Fall 2026

We have a new course at McNally Robinson. Life Sketches in Words and Spark your Writing are returning. We'll update the details as we firm things up...

new course in McNally's classroom

October 3, 10, 17 & 24

Workshopping your Writing: the pleasure and the process

You have in hand a work in progress (WIP), maybe a manuscript or maybe a longer piece of writing (however you define ‘longer’ in your writing practice). You want fresh, creative, and critical eyes to help you through the hard work of refining and revising the piece.

This four-week course offers a dynamic and collaborative environment for writers interested in reviewing and reworking their WIP in the company of other writers doing the same. Deborah and Amanda will guide the conversation to ensure each writer has the time and space to present their work, to ask for specific feedback, and to respond to comments. The objective is for you to make progress on your WIP and to sharpen your critical-reading and response skills, while building community via the support of this group.

The class will be run as a seminar: Each writer will be invited each week to present their WIP to the group by reading excerpts and asking for specific comments and feedback. Our focus will be on structure, plot and narrative development. We will consider questions of beginnings and endings, characters, form, style, tone, and more. (This class is not about language-level editing.) Genres welcomed are fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir.

There will be pre-work before the first class and homework each week.

Saturday mornings / October 3, 10, 17 & 24

Fee: $150

Space limited to 8 participants

Dates TBC

Spark your Writing 1

No term of ours is complete without this perennial favourite -- and, this term, we're offering two sessions.

Fuel your writing practice with a weekly prompt sent to your email inbox on a specific day, followed later in the week by a collaborative, supportive conversation with a small cohort of enthusiastic and committed writers just like you. You will be inspired by reading your work aloud and by receiving constructive and encouraging feedback.

New sparks, always, in every session.

Dates TBC

Life Sketches in Words

Writing is a solo act, but when we do it in the company of others also engaged in capturing memories with words on the page it is both fun and remarkably productive. "Life Sketches" is six weeks of prompts to get you writing about your own life. A new topic each week. Every week writing, conversation and sharing. All designed to spark your memory and to get words down onto the page. Later, you can rework and revise those words. This course is about generating drafts and stories to get you started.

Wednesday mornings, 10 a.m. to 12 noon (Winnipeg time)

October / November : dates TBC

Via Zoom

Fee: $90