The Conference

January 17 – 24, 2026

 

Our application period for the 2026 conference is now closed.

Workshop placements will be announced via email on or by November 15.

Thank you.

Located on the beautiful waterfront campus of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, this writers’ conference features professional writers at the top of their form spending quality time with motivated and talented participants seeking an intimate, unhurried climate for learning…in paradise.

2026 WORKSHOPS

Full week, $950, 12 participants max per workshop

 

CRIME FICTION with Laura Lippman

Looking for the formula for writing great crime fiction? Alas, it doesn’t exist. But this workshop can help writers with novels in which a crime is the engine that moves the story forward. Counter-intuitively, the emphasis will be on character, not plotting. Crime novels work best when characters are true to themselves. Then again, per Raymond Chandler, it never hurts to send a man through the door with a gun.

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SHORT STORY with Andre Dubus III

If I teach nothing else in my writing classes, I teach this: do not outline your novel or novella or short story or essay. Do not think out the plot, the narrative arc, the protagonist’s journey, whatever you want to call it. Instead, try to find the story through an honest excavation of the characters’ total experience of the situation in which they find themselves. Do that, and I promise the story will begin to write itself, with little need for the controlling hand of the godly, intelligent, well-read, and ambitious author. But how, precisely, does one go about this “excavation”? And how, technically speaking, can we ignite a story into “writing itself”? Come to this workshop, and I will seek to demystify those writerly tools and skills that time and time again, if they are sharp enough, and if the writer can summon enough daily faith and nerve, can penetrate the mystery of story itself.

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NOVEL with Ann Hood

“The page is still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible,” Nabokov said of writing a novel. That’s our goal in this workshop—to bring that miracle of words that tell a story to the page. We will discuss the architecture of novels, the best ways to begin, the muddle of the middle, rising tension, character development, situation versus story, making characters breathe on the page, and where to end. And more. Through examples from published novels and close reads of your own work, we will investigate, explore, and celebrate writing your novel.

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NOVEL with Stewart O’Nan

The class will be primarily a workshop. Students will read one another’s novels-in-progress, interrogating character, action, language, ideas and setting with an eye toward revision.

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SUPERNATURAL/SUSPENSE/HORROR with Michael Koryta

This workshop is open to writers working on a suspense novel, particularly one with a supernatural or paranormal element — think Shirley Jackson, Ira Levin, Stephen King, Megan Abbott, and Joe Hill. Our focus will be on the handling of core issues such as character, structure, scene building, and how supernatural suspense is built through grounded stories with emotional realism.

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POETRY with/co-led by Didi Jackson and Major Jackson

This workshop will examine ways language moves from earnest expression to artful speech. In our time together, we will direct our attention to how a poem makes a lasting imprint on the reader and what craft elements might we concentrate to render the poem memorable. We will attempt to avoid overly familiar phrases, conceits, tropes and arrive at an original work by finding the extraordinary in the everyday. With support, kindness, and respect, we will commit to help each other make each poem a better version of itself.

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MEMOIR with Luis Alberto Urrea

A colleague I admire calls the non-fiction genre “Verity.”  This being a memoir course, I still like this term – but with a more personal focus. Writing memoir should indeed be the truth. But it is your opportunity to tell *your* personal truth, your verity of a story.

The form you choose to tell your memoir is up to you – it could be an essay, it could be a poem. It could be a short story. It could be a novel. I would argue nearly everything I have written is a form of memoir. The point is making a record of a story only you can tell.

Your writing is not only what is upon the page, but what lurks beneath. The shadow realm that makes your readers dream. Your story can be humble, closely observed. It doesn’t have to be a world war. It can be about your grandmother’s hands. Your story, after all, is huge to you or you wouldn’t want to write it. What you are writing is a gift to the reader and it calls for you to be brave and look into the light – and the shadow.

So bring your best light. Bring your best shadow. Bring your generous spirit.

Don’t be shy. Do not fear, we won’t let you fall.

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NONFICTION with Madeleine Blais

Let’s have fun. Whether you are working on memoir, essays, an historical account, a biography, or some combination, your prose is going to need a narrative arc, which can be challenging in nonfiction. Our group will brainstorm ways to create an engine for your prose—-on how to turn a situation into a story (especially tricky in memoir). A Prompt of the Day will help us devise further strategies to create lively prose, with a special emphasis on generating future subject matter. Plan on submitting between 15 to 25 (max) sample pages of your work to share with the group. If all goes as I hope, you will arrive brimming with enthusiasm and you will be just as enthusiastic when the week if over, if not more so.

 

3-Day Workshops, $495, 6 participants max per workshop

SHORT STORY with Karen Russell
January 18-20, 2026

“Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space . . . I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification,” writes Italo Calvino. In this workshop, we will read each other’s work attentively and help each other to gain fresh perspectives on our works and worlds in progress. We will also read excerpts from some extraordinary short stories that model different approaches to various narrative challenges.

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STRUCTURE with Les Standiford
January 22-24, 2026

STRUCTURE–WHAT I STOLE FROM HOLLYWOOD.  A three-day workshop focused on narrative structure and the composition of effective scenes in fiction, memoir, and narrative non-fiction, informed by the instructor’s experience as a WGA-credited screenwriter and a graduate of the American Film Institute.

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Manuscript Consultation with Sterling Watson ($450)

During our meeting, the participant and I will discuss the manuscript including my thoughts on what I think works and doesn’t work.  I will give the participant a brief report on the manuscript, which will be the basis for my spoken comments.  Additionally, I will provide the participant with a line-edited copy of the manuscript (participants may decline line-edits if they wish to).  Finally, we will address any questions that the participant prepares for the meeting.

• by application only via Submittable from August 1 – November 1
• novels in progress, up to 35pp plus synopsis
• one-hour consult
• may be combined with a 3-day workshop or stand-alone only
• may not be combined with a full week workshop due to scheduling conflict
• accepted manuscript consultees will be considered full participants and thus be eligible to attend all conference events (except workshops)
• meeting must take place during the conference week (Jan 17-24)
• participant will work directly with Sterling Watson to arrange meeting time and location

NEW FOR 2026

• New York Times‘ #1 best-selling author, Michael Connelly, will join our 2026 lineup as Keynote Speaker
• Writers in Paradise welcomes back two award-winning alumni, Nancy Johnson and Jemimah Wei, to welcome the 2026 cohort
• Didi Jackson & Major Jackson will co-lead a weeklong Poetry workshop (see above for description)
• Joining our publishing panel, VP & Editor at W.W. Norton, Jill Bialosky will bring her unique eye and poetic expertise
• Kimberly Witherspoon and Richard Pine from Inkwell Management Literary Agency will both talk industry, interest, and how to pitch