Message from the Director
Dear Writer,
In 2026, we’re back with immersive programming across multiple genres. YWW will offer weeklong sessions on Yale’s extraordinary campus. Choose the workshop, genre, and faculty member that best fit your sensibility, experience, schedule, and budget. And for emerging high school writers, we’re continuing our very successful youth program, offered both on campus and online. In this program, writers generate new work and meet with published authors.
This year we’re adding more genres because writers compose across forms. (We are writers, not just fiction or nonfiction writers.) We are offering screenwriting, poetry, and flash workshops in addition to fiction and nonfiction.
Working writers and publishing professionals are at the heart of the workshop. Our talented and energetic instructors guide writers on individual journeys of discovery. Drawing on their unique backgrounds as writers and editors, they provide readings and exercises designed to strengthen all aspects of a writer’s craft—facilitating breakthroughs on the page. Sessions do not rely on a set curriculum; instead, they draw on each instructor’s expertise to create a personalized experience. In workshops we motivate and critique, celebrate and problem-solve. In 2026, I’m placing special emphasis on journal exercises and small-group discussions throughout the week. I encourage all attendees to familiarize themselves with this year’s guest writers.
Our workshops help writers advance their craft and offer insight and instruction on how to revise—how to re-see—their manuscripts. With a trusted community supporting you, you’ll be encouraged to do the hard work of composing compelling narratives. The goal of all our programs is the same: to help writers better prepare to tackle their next story.
I look forward to meeting you at Yale. Hope you’re reading something good.
—Jotham
