Whale Rock Mentorships, Winter 2025
Our Mentorships are immersive, writing experiences designed to offer writers one-on-one attention, feedback and skill building from master, MFA-level faculty members.
Our mentorship faculty members team up for this unique online program designed for picture book, middle grade, and young adult authors. With award-winning authors, editors, professors and former professors from Hamline University and Vermont College of Fine Arts, students receive one-on-one guidance and stewardship. For authors contemplating an MFA program, this is a wonderful alternative to grow your skills without the steep price tag. For authors who have an MFA or never considered one, this is your opportunity to get pages read and critiqued by master instructors.
All workshops are recorded.
Winter / Spring 2025 Write Now!
WHEN: January - May, 2025
Wednesday & Thursday mornings
10:00 AM - 12:30 PM ET
Tuesday evenings 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM ET
WHERE: Online
There’s nothing like a regular meeting time and space to keep your writing commitments honest. Our Write Now! groups are FREE and offer the support you need to show up and work each week. (Note: You must be a newsletter subscriber to participate in Write Now!)
Master Class: Dive into Picture Books
Phyllis Root
DATE: Wednesdays, February 5 - March 19, 2025
No class February 19.
TIME: 7:00 - 8:00 PM EST
WHERE: Online
Join MFA-level, master-instructor Phyllis Root for a six-week deep dive into picture book writing. Whether you're an experienced picture book writer or whether you're at the beginning of your picture book writing journey, this six-week workshop will examine multiple mentor texts per week and use those texts as a spring board for inspiration. Writers will participate in on-the-spot writing prompts and discussions and will have a weekly assignment to draft a picture book.
Come prepared to read. Come prepared to write. Come prepared to discuss.
All classes are recorded.
THIS CLASS IS FULL
Nine Personality Types: Using the Enneagram to Develop Well-Rounded Characters
Christina Granahan
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 2025
TIME: 4:00 PM EST
WHERE: Online
$30.00
Are you sometimes stumped, trying to figure out how your character should respond to a moment of panic? What about your secondary characters? Do you know how they will each respond to surprise? Fear? Excitement? The Enneagram is a tool used to understand individuals’ motivations: what drives people to behave in the way they do. According to the Enneagram, here are nine personality types who engage in predictable patterns of behavior. Join Christina Granahan, MSW as she breaks down each personality type and provides examples for how each of the different types respond to different situations. You’ll come away with new ways of thinking about your characters and new approaches to plotting for them. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to add more tools to your writer toolbox.
Workshop will be recorded.
Turning Memory into Fiction
Evan Griffiths
DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 2025
TIME: 7:30 - 9:00 PM EST
WHERE: Online
$30.00
We’re often told to “write what we know.” But what does that actually mean, and how do you do it? Join award-winning author and VCFA faculty member Evan Griffiths for this 90-minute workshop that explores using our own lives as wells of inspiration for fiction with the goal of forging strong personal connections to our stories. Through generative exercises, we’ll experiment with concrete aspects of our memories (e.g., adapting place-based memories into fictional setting descriptions—a world-building hack!) AND the more abstract aspects (e.g., fictionalizing a moment of intense feeling from childhood in order to imbue a scene with emotional resonance). You’ll come away with techniques you can revisit again and again.
Workshop will be recorded.
The Short Novel
Gary Schmidt & Shelley Tanaka
DATE: March 23 - August 24, 20205
TIME: See Workshop description for schedule breakdown
WHERE: Online
Short novels are in demand. Teachers want them, librarians want them, and kids want them. And yet authors continue to churn out 200-page-plus books for young readers.
In this new and unique offering, beloved faculty members Gary Schmidt and Shelley Tanaka will walk you through the process of writing a short novel (approximately 80-120 pages) from beginning to end. That’s right, you will come up with a novel premise and by the end of the workshop you should be able to write the full manuscript with the help of these two amazing mentors.
We can only accept ten students for this intensive workshop. Registration opens December 15, 2024.
THIS CLASS IS FULL
Workshops will be recorded, but we recommend attending all workshops.
Revise Your Picture Book Manuscripts: A Faculty led, Writer-Centered Critique Group
Karen Krossing
DATE: Wednesdays March 26 - May 21, 2025
TIME: 7:30 - 8:50 PM EST
WHERE: Online
ONLY 1 SPOT LEFT
Do you have picture book manuscripts that you’d like to revise with a small, committed group of writers dedicated to helping you produce your best work? Join award-winning author and MFA-level instructor Karen Krossing for this in-depth, hands-on, nine-week workshop limited to eight participants. You’ll use your own manuscripts to explore picture-book craft/revision, you'll discuss craft elements you can apply to your own manuscripts, and you’ll participate in weekly online discussions that dive into picture book craft topics.
A perfect partner to our Master Class: Dive into Picture Books workshop with
Phyllis Root.
Whale Rock Mentorships, Fall 2025
WHEN: September - December 2025
Our Mentorships are immersive, writing experiences designed to offer writers one-on-one attention, feedback and skill building from master, MFA-level faculty members.
Our mentorship faculty members team up for this unique online program designed for picture book, middle grade, and young adult authors. With award-winning authors, editors, professors and former professors from Hamline University and Vermont College of Fine Arts, students receive one-on-one guidance and stewardship. For authors contemplating an MFA program, this is a wonderful alternative to grow your skills without the steep price tag. For authors who have an MFA or never considered one, this is your opportunity to get pages read and critiqued by master instructors.
*Please Note: We do not yet have confirmation of availability from all our mentors, but 80% of our mentors return session after session. If you wish to register early in order to confirm your spot, you will be able to revisit your mentor choice once we have our faculty in place.
All workshops are recorded.
In Person Master Skills Workshop
Patti Gauch and Gary Schmidt
DATE: September 7 - September 13, 2025
TIME: All day in-person event
WHERE: Lexington, Michigan
Join Patti, Gary and other children’s literature authors for a week designed to help you dive deep into your craft and take your writing to the next level. Each year, our instructors bring new lessons, new prompts and new exercises to help you master your craft.
This class is full
Virtual Master Skills Workshop
Patti Gauch and Gary Schmidt
DATE: October 19 - October 25, 2025
TIME: All day event
WHERE: Online
Join Patti, Gary and other children’s literature authors for a week designed to help you dive deep into your craft and take your writing to the next level. Each year, our instructors bring new lessons, new prompts and new exercises to help you master your craft.
All workshops are recorded.
Caboose Retreat 2025:
WEEK ONE DATES: November 2 - November 7, 2025
WHERE: Sabillasville, MD
SPECIAL GUEST: Patricia Lee Gauch
WEEK TWO DATES: November 9 - November 14, 2025
WHERE: Sabillasville, MD
SPECIAL GUEST: Agent Miranda Paul, Erin Murphy Literary Agency
Join Whale Rock Workshops faculty for a cozy writing retreat in Sabillasville, MD. Make lifelong writer friends with this six-day, five-night getaway. Faculty and writers will cook together, eat together, walk together, laugh together, and of course write together.