About The Food Writing Workshop

Nationally renowned, prize-winning editor and two-time James Beard Award-winning writer Leslie Brenner will be your teacher and writing coach in our hands-on workshops. Read more about Leslie Brenner.

Our workshops come in two flavors:

FOOD WRITING FOR SUBSTACK
Geared toward food writers at all levels, from those just starting out, to writers who are accomplished in other genres and want to dive into food-writing, to experienced food writers who want to hone their craft and optimize their work for Substack.

The workshop will give you the tools to maximize your success on the Substack platform, build an engaged audience, and present your best work. Students will optimize their Substack-specific strategies and approaches, as well as present their work for critique (by the fellow students and the instructor) in an MFA-style workshop format.

What is an MFA-style workshop format? Please see the description in the last three paragraphs of “Food Writing Workshop” below.

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FOOD WRITING WORKSHOP
An MFA-style, interactive 4-week online workshop for writers in all food-writing platforms (magazines, blogs, newspapers and/or Substack and other newsletters) and in all kinds of forms (essays, cooking stories, food features, profiles, Q+As, etc.). You’ll work on whatever’s exciting you at the moment, and bring your writing to the workshop for critique.

What is an MFA-style workshop? It is a class taught in the format used by Masters of Fine Arts writing programs given by universities and colleges in the United States, such as those at the University of Iowa and Columbia University School of the Arts (where Leslie earned her MFA).

Each 2-hour workshop session is divided into two segments. In the first, the work of one student — submitted to all the classmates and the instructor a week in advance — is critiqued and discussed by the group, with the writer of the piece remaining silent and taking it all in until the end. The writer’s fellow students are the first to offer their thoughts on the piece, with the instructor waiting to weigh in until everyone (except the writer) has had a say. The instructor then summarizes the comments, and the writer comments (if they like). In the second hour, a second student’s work is critiqued in the same manner.

There is enormous value in this type of workshop. First, there is the inherent value of the feedback itself — it shortcuts the writer’s process in taking a particular story to its highest potential. And from a larger view — with lasting value — each writer learns how to assess outside criticism, taking the what’s most useful and setting the less useful aside. The process enables writers to learn to be their own best critics and editors.