The Montreal Literary Lab (MLL) is a new independent Creative Writing program for aspiring writers who want access to highly experienced CW professors in a seminar setting, and with a shorter time commitment.
The Program at a Glance
Each eight-week course will take place synchronously online. Two optional in-person sessions will be offered in Montreal, one of North America’s most scenic and charming cities. Participants will have the chance to stroll through some of Montreal’s most iconic places, and, if they wish, join the instructors for an evening meal. (An online class option will remain for those unable to join the session in person).
- All participants will be pre-approved to maximize creativity and productivity in each course cohort. Classes will have no more than 12 students.
- All participants will be provided with in-depth assessments and guidance comparable to the standards that obtain in university programs.
- MLL accepts participants interested in working on fiction, personal essays, memoir, travel lit, and hybrid texts.
- Post-course assistance will be available to graduates. MLL aims to help participants achieve publication.
Founders
Mikhail Iossel
Guggenheim Fellow, Creative Arts, US & Canada, award-winning author of Love Like Water, Love Like Fire, and, most recently, Sentence. Iossel,originally from Leningrad/St. Petersburg, USSR/Russia (where he was a samizdat writer and member of a club of unofficial writers), has been teaching creative writing for over three decades in the US and Canada. He was the founding director of Summer Literary Seminars (1998-2019), one of the largest,most innovative and dynamic independent international literary programs. SLS’s seminars and workshops were held in Russia, Kenya, Lithuania, Georgia,Canada, and elsewhere. Read full biography here.
Josip Novakovich
Josip Novakovich emigrated from Croatia at the age of 20. He has published two novels, April Fool’s Day (in ten languages) and Rubble of Rubles, six story collections (Infidelities, Yolk, Salvation and Other Disasters, Heritage of Smoke, Honey in the Carcase and Tumbleweed) and three collections of narrative essays as well as two books of practical criticism. His work is anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award and an American Book Award, and he was a Man Booker International Award finalist. He has taught at Penn State, University of Cincinnati, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and now at Concordia University in Montreal. Read full biography here.
Olga Stein
Stein has a PhD in contemporary fiction, cultural institutions, and immigrant and transnational fiction. She is an editor, a widely-published essayist, literary critic, and poet, and a college and university instructor. Stein served as the chief editor of Books in Canada, one of Canada’s oldest book review journals, and helped develop the careers of many Canadian writers. Stein is also an experienced organizer of conferences, awards galas, and other literary events. Read full biography here.
Life in Montreal
Participants will have the chance to stroll through some of Montreal’s most iconic places.
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Program Cost
$600
USD / person
OR
$800
CAD / person
Find payment instructions here. And, please keep in mind that in-person attendance (entirely optional) can involve extra travel and accommodation costs.
Apply for the Upcoming Session
Due to the seminar structure of the program, enrollment is strictly limited to 12 students per session. Please submit your application below to be considered for admission.
Additional Information
- The Lab offers qualifying participants affordable access to instructors who are Creative Writing professors with decades of experience teaching at universities in the US and Canada.
- MLL’s instructors use best-practice approaches to help participants with new or in-progress manuscripts. Like any extant MFA program, MLL courses centre discussion, constructive critique, as well as assessment of all submitted work.
- MLL’s participants will improve, expand on, or perfect works-in-progress by working with instructors who are award-winning authors, and have a thorough understanding of the literary marketplace.
- The MLL is a space where promising writers can work with and learn from others in small classes. Applicants to the Lab must meet the program’s criteria for participation.
- The MLL’s participants will be offered preferential admission and rates for the Maasai Mara, Kenya, writer’s retreat, also affiliated with the Montreal Literary Lab.
- The MLL’s instructors will write recommendation letters for participants whose manuscript (short story, essay, memoir, etc.) is deemed ready for publication in a journal or in book form.