Faculty
This is the series for writers working on novels and stories, writers between workshops, between books, or between phases of practice looking to refresh their craft. Intermediate to advanced, and fiction-focused.
$500 secures your place in the Fall 2026 cohort — orientation details follow by email. Full refund within 7 days · Secure checkout via Stripe.
An informal first gathering, a week before the seminars begin: ask questions, meet your cohort, and set the tone for the eight weeks ahead. 7–9 PM ET, on Zoom.
“First sentences are doors to worlds.” — Ursula K. Le Guin. That’s exactly what a first sentence does: It opens. It grabs. It lunges. Sometimes, it screams. In this class, we will uncover what makes a memorable first sentence that captures and holds hostage the reader’s attention. Every story starts with a sentence: a combination of words that casts a spell upon the reader. By the end of this seminar, you will have a bank of first sentences to use as springboards for your own writing projects, a hall full of doors to expand into worlds.
Baylina Pu graduated from Yale in 2023. Her work has been published in the Michigan Quarterly Review Online, New Ohio Review, Black Warrior Review Online, The Yale Literary Magazine, Dirt, and more. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Felipe De Alba Fellowship, and her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net. She has taught or currently teaches at Columbia University, Gotham Writers Workshop, The Center for Fiction, Yale Alumni Association, Accent Society, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
“Baylina was always super compassionate and engaging in class, and made critique sessions feel simultaneously weighty, informative, and exciting. She is a great professor who really helped push my writing to the next level.”
— Former Columbia studentWe spend a lot of time mapping out our story, but not enough time figuring out the best way to tell it. Scenes are the way we deliver a story’s pivotal moments that are best prepared when there’s more cooking than a reader might see at first. In this session, we will use food and meals as an entry point for writing; we’ll explore the aspects of a scene (description, action, dialogue, and thought) and the ways to best serve them for our readers.
Author of the graphic novel Chhotu: A Tale of Love and Partition (Comic-Con India “Best Writer”) and the travelogue Food of the Gods (Gourmand Cookbook shortlist for “Peace”), both with Penguin Random House — with a sequel to the graphic novel set to release in 2027. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, where he received the Felipe P. De Alba Fellowship and served as Director of the Columbia Artist/Teachers Program. Teaches at Columbia, NYU, the Center for Fiction, Gotham, and 826NYC.
“If I ever become an author, I’d like to credit him for being the catalyst that started my journey.”
— Former Gotham Writers student“Tell stories filled with FACTS. Make people touch and taste and KNOW. Make people FEEL! FEEL! FEEL!” — Octavia Butler. How can we make details in writing as granular and textured as possible? How can we, through these details, immerse readers fully into a scene — making them see anew, smell anew, hear anew? What makes a detail destabilize a reader, or ground them, or encourage a transcendence of sorts? In this session, we will look at writers who render scene in astonishing detail and identify the craft decisions that enable them to do so. We will also determine when obscuring details can be generative and exciting; how does obfuscation lend itself to painting a portraiture through outline?
Britt Astrid Alphson earned her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University, where she was a Henfield Prize nominee and taught as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. Her work has appeared in Hobart Pulp, Dream Boy Book Club, and The New Limestone Review, among others. She is from Los Angeles.
“Your class has been one of the highlights of my fall — I’ve grown so much as a writer, and I’m so grateful for the thoughtful guidance and encouragement you brought to every workshop.”
— Former studentAs a novelist who comes from the world of half-hour TV comedy, I’m always thinking about tight three-act structure, snappy act blows, and characters who change from start to finish. In this course, we’ll plot our novels using these techniques and tried-and-true forms from film and TV, such as Dan Harmon’s Story Circles. We’ll also discuss ways to subvert these forms using alternative story shapes (like my favorite, the triptych!).
Claire Jia’s debut novel Wanting was an NPR, Elle, Public Books, and Chicago Sun-Times Best Book of 2025, and was shortlisted for the 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, The Rumpus, Reductress, and more. She writes for television and co-wrote the Peabody Award-winning interactive series We Are OFK. She hails from the suburbs of Chicago, but today she lives in Los Angeles.
“Inspiring and knowledgeable, and with compassion and understanding helped me to think through my story structure and its possibilities.”
— Former Farmhouse studentHow does it feel to speed through a lifetime in just a few pages? Is it possible to extend a single, brief moment to the length of a novel? In this session, we’ll explore narrative timelines that stretch and condense, push and pull, ebb and flow. We’ll use in-class generative exercises spanning plot, style, and syntax to explore new ways of transforming time in our own fiction.
Regan Mies is a writer and translator in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she previously graduated with a BA in political science and German. In addition to teaching with Pilcrow, Regan is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Columbia’s Undergraduate Creative Writing Program, an instructor with the Columbia Summer Pre-College Program, and a jury advisor with the literary organization New Books in German. Previously, she served as the director of Columbia Artist/Teachers, taught in Hamburg with the support of a Fulbright grant, and worked in publishing in New York.
“She challenged us to experiment and go outside of our comfort zones. I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher.”
— Former Columbia Pre-College studentAn overview of world-building techniques to engage in politically imaginative futures.
Molly McGhee is a novelist from Nashville, Tennessee, living in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Undergraduate Creative Writing Advisor in Fiction at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in publications such as McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Paris Review, The Baffler, and The Guardian, among others. Her novel, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novel award and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue.” — Truman Capote. What should characters say (and not say) to each other? When do they speak their mind? When do they hold back? What can we learn about tension and propulsion from plays and screenplays? Are we going for realism? Absurdity? Naturalism? In this session, we’ll examine how to use dialogue (or lack thereof) to craft a compelling scene. We’ll explore the balance between characters’ words and thoughts, examine how playwriting and screenwriting techniques can inspire one’s fiction, and discuss how dialogue is just as stylistic as other forms of writing.
Kaley Mamo is a screenwriter, playwright, and filmmaker who writes drama about complicated women and people who make mistakes. She was one of seven screenwriters chosen for the 2025 Black List Writers Lab for her script SHELLS. Her medical-horror script THE WELL was a 2024 Academy Nicholl Semifinalist and is currently under option at Talon Entertainment (Oh, Canada; Bookworm). Her plays have been produced at the Irvington Theater Arts Incubator Short Play Festival, the Queens Short Play Festival, Break a Leg Productions’ Earth Day Expo, and Coastal Creative’s End of the World Play Festival, and earned her Final Round consideration at Berkeley Repertory’s Ground Floor Summer Residency. She is represented by Jake Weiner at Harvest Hill Entertainment.
Whether short fiction or an epic novel, every work of fiction needs a thread of something — suspense, intrigue, a strange and singular question — to pull the reader’s attention through the book. In this class we’ll discuss your story’s hook and promise and how to deliver on it through the narrative. As a special bonus, the second half of this session will include a bit on community and publishing: how to find other writers, the state of being a writer on the internet, querying, etc.
Stuart Pennebaker is the author of the novel Ghost Fish. She works and teaches at Gotham Writers Workshop.
“I cannot believe how engaging this course was… Really impressed with Stuart.”
— Former Gotham Writers studentA closing conversation, a week after the final seminar: talk with instructors and fellow writers about what you made and where it goes next. 7–9 PM ET, on Zoom.
Anything else? Email hello@pilcrow.nyc
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