POSTPONED: Please check back for a new date in the near future.
2 workshops, 2 genres, 2 panels, 1 great day for writers!
Genre Jumper is a one-day conference for writers interested in experimenting in multiple genres. You’ll attend 2 workshops (one in your primary genre and one in a new/secondary genre) and 2 panels with expert multi-genre authors, including Avitus B. Carle, Aubrey Hirsch, Hannah Grieco, Monica Prince, Séamus Isaac Fey, and Susan Muaddi Darraj.
Whether it’s Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, or Graphic Memoir, you will leave this conference with new ways of thinking about your work and new strategies to tackle your biggest hurdles.
Our workshop leaders will be available between sessions, at lunch, and at the closing reception, so you can make personal connections. And you’re strongly encouraged to connect with your fellow attendees, too!
Morning coffee, lunch, and a post-conference reception are included.
Workshops
After registering you will receive an email with a form to denote your preference for which of the workshops you’d like to attend. If you do not receive an email within 1 business day, please email Brandon Johnson at brandon.johnson@writer.org
- Fiction: Compelling Prose | Workshop Leader: Susan Muaddi Darraj
“Powerful fiction requires not only a good story, but impeccable storytelling. In this workshop, we will hone your ability to deliver compelling and engaging prose through a focus on sentence structure, voice, and style. Workshop includes analyses of published works, discussion, and generative exercises. - Flash Fiction: Check Please! Flash and the Listicle | Workshop Leader: Avitus B. Carle
In the age of technology, we still find ourselves surrounded by lists, whether they are virtual or handwritten: To-Do lists, Step-by-Step Instructions, or How-To Guides. In this generative workshop, attendees will be provided a series of prompts inspired by writers who have transformed these transcribed notes found on post-it notes, scraps of paper, apps, or on the backs of opened envelopes into flash stories that resonate with readers. Participants will analyze different forms of flash lists or listicles and how these forms enhance a story’s narrative. Finally, attendees will be given time to write their own listicles, applying skills they may utilize beyond the workshop’s conclusion. - Graphic Memoir: Comics for People Who Can’t Draw | Workshop Leader: Aubrey Hirsch
Comics are awesome! They’re fun to make, quick and easy to read, and endlessly shareable. Yet when I talk to writers who want to try making comics, I often hear the same hesitation: “But… I can’t draw!” Here’s the secret: your ability to make great comics has very little to do with your drawing skills. In this workshop, I’ll show you how you (yes, you!) can create engaging, expressive comics without any traditional art training at all. In this workshop, we’ll identify the main goals of comics artists and talk about the fundamentals of using art as communication. We’ll discuss ideas to work around gaps in artistic skills while still producing work that is visually compelling. We’ll also identify and practice ways you can leverage what you have to create a readable style that’s uniquely yours. This workshop is open to anyone with an interest in comics—no drawing experience or special equipment required! - Nonfiction: From Blank Page to First Draft (Twice!) | Workshop Leader: Hannah Grieco
Are you stuck? Do you feel like your writing is in a rut? Want to try something new, explore ideas you’ve tiptoed around in the past, or just get inspired to write again? In this class, we’ll read, brainstorm, and write in response to prompts. You’ll start two new nonfiction pieces: one flash work of creative nonfiction and one personal essay! You’ll leave with two well-developed new drafts and a guided plan for revisions! - Poetry: Constraints & Forms Excite Me: Oulipian Constraints in Poetry |Workshop Leader: Monica Prince
Of the many poetic forms imagined and inherited, the Oulipian constraint offers an opportunity to expand one’s vocabulary and creative attention. Participants of all poetry levels will read and write a particular Oulipian constraint, the lipogram or beautiful outlaw. By working with this challenging but exciting form, beginner and intermediate poets will discover new ways of circumlocution and enliven their poetic preoccupations. - Poetry: How to Surprise your Reader |Workshop Leader: Séamus Isaac Fey
With the sheer amount of books being published, it’s growing more and more difficult to say anything that someone hasn’t said before. The best we can do is sharpen our voices, and use the tool of specificity to write something that leaves a lasting impression on its reader. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to use the element of surprise in your poems (or otherwise) to engage the reader and say something in the way only you would say it.
Schedule
9:30am: Registration & Coffee
10:00am-11:30am: Workshop 1
11:45am-12:15pm: Panel 1 | Why Genre Jump? with Monica Prince, Avitus B Carle, and Aubrey Hirsch
12:15pm-1:15pm: Lunch
1:30-3:00pm: Workshop 2
3:15pm-3:45pm: Panel 2 | Genre as a tool! with Séamus Isaac Fey, Susan Muaddi Darraj and Hannah Grieco
4:00pm: Reception
Workshop Leaders
Avitus B. Carle (she/her) lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her stories have been published in a variety of places including Ghost Parachute, X-R-A-Y Litmag, SoFloPoJo, Necessary Fiction, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), and elsewhere. Her work was selected for the 2025, 2024, and 2022 Best Small Fictions anthology, the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2023 and 2024, the 2022 and 2020 Best of the Net anthology, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, PEN/O. Henry Prize, and the Best Microfictions anthology. She is the author of the flash fiction collection, These Worn Bodies, which won the 2023 Moon City Press Short Fiction award. Avitus can be found at avitusbcarle.com or online everywhere @avitusbcarle.
Aubrey Hirsch is the author of Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life as a Woman in America. Her stories, essays, and comics have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vox, TIME Magazine, American Short Fiction and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in literature and an individual artist award from The Sustainable Arts Foundation. You can find her on Substack or Instagram as @aubreyhirsch.
Hannah Grieco is a writer, professor, and editor in Washington, DC. Her short story collection First Kicking, Then Not is out now from Stanchion Books. She writes the monthly SpotLIT column for Washington City Paper, and you can find more of her work in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Brevity, Craft, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, The Offing, Wigleaf, Fairy Tale Review, and more. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.
Monica Prince, associate professor of activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University, is a Guyanese American poet that writes, teaches, and performs choreopoems across the country. Her poetry and essays appear or are forthcoming in national and international literary journals, and her published choreopoems include Roadmap: A Choreopoem, How to Exterminate the Black Woman, and FORCE, releasing in January 2026. She shares her life with her husband, polycule, and three disrespectful cats.
Séamus Isaac Fey (he/they) is a Trans writer from Chicagoland. Currently, he is the poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine. His debut poetry collection, decompose, is out with Not a Cult Media. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Offing, Sonora Review, and others. He loves to beat his friends at Mario Party. Find him online @sfeycreates.
Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker andApple Books. Behind You Is the Sea was also longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award.
Scholarships
We plan to offer 2 scholarships to Genre Jumper for writers unable to pay the registration fee. Please apply for the scholarship by emailing brandon.johnson@writer.org with “Genre Jumper Scholarship” in the subject line; no additional information is required. Scholarship recipients will be selected randomly from among all applicants. Scholarship Deadline: November 28, 2025
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.