Annual Meeting and President's Report

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2025 Annual Meeting Summary
2025 President's Report

2025 Annual Meeting Summary

The annual meeting of the members of Columbia Fiction Foundry was held on October 4, 2025 at the Columbia Alumni Center at 622 West 113th St, New York, NY 10025. The President, Ken Schept, called the meeting to order at approximately 10:15 a.m, and welcome all the attendees. Serving Executive Committee members attending in person included Ken Schept, Margaret Winslow, Tania Moore Lisa Melilli, Mauricio Matiz. Linda Ellison participated via Zoom. In total, twenty-five members attended in-person, and seven attended via Zoom for a total of 32 attendees. At one point, Stanley Clark from the CAA, and our host at the Alumni Center, entered the room. Ken introduced Stanley and thanked him for his continued and tireless support. 

Ken started by recognizing CFF members with recent publication successes. This list will be posted in the News section of the website. Ken also took a moment to remember two people we lost this year:  

  • Havilah Giannetta, a new CFF member with great promise died last November after being struck by a car. She attended Columbia College as a Kluge Scholar with a BA in literature.
  • Charles B. Wendel, a long-time CFF member, with Columbia master’s degrees in literature, philosophy, and business died in April at age seventy-four.

The next order of business was the President's Report, including election of officers for the 2025-26 year. Ken called upon Lisa Melilli, chair of the Nominating Committee who placed the following names in nomination:

President – Ken Schept
Vice President – Linda Raymond Ellison
Secretary – Lisa Melilli
Communications Director – Mauricio Matiz
Officers At Large – Michael Hirsh, Tania Moore, Richard Nochimson, Jennifer Sears, Margie Winslow.

There being no questions regarding the nominees and no other nominations, Ken called for a vote. All members voted in favor of the Committee’s slate, whereupon the above-mentioned nominees were elected.

Ken gave an overview of the CFF Workshops, and answered general questions. He then invited all present to remain for an Open House, featuring conversation and refreshments.

There being no further business, the Annual Meeting was adjourned at approximately 11:00 a.m. A Meet-and-Greet with refreshments followed for those present in-person.

 

President's Report 2024-2025

Ken Schept, President

Columbia Fiction Foundry is about enter year sixteen since its establishment, in 2009, by Ralph White and other Columbia graduates interested in helping each other become better fiction writers. Our core mission remains the same, and we also want to help each other become published fiction writers.

Goals
This past year, my first as Columbia Fiction Foundry president, we’ve advanced CFF’s mission
by pursuing these goals:

  • Build community
  • Strengthen the CFF brand with programming that raises the awareness of CFF in the publishing industry
  • Improve the quality of writing in the workshops
  • Expand the diversity of voices in the workshops

Actions

Communications and Marketing
Reaching all of our goals requires improved communication. That starts with adding more content to the website but also reaching members in other ways that encourages them to visit the website. Initiatives this year included:

Website: We upgraded the website, creating a more informative landing page featuring upcoming events and the publishing successes of CFF members.

Email blast: We created an email blast to update CFF members about important developments, as necessary, and encourage them to find additional details on the website.

Newsletter: We’re in the process of developing a quarterly newsletter. The newsletter will help build community by connecting more often with CFF members.

Automation: We automated our workshop Call for Manuscripts, which enables the moderators to spend less time on the logistics of requesting manuscripts.

Membership
As of the date of the Annual Meeting, CFF has a total of 1,280 members, and 442 members in a subsidiary list of people interested in our workshops.

Partnerships: We connected with other Columbia University schools, including the Journalism School, Columbia College, and the School of the Arts to build awareness of CFF and build attendance at our programs. We specifically reached out to the SOA Writing Program as part of our effort to draw more diverse, younger voices to our workshops.

Normalized lists: We began the year with two separate member lists, which we consolidated in our Nation Builder software.

Workshops
We critiqued a total of 151 manuscripts between September 2024 and August 2025. The workshops included an average of around seven attendees.

Growth: We created a spreadsheet to record workshop attendance and guide planning. Following each workshop, the moderator fills in necessary details, such as the number of participants, both those who submitted manuscripts and observers. 

We added a second workshop on Saturday mornings when we have more than eight submitted manuscripts. We may do the same for Wednesday evening workshops. To accomplish this initiative, we’re looking for moderator volunteers.

Guidelines: We drafted guidelines to ensure that our workshops provide a welcoming, inclusive, respectful space. The Guidelines detail the expectations for workshop moderators and workshop participants. We drafted the Guidelines in consultation with the School of the Arts Writing Program and the Alumni Office.

Programs
We developed programs to build community and help members improve their craft and succeed commercially.

Meet the Gatekeepers: We hosted a 90-minute Zoom conversation with five literary agents from the Agents Roundtable consortium, on April 10. The link is on the CFF website.

Welcome back from summer: We hosted a September social gathering at Bryant Park Café.

We have a full 2025 fall schedule. Here are highlights:

    • POV and Place: The Craft of Writing. Organized by CFF ExComm member Lisa Melilli, October 22.
    • Author talk: A conversation with author and publisher Jill Santopolo, October 28
    • Publicist: The role of a book publicist with publicist Jessie Glenn, November 11.
    • Publishing Today: The state of publishing today with Dawn Raffel, and editor, author, and teacher, December 2.

Final Thoughts

Progress doesn’t happen by accident. Our communication improvements required the deep knowledge, experience, and commitment of CFF Communications Director Mauricio Matiz. And the work of every Executive Committee member. They each volunteer their time and expertise to improve this collaborative organization. Thank you to the other officers: Linda Raymond Ellison, vice president; Margie Winslow, secretary. And to the at-large directors: Tania Moore, immediate past president, Michael Hirsh, Lisa Melilli, and Richard Nochimson.

Thank you all for attending the Annual Meeting. Please attend the workshops, perhaps as an observer if it’s your first time. We welcome your involvement.

Ken Schept, president
Columbia Fiction Foundry

Prior Annual Reports are available here: CFF Annual Reports Archive