The Columbia Fiction Foundry’s writing workshops are held once or twice each month in the Alumni Center at 622 West 113th Street, New York, NY. These sessions are open to all Columbia alumni, students, and faculty, and are free of charge. We have no membership dues, but members are expected to read each other’s material and to provide constructive feedback.

Two weeks in advance of each workshop, a volunteer moderator emails an invitation for manuscripts to be submitted. The manuscripts are then distributed one week before the workshop so that members can review and prepare critiques for each work. Typically, four to eight manuscripts are covered, each one ranging between 2,500 and 5,000 words.

Prospective members are encouraged to attend one workshop before submitting their own material so they can learn how the process works and judge whether it’s potentially useful for them. If you wish to be added to our distribution list for upcoming sessions, please email us at [email protected].

In addition to our live workshops, Virtual Fiction Foundry, which is under development, will offer options for collaboration in specific genres such as historical fiction, screenplays or memoir, as well as the possibility to share full manuscripts. If you’d like to learn more about VFF, please fill out the VFF form, linked to here, to share more about your specific interests. We’ll reach out to you with information as it becomes available.