Applications for the 2027 George R. R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop Are Now Open
The workshop is designed for mid-career journalists who are writing their first novels
EVANSTON, ILL. -- The fourth annual George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is now accepting applications.
Medill will be selecting 10 mid-career journalists to learn from award-winning novelists and writing instructors at this eight-day, fully funded program. The workshop will take place in Evanston, Illinois, from July 6-14.
“This unique workshop is designed to be a bootcamp focused on helping journalists make solid progress on a novel they are passionate about writing,” said Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Medill’s George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, who will be leading the workshop. “So many journalists have terrific ideas and stories that have stayed with them and would make compelling novels. Our mission is to help guide these writers on how to turn these ideas and pages into full novel manuscripts.”
George R.R. Martin (BSJ70, MSJ71, ’21H), author of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire” and co-executive producer of HBO’s Emmy award-winning “Game of Thrones,” funds this writing intensive program.
“The George R.R. Martin program was truly life changing,” said Laura Wides-Muñoz, a director of editorial standards at NBC News who participated in the 2026 workshop. “I had almost given up on the novel I’d been working on for years. Now, I am determined to finish and publish it. The program gave me the time, space and feedback to think critically about how to move forward.”
During the 2027 workshop, participants will get to learn from leading instructors and guest speakers. In the workshop’s first three years, Martin and authors including Lev Grossman, Scott Turow, Vinson Cunningham, Dawn Turner and John Searles spoke at the intensive, as did editors Sally Kim and David Ebershoff and literary agents Gail Hochman, Barbara Jones, Rebecca Nagel and Mackenzie Brady Watson. Instructors included award-winning novelists Tananarive Due, Julia Glass, Sarah Schulman and Juan Martinez. Fellows also did a field trip to Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company for a class on writing dramatically led by director of new play development Jonathan L. Green.
The 2027 workshop will include classes on various aspects of the craft of writing fiction, from developing compelling characters to world-building, plot, structure and narrative arcs, as well as small group workshop sessions in which each participant will have their novel manuscripts critiqued by instructors and peers.
“I didn’t know what to expect when I returned to Northwestern University, where I once studied to become a journalist,” said 2026 Fellow Monée Fields-White (MSJ95), who is managing editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal. “This time, I was on campus as a fiction writer. What I found was rigorous, generous guidance during the workshop that pushed me to look more closely at my novel and to trust the parts of the story I’d been circling for quite a while. Years ago, Northwestern taught me how to tell other people’s stories. This summer, it helped me tell my own.”
Applications are currently open for the workshop. The deadline to apply is January 11.
