The Writing Workshop leaders for the 2025 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival on October 18, 2025, will be Michelle Brafman (Fiction), Ron Charles (Book Reviewing) Susan Coll (Fiction), E. Ethelbert Miller (Memoir), Kim Roberts (Flash Fiction and Prose Poems), and Margaret Talbot (Non-Fiction). Registration will begin on May 1, 2025.
Michelle Brafman
Fiction
“Making Art Out of Orts”
An ort is a table scrap, something that you might throw away in the trash. The prompts in this Workshop are designed to help writers hone their powers of observation and exercise their imaginations in order to memorialize the ordinary, yet often noteworthy, moments that can pass by us. The goal is simply to move the pen. No judgment. No pressure. No writing experience necessary. These exercises will help beginners and seasoned writers find their pathways into new and existing projects. Plus, we’ll have fun!
Michelle Brafman Bio:
Michelle is a writer and educator. She is the author of Washing the Dead (2015), which was featured in Book Riot‘s compilation of 100 essential-books on women and religion, and Swimming with Ghosts (2023). Her Bertrand Court (2016) includes stories that have received numerous accolades, including a Special-Mention in the Pushcart-Prize Anthology. Her essays have appeared in Oprah Daily, O Quarterly, Slate, Lit Hub, The Forward, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Tablet, and other publications. She teaches fiction writing at the Johns Hopkins MA in Writing-program and is the founder of Glen Echo Workshops, where she leads monthly multi-genre workshops and teaches summer college essay writing courses.
Ron Charles
Non-Fiction
“Writing Book Reviews”
In this Workshop we will explore the art of book reviewing, from selecting the right book and reading with a critical eye to crafting compelling reviews that resonate with readers.
Ron Charles Bio:
Ron Charles came to The Washington Post in 2005 and became the editor of Book World in 2016. He is now a full-time writer for the Post, where he covers books and produces the weekly Book Club newsletter. In 2010 he began a series of video book reviews for the Post called “The Totally Hip Video Book Review,” a satirical look at current books in the news and the art of book reviewing which sometimes features his wife, high school English teacher Dawn Charles. Once a month, he also hosts “The Book Report” on CBS TV’s Sunday Morning. A native of Missouri and a graduate of Washington University, prior to coming to the Post, for seven years he was editor of the book section of The Christian Science Monitor; and from 2013 to 2020, he hosted “Life of a Poet,” an interview series co-sponsored by the Library of Congress. In 2008, he received the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Citation for book reviews and 1st place for A&E Coverage from the American Society for Features Journalism; in 2014 he served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; and in 2018 he won the Louis Shores Award for excellence in reviewing from the American Library Association.
Susan Coll
Fiction
“Point of View”
Consideration of point of view in fiction writing is often given short-shrift, yet it is one of the most consequential choices an author can make. In this Workshop we will consider the ways in which the narrative changes when told from a variety of perspectives.
Susan Coll Bio:
Susan is the author of seven novels including the USA Today bestselling Real Life and Other Fictions (2024), Bookish People (2022), and The Stager (2014), a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice. Her 2007 novel Acceptance was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com. She was the president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore.
E. Ethelbert Miller
Non-Fiction
“Should You Write a Memoir Before You Die?”
Is a memoir as important as having a will?
What memories about your life do you want to save?
When does writing a memoir become urgent?
E. Ethelbert Miller Bio:
E. Ethelbert is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholars on UDC-TV, which received a 2020 Telly Award. He is Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. His How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask was published by City Point Press in 2022.
Kim Roberts
Fiction/Poetry
“Writing Short”
In this generative Workshop we will look at flash fiction and prose poems, and discuss the charm and challenge of brevity. How do these “short shorts” stop time, center on a single incident or character, and infer a rich backstory? How do we imply deep emotion as we distill the essentials of a story into a single paragraph? We will read some examples, talk about strategy, and then do some short writing of our own.
Kim Roberts Bio:
Kim is the author of six books of poetry––The Wishbone Galaxy (1994), The Kimnama (2007), Animal Magnetism (2011), Fortune’s Favor (2015), The Scientific Method (2017), and Q&A for The End of the World (2025)––; two books of non-fiction, Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word Poetry in DC (2010) and A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (2018); has edited two anthologies, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (2010) and By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems From the Early Days of Our Nation’s Capital (2020); and has founded two literary journals, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Delaware Poetry Review. She received the 2009 Pearl Poetry Prize for Animal Magnetism and the 2008 Independent Voice Award from the Capital BookFest for her “Contributions to the DC Literary Community”; and she has been given grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and Humanities DC and has been awarded residencies at eighteen artist colonies in the United States, including Art Omni International Arts Center, the Edward Albee Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ucross Foundation.
Margaret Talbot
Non-Fiction
“Here at The New Yorker”
The year 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of The New Yorker. In this Workshop we will talk about its style and substance and what makes a New Yorker piece. And just for fun we will try our hands at writing New Yorker cartoon captions.
Margaret Talbot Bio:
Margaret has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2004 and was formerly a Contributing Writer at The New York Times Magazine and Executive Editor of The New Republic. Her articles and essays have been anthologized in collections including The Best of the Best American Science Writing and The Art of the Essay. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and was a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. Her memoir/biography of her father, stage and screen actor Lyle Talbot, and his times, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, was published in 2012. USA Today called The Entertainer a “fascinating social history of America…at the same time, a warm father/daughter story;” and according to Slate, “Talbot has woven a tale as romantic and vivid as any film could hope to be, while still seeing every bit of it plain. She is as clear-eyed about her father as she is about history—no easy feat.” Her book profiling 1960s and 1970s radicals, By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution, written with her brother David Talbot, was published in 2021 by HarperCollins.