PEN America’s Emerging Voices Workshop in Los Angeles brings together a diverse group of writers from Southern California to foster community and grow their craft. With just 15 writers in attendance each session, the Emerging Voices Workshop creates an intimate environment where fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry writers can get to know each other, share ideas, and connect with their writer selves.
I first attended the Emerging Voices Workshop in December 2024 as part of the fiction cohort facilitated by Charmaine Craig, and I have since been invited back to assist and facilitate panels for the June and November 2025 sessions. Here’s a peek into what the November session was like.
Deep Dive on Craft
The Emerging Voices Workshop ran for a full week, Monday through Friday. Each day, writers began with free write sessions to get their creative energy flowing and then broke into genre-specific workshops.
In the workshop, writers read samples of each other’s work and spent time wrestling with the material, offering each other feedback and insights under the guidance of their facilitator. In November, our facilitators were Claire Stanford (fiction), Stephanie Elizondo Griest (creative non-fiction), and Shonda Buchanan (poetry).
“I had been feeling stuck with my book for a while now—checking off scenes but not feeling energized by what I was writing,” said fiction writer Ansuya Nathan. “Workshopping the first 10 pages cracked something open for me. Our fab fiction facilitator Claire Stanford pointed out a narrative clue that was there all along and all of a sudden I feel invigorated to move past the messy middle and push through to the end.”
While many writing workshops offer a feedback model like this one, often with 45–60 minutes of workshop time scheduled per participant, the Emerging Voices Workshop also allocated extra time to workshopping that the writers and facilitators could use as they saw fit.
Facilitators also shared their wisdom with the full cohort through cross-genre craft talks each afternoon. Stanford taught writers how to ascribe specialness to the every day. Buchanan led a workshop on civil rights poetry and helped writers envision how they might use their voices for justice. Griest inspired writers to go deep into the full potential and meaning of art.
“Stephanie’s visualization gave me permission to see myself as an author, not just someone trying to finish a book,” said fiction writer DeLana Nicole Orr. “It turned a goal into an identity.”
Learning the Business of Writing
The Emerging Voices Workshop also seeks to demystify the publishing process—and teach writers how they can balance writing with a full life, which often includes other jobs. The panel on writing life featured authors Charles Yu, Chris Belcher, and Dana Johnson, who all shared how writing factors into their lives overall. They discussed how they develop an ongoing writing practice, what their reading lives are like, how they balance writing with family and income considerations, and what brings them joy in writing.
The submissions panel, which included Callie Siskel from the Los Angeles Review of Books and author and editor David Ulin, helped writers understand the importance of literary journals, how to find the best publications for their work, and how to manage the ongoing labor of submissions in addition to writing.
The publishing panel, composed of Lucy Carson from the Friedrich Agency and Elizabeth Garriga from Little, Brown and Company, helped writers understand the full scope of a book’s path from the start of the writing process to a reader holding a copy in their hands. Writers got an overview of the publishing process, from researching agents to querying to selling the book and all the way to publicity and potential book tours.
“The workshop did an incredible job of demystifying the publication process,” said poetry writer Ashley Hockney. “My writing has improved, but more than that, I feel I have a clear roadmap for next steps on finished pieces. After all, an emerging writer isn’t just one who finishes work on a page. It’s one who is in conversation with the world around them. Knowing how to enter that conversation has been extremely motivating to my work.”
Building Community in the Heart of Los Angeles
West Coast writers can feel far away from the publishing industry. But PEN America is building a network of Emerging Voices alumni who can lift each other up in California.
“PEN America’s Emerging Voices workshop completely rewired how I think about being in community with other writers,” said creative non-fiction writer Jasmine Desiree. “I used to avoid being around other writers out of intimidation, but this space was so loving, generous, and supportive that it felt safe to show up as myself. I left with a new confidence and friends I’ll cherish for life.”
The week culminated with a public reading that brought together alumni, industry professionals, and lovers of literature in Los Angeles. The writers took a voice workshop led by Julanne Chidi Hill to help them connect with their own voices and prepare to read their words aloud for an audience—several for the first time.
PEN America’s tuition-free Emerging Voices Workshop offers a truly accessible platform for writers to gather and grow.
