Participants send a 1000-1200 word narrative or narrative excerpt to Jackson Hole Writers at least ten days before the session. This should be unpublished writing that you are working at a stage where you haven’t solved all of the problems it presents. If you send an excerpt, please note how it fits in the larger work it’s a part of.

Participant narratives are shared with John Rember, and he will read each piece carefully, putting himself in the place of a reader/editor, taking notes with an eye toward what is working and what isn’t. Once he has a good idea of everyone’s interests, skills, and areas where he can bring his own experience to bear, John Rember will sketch out an hour’s craft talk. He will try to address issues that the various pieces have in common, and will try to be an articulate advocate for your readers.

John won’t single out anyone’s work for criticism, but he will give you solid, practical advice that will make your readers love you, or at least love you more than they do now. John has dealt with tough editors and he will try to imitate one long enough to give you an idea of what will warm the cockles of their hard, jaded little hearts, at least as far as a story can accomplish such a thing.

In addition, John will send each participant a half-page or so of comments on their work, with an emphasis on useful advice going forward.

After that hour, we can open up the session for discussion/comments/questions/rants for thirty minutes or so. With luck and good will, it will be a good and worthwhile ninety minutes for all of us. John would much prefer a room with all of us in it, but that will have to wait until 2022. In the meantime, he looks forward to reading your work.

John Rember, author of three books of short stories (Coyote in the Mountains, Cheerleaders from Gomorrah, Sudden Death, Over Time), a memoir (Traplines), a why-to-write book (MFA in a Box), and an end-of-the-world book (A Hundred Little Pieces on the End of the World). For a complete biography and publication list, see his website at johnrember.com. John also writing a journal of the plague year and posting it on the website. It contains almost all of his 2020 writing.