June 2026 – June 2027
There’s a book inside you.
Make this the year you committed to writing it.
About Fishtrap’s Yearlong Writers Workshop
Fishtrap’s Yearlong Writers Workshop is a 13-month intensive distance-learning program that focuses on one-on-one instruction to help you reach your goals as a writer. During the year, you will work closely with your instructor and fellow students exchanging your work for review. With each exchange, you move closer toward completing a full-length manuscript.
The Yearlong Writer’s Workshop is best suited for those who have started, or are about to start, a book-length project:
- longform fiction, including novels and short story collections;
- longform nonfiction, including memoir, research-based narrative, and essay collections.
- hybrid mixes
Embark on the joyful journey of writing a book.
With Laura Pritchett as your guide, you will focus on the essential and practical considerations for creating a longer narrative in your preferred genre.
The year begins and ends at the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers. There you’ll have an opportunity to commune with your Yearlong cohort for a week of workshops, craft talks, nature walks, and shared meals in the shadows of the Wallowa Mountains. In between, you’ll benefit from regular community connections — including monthly zoom workshops and craft classes — providing structure, guidance, and accountability. Discussions include serious and robust examinations of structure, themes, point of view, launching spots, building character, developing setting, and sustaining a plot.
We’ll also focus on the psychology of it all—as Laura likes to say, “You date a short story or essay, but you marry a book.” How can we sustain the long-term relationship required to finish a long project?
Yearlong Writers Workshop Tuition
$7,800
A $650 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your spot in the class.
Tuition is due in 11 monthly payments of $650 beginning June 23, 2026. You can receive a 10% discount if your tuition is paid in full by June 23, 2026.
Tuition Includes:
Registration and Workshop instruction for the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers June 23 – 28, 2026 and June 22 – 27, 2027 Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers.
- All individual monthly instruction during the Yearlong Writers Workshop course.
Tuition does NOT include:
- Lodging or meals for the 2026 and 2027 Weeklong Summer Fishtrap Gatherings
- Transportation to or from Summer Fishtrap
- Materials and postage expenses
- Communications expenses
Former participant Jacqueline Haskins has this to say: “One of the best experiences of my writing life! I walked into Laura’s year-long with an ungainly pile of words—I walked out with a coherent ms and an agent, and a year later had a top-tier publisher for my first-ever book.”
As one of Pritchett’s recent students said, “You just saved me a year or two of time!”
Laura Pritchett’s fiction is rooted in the natural world—and celebrates the people who live close to it. She’s the author of seven novels, two nonfiction books, and editor of three anthologies, and her work has been the recipient of the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, and several Colorado Book Awards. She’s also a freelance writer with publications in the LA Times, The New York Times, Orion, Terrain, The Colorado Sun, Salon, Creative Nonfiction, and more. She holds a PhD from Purdue and she directs the low-residency MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, one of the few graduate programs dedicated to writing about the natural world. More at www.laurapritchett.com