiar during long projects

• Use the highlighter method to track dates and characters

• Apply the “30-word cut” rule and the “week off” technique—plus how to use beta readers

Chapter 8: A New Way To Pitch

• How to write pitches that grab any editor’s attention

• How to use screenwriting techniques to write a killer pitch

• How to overcome pitch frustration

Chapter 9: Fight For Your Rights

• Learn to negotiate with publishers for favorable IP rights

• Understand “work made for hire” red flags

• How to self-publish when necessary to retain 100% ownership

Chapter 10: How Film/TV Options Work

• Decode complicated Hollywood deal structures

• Navigate royalties, spin-offs, sequels, and merchandise rights—and other hidden compensation

• Get the insider’s guide to option agreements

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Registration Details: This is a self-guided class. After signing up, you’ll receive a link to access the full course materials, which you can navigate at your own pace.

Questions? Email us at academy@narratively.com.

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Speaking about dishing dirt…what if you could turn your old diary entries into publish-ready memoir stories…or even a book? Many of us know we have a memoir or a series of essays buried in our journals. But where to begin?

The next edition of one of our most popular classes, From Journal to Memoir: How to Turn Your Side Scrawls Into Literary Gold, starts this Sunday, June 7 and there are still a few seats left. This class is for anyone with journals, Google Docs, or years of scattered material who’s ready to start shaping it into something bigger. Led by memoirist, essayist and poet , you’ll learn how to identify the through line in your work, structure a compelling memoir, and begin turning fragments into a cohesive, book-length project.

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Melissa chatted with us about how she re-conceptualized her memoir into a hybrid book that feels very of-the-moment — and got a publisher’s attention with her new proposal. Give it a watch by clicking play above.

BTW, we have just a couple seats left in Melissa’s Nonfiction Book Development Boot Camp, which starts next week. If you’re ready to take on a full-length book—memoir, narrative nonfiction, or something in between—but you’re not totally sure how it takes shape, this two-day workshop is designed to help you transform your idea into a structured, strategic vision you can confidently pitch, write and publish.

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One of the most impressive feature articles I’ve read this year is “A Family Secret No More,” an epic story by Susan Saulny published in The New York Times a few weeks ago. Susan explores the dual life stories of her grandfather, George, who lived in the Jim Crow South as a Black man, and his lighter-skinned brother, Edward, who moved to Chicago and “crossed the line” to live as White. It’s a remarkable reported essay that I can only imagine took an immense amount of researching, reporting, and navigating complicated family dynamics to put together.

This Thursday, June 4 at 1pm ET, Susan Saulny, who has more than 25 years of experience in journalism — including as a national correspondent for The New York Ti…

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The book is And Then There Was Paris and for those who didn’t have the chance to join us live, we’re making the recording free for everyone. Here’s to always chasing your dreams.

Happy weekend!

I can’t believe June is almost here already, which means we have not one but two classes starting on Monday. The first is our in-person photography class, led by veteran photojournalist Ben Fractenberg and taking place in NYC. There are still a few spots left in that one, so grab a seat now if you want to join.

The second is 30 Days, 30 Essay Prompts: A Month of Generating Inspiration and Ideas for Memoir. This fun self-guided class is made for you if you know you have revealing and relatable stories to share, but you rarely find the time in your busy schedule to write — and when you do, you catch yourself staring at that dastardly blinking cursor on the white screen and just can’t find a way to start. This June is the time to break those habits, get moving on your writing and never look back.

Learn More + Sign Up

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Plus, if you enjoyed last week’s Open Book conversation with memoirist Amy Gabrielle about the process of publishing her book with a hybrid publisher, be sure to mark your calendars for our next chat tomorrow, with Laurie Garnier, who will open up about her own process for self-publishing her new book, And Then There Was Paris.

…

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We recently published an adapted excerpt of Amy’s memoir over on Narratively.com, and we wanted to chat with Amy to learn more about how she finished and published her book. Her memoir comes via She Writes Press, an award-winning hybrid publisher for women authors. Many of you have questions about how this model works, and Amy was kind enough to open up and chat about everything.

Paid members can watch the full conversation above.

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Now, onto prompts… Some of our most popular offerings over the past year have been our month-long prompts courses, which are designed to help you break through writer’s block and generate lots of ideas for your memoir writing. Developed by Narratively Chief Submissions Reader , these self-guided classes help you figure out what you really want to write and how to get it started. We’ve had a lot of requests to offer our original prompts course again—and to debut some brand-new prompts for those who’ve already completed the first course. Ask and ye shall receive! In June, we have the original 30 Days, 30 Prompts class for those who haven’t had a chance to take it yet; July is all about prompts for self-editing your work; and August is our next brand new prompts class, focused on writing about family and relationships. These classes are self-guided and you can complete the prompts at your own pace, so it’s totally doable to sign up if you’re traveling this summer and not available every single day.

June: 30 Days, 30 Essay Prompts: A Month of Generating Inspiration and Ideas for Memoir

We’ve all been there. You know you have revealing and relatable stories to share, but you rarely find the time in your busy schedule to write — and when you do, you catch yourself staring at that dastardly blinking cursor on the white screen and just can’t find a way to start. June is the time to break those habits, get moving on your writing and never look back. Every day, you’ll receive a short personal essay or two to read, paired with a related prompt to inspire your own writing. You’ll set aside a few minutes of your day to respond to that prompt and, if you choose to, share a short piece of writing with a supportive and encouraging community of writers.

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July: 31 Days, 31 Revision Prompts: A Month of Self-Editing Your Essays

OK, so you’ve written some essay drafts—maybe even a lot of drafts—but now what? Does the idea of revision and editing strike fear in your creative heart? That’s natural, but it doesn’t have to be that way. This self-guided course is designed to help you tighten, strengthen, expand and contract your essays or memoir. It will help you add depth and background, make your narration shine, be more active with your word choices — in short, take what you’ve already written and prepare it for potential publication. Daily exercises and prompts include creating a narrator personality chart, finding the most resonant starting/point of your essay, and identifying ways to make your writing more active. The overall goal is to provide you with a self-editing toolbox of techniques you can use to polish your current drafts and perfect future essays.

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August: 30 Days, 30 Prompts For Writing About Family and Relationships

And here’s the brand new one! Everyone has family issues to write about…and we all put it off, because it’s too hard too complicated, or we just don’t know how to write about the people closest to us. This new course is designed to help you find inspiration, focus your memories, and introduce ways to write about the people and relationships in (and out) of your life. The prompts will help you find your own unique storytelling approach to essays about your family members, and your relationships with them and other people.

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A photography professor of mine said that writing and photography are opposite forms of creation. The writer starts with the blank page and strives to create something out of nothing. The photographer starts with everything, the entire world around them, and decides to focus on one small aspect of it. How we observe can be one of the most important decisions we make on a daily basis—and it is something we do less and less of these days.

Indeed, most of us walk through our daily routine on autopilot. We scroll while we meander to the subway. We barely take notice of people while we rush to the office. Modern life seems to make it harder and harder to be present in the moment.

Street photography is the art of observation. It requires awareness. To see things with fresh eyes. To capture moments both intimate and mundane. It requires us to notice. To see the colors, the textures, the movement of life all around. And it asks us to think about how we fit into this world. Why do I choose to focus on certain things and not others? What details have greater meaning for us? What do interactions between people, no matter how subtle, tell us about the time in which we live?

The act of taking pictures in public is a practice of mindfulness—of quieting our assumptions and trying to look with fresh eyes.

As with all art, understanding how some of the greats went about composing their images is essential, and always open to interpretation.

In the Street Photography Workshop, we will look at some of those greats’ art with fresh eyes. We will see how each of us interprets the same environment differently. We’ll discuss why we captured what we did. And why we chose to frame the world in such a way.

Yes, street photography is a lesson in technical precision: how to best use light, how to create the right depth of field, and how to quickly frame an image. But most importantly, it is a lesson on how to be in the moment. How to really see and think more deeply about your relationship between observer and observed.

Ready to get out there?

The Street Photography Workshop starts June 1. Award-winning photojournalist Ben Fractenberg has shot for The New York Times, Daily News and THE CITY, among other outlets. In this three-session hands-on workshop held in New York City, you’ll spend time out in the city shooting, then come back together to review, refine, and push your work further. Whether you’re brand new to street photography or looking to get more intentional about your practice, this class is about learning to see—and capture—the moments most people miss.

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Writers, we’ve got a brand-new flash contest for you. This one is inspired by a recent excerpt that we published from ’s new memoir, Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hookups, in which she writes about starting to date after losing her husband prematurely. It's also a super flash contest — as in you will only have one day to complete it. That’s right, these are due by EOD today, Wednesday, May 20.

The challenge? Tell us about a time you unexpectedly bounced back from a tragedy — surprising even yourself. Did you deliver the best performance of your life after experiencing a profound, sudden loss? Find the courage from you’re still not sure where to start your own (now very successful!) company following a brutal layoff? Something else entirely? We would like to hear about it.

Submit a piece of up to 300 words for the chance to have it published on our sister site, , and to receive a free year-long subscription to both and . Submissions are due EOD today, Wednesday, May 20, and you can expect to hear back from us later in the week. Ready? OK…

Submit Here!

Looking for some inspo? Check out some of the winners of recent flash contests…

‘The Slippery Convict Had Us Sweating’

Running Around in a Prepubescent Parody of Lust

A Lark for the Ages—Or So I Thought

That story is an excerpt from Amy’s just-published memoir, “Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hookups.”

For the past few weeks, Amy has been immersed in a whirlwind that’s not quite like any other: The Book Launch. Of course, it’s a fun time, but also a confusing and at times overwhelming one. This Thursday at 1 p.m. ET_, Amy is going to take a quick break from her book launch to join us for a special live “Open Book” conversation about how she finished her memoir and landed a deal—and talk us through what the book launch is really like. Click here to add to your calendar and join us on Thursday.

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If you haven’t had a chance to read Amy’s story yet, we’ve made it free for everyone over at Narratively.com. Give it a read this week and come with your questions for …

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