Application is required to participate in this class, and is open until Friday, January 26 at 11:59PM EST.

$400 w/financial aid available. Classes open to residents of Greater Philadelphia only (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties)

8 week class: Wednesdays 6-8PM EST, February 21- April 10 (optional make up date April 17)

Camille Acker is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Training School for Negro Girls published by The Feminist Press. She grew up in Washington, D.C and holds a B.A. in English from Howard University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from New Mexico State University. Her writing has received support from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Tin House, and Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. As a creative writing teacher, she has advised and mentored students across the United States including at New Mexico State University, Tin House Writers Workshop, University of the Arts, Chicago Writers Studio, and Blue Stoop in Philadelphia. She was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2020 and was named a 2022 Fellow by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Her work has been published in The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Electric Literature, as an Audible Original, and is in the anthology On Girlhood: 15 Stories From the Well-Read Black Girl Library. She has two books under contract with Random House and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Writing in Place is a multi-genre storytelling project in which participants are encouraged to explore issues of identity, community history, and personal culture through the lens of their residence—new or lifelong—within the city of Philadelphia. The writing of selected participants will be published, along with the work of other writers, in an edition of APIARY literary magazine in hard copy and digital media.

The project will conduct three 8-week writing instruction classes that focus on development of craft in poetry (with Gabriel Ramirez), fiction (with Camille Acker), and creative nonfiction (with Joseph Earl Thomas); two workshops in small press and online publishing, including sessions where participants learn to prepare and revise their work for publication; and the opportunity to see their work published in APIARY, a respected publication devoted to Philadelphia writers.

8 week classes will be held online, and publishing workshops will be held in-person at Head & the Hand Books.