Summer Writers' Conference
of Pine Manor College

What Does It Mean to be “Workshopped” at the Solstice Conference?

Our Focus

The focus of workshops at the Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference is simple: to help make your creative writing the best it can possibly be. Our participants receive positive feedback and constructive criticism from our faculty members and their fellow students, providing a sense of what’s “working” and not in each creative piece and offering guidance for revision. There is no sense of “back-biting” or competitiveness in the workshops; everyone is urged to keep the atmosphere both professional and nurturing. Students leave a workshop with a sense of where to go next with their own writing by having received in-depth analysis of their work, and by having evaluated and offered similar feedback to other writers in their group.

In advance of the Conference, students will receive (via email) a copy of their fellow workshop participants’ manuscripts. Having the opportunity to read these manuscripts in advance enables all students to participate in workshop discussions in an engaged, detailed way. Print versions of manuscripts will be available for all participants at Conference check-in.

Why Do Two Faculty Members Teach Each Workshop?

Offering two faculty mentors for each workshop exposes students to a range of artistic approaches while keeping the workshop energy level high.

“Most of our conversations during the first half of the Conference were centered around looking at each story’s arc, its ‘big picture,’ while during the second half, we zeroed in on the sentence,” said one Solstice participant. “The combination of the two gave me a wonderful sense of how to look at my work with both a wide-angle lens and a microscope. I realize I need both!”

All students receive feedback on their creative work by at least one of the faculty mentors, who has read the student’s material in advance. This positive feedback and constructive criticism, in addition to the lively discussions of the work of all students in the group, provides a rich and varied array of suggestions and ideas that can be applied to each student’s own craft.

“I learned just as much from hearing what our faculty mentors said about my peers’ work as I did from hearing what they suggested about my own,” said one Solstice participant.

How Are the Workshops Structured & Conducted?

The Solstice Conference invites its faculty members to structure and conduct their workshops in their own unique ways. Each faculty person explains his or her “ground rules” at the beginning of the session. For example, some workshop leaders invite all participants, including the author of the piece being discussed, to chime in whenever they have something to say, while others might ask each participant in turn to offer positive feedback and suggestions. Many faculty members will ask the author of the particular piece being discussed not to speak until the end of the group’s conversation. (There’s a good reason for this: if your poem or story were published in a magazine or book, you as its author would not be able to peer over the reader’s shoulder explaining, “What I meant by that was…” By listening to the discussion of your work, you gain a sense of what people are “getting,” where they might be confused, and what seems to be most striking / moving / memorable.)