What is your manuscript missing?
"Attending the VCFA Writers' Conference was an incredible benefit to my writing. The small group setting for workshop enabled us to focus more deeply on exactly what each writer needed for their work-in-progress. Meeting one-on-one with my workshop advisor gave me additional insight into my work and real world information on the publishing industry. I loved spending time with people who love writing as much as I do — the atmosphere was invigorating and motivating."
Writer's Toolkit
Seven craft tools from the faculty of the VCFA Writers' Conference — fiction writers, memoirists, poets, and screenwriters who have spent their careers in the room with serious writers. A self-assessment to start. A writing prompt with each tool. A revision log to keep near your manuscript.
At the conference, workshops hold exactly six writers — because that intimacy is the point. Every participant also receives a dedicated one-on-one hour with their faculty instructor to go deeper into their manuscript alone.
Writer's Toolkit
the VCFA Writers' Conference at CalArts
We know what it costs to take your writing seriously in a world that rarely does.
We know the loneliness of the desk, the years of working without the right readers, the hunger for a room full of people who understand exactly what's at stake in a sentence.
For 30 years, this conference has been that room.
Not the writer who is curious about writing — the one who cannot stop. The one who reads other writers closely, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with envy. The one who carries a manuscript around like a low-grade fever, returning to it early in the morning or late at night, convinced it is almost there.
These tools are not rules. What they can do — if you work through them honestly with your actual manuscript in front of you — is help you see what the work is already doing and where it might want to go next.
Now, at CalArts — one of the world's great creative campuses — with faculty who have spent their careers in the room with serious writers, we're building it again. Better. More alive than ever.
Co-Chair, VCFA Writing Program · Editor in Chief, Hunger Mountain
"The questions matter more than the answers. The answers are yours."
The VCFA Writers' Conference is built on the same idea. We do not arrive with a template for good writing. We arrive with attention — close, rigorous, generous attention to the work you bring.
The conversations that grow out of that — between writers who have taken each other seriously — are often the most useful conversations a writer can have.
"Thirty years of proof that serious writers change in this room."
The faculty of the VCFA Writers' Conference at CalArts
Workshops of six writers. A one-on-one faculty consultation for every participant. Faculty selected because their work and their teaching both belong in the serious room.
Free. Instant access. No credit card. Apply it to your manuscript this week.
at CalArts
Download the Toolkit → Reserve your place → Leave changed.
Not with a certificate. With a clearer voice, a stronger manuscript, and a cohort of writers who know your name and your work. The isolation is broken. The work is no longer just yours alone.
The conference holds 84–100 writers by design — because the intimacy is the point. Each workshop has just six writers. Every participant gets a private one-on-one hour with their faculty instructor. And the informal conversations over meals, between sessions, and late into the evening? Those are part of the curriculum too.
Learn more & register →finally in the West.
For 30 years, writers in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest have traveled east for this conference. This August, the conference comes to them — on the CalArts campus in Valencia, California. Same rigor. New address. One week at CalArts.
Austin · Denver · Phoenix · Albuquerque · Los Angeles · Portland · Seattle · San Francisco · Boise · Tucson
Whatever you write, there's a workshop for it
30 years of serious writers. One week that changes everything.
"There is something magical going on up there. I think you have perfected the writers' conference as we know it."
"Best week of my writing life."
"What a wonderful experience. It really felt like a conference of peers."
"I love that there is no border between students and teachers. A true creative community."
"One of the most positive experiences I've ever had, and definitely the most valuable conference I have attended."
Not every conference is the right fit at every stage. Here's our honest read.
"If you read the left column and felt something — a quiet recognition, a small lean of relief that someone named the thing you've been carrying — then you already know. This is for you. Come."
— Adam McOmber, Conference Director
Download the Toolkit. Use it this week. Then join us in Valencia this August — while there's still a place for you.
Ready to register? Reserve your place at CalArts → · Fewer than 50 spots remain.