Meet your Coaches
tessa fontaine
aka good cop
annie hartnett
aka bad cop
Hi! We’re here to support you (and your writing). Don’t worry, we’re nicer than we look.
How the Workshop Started…
It was 2018 and we were stuck. we both had mfas, we both had published books, but we needed something different.
Annie found an essay by Aimee Bender about a contract for accountability. We each drafted a contract, committed to word counts and daily check-ins and became accountability partners. The work got done. The agony ended.
Annie’s second novel, UNLIKELY ANIMALS, came out with Random House in 2022, and Tessa’s second book, THE RED GROVE, came out with FSG in 2024. Golly, that’s a happy story! We knew we had something we needed to share.
Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine is the author of THE ELECTRIC WOMAN: A MEMOIR IN DEATH-DEFYING ACTS (FSG, 2018), a New York Times Editors' Choice; Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and best book of the year by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors', and The New York Post.
THE RED GROVE (FSG, 2024), her debut novel, was named a best book by Amazon Editors’ and People Magazine, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
Other writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, AGNI, The Believer, People, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, and more. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa holds an MFA from the University of Alabama and 4/5 of a PhD (I know, I know) from the University of Utah. She founded Salt Lake City’s Writers in the Schools program, and has taught in jails and prisons. In 2022, she co-founded the Accountability Workshops with writer and pal Annie Hartnett, and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her daughter, dopey dog and sassy cat. Tessa teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
Annie Hartnett
Annie Hartnett is the author of novels RABBIT CAKE (Tin House Books, 2017) and UNLIKELY ANIMALS (Ballantine/Random House, 2022), and THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS (Ballantine/Random House, 2025).
Unlikely Animals was listed as one of the best books of 2022 by the Washington Post and BookRiot. It was the winner of the 2023 Julia Ward Howe prize for fiction, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It was the April 2022 book club selection for Good Housekeeping magazine and Amerie’s Book club. It received starred reviews from Booklist and Bookpage, and was an April Indie Next pick.
Rabbit Cake was listed as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2017, was a finalist for the New England Book Award, an Indies Introduce and an Indie Next Pick, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. It received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal, and was People magazine's Book of the Week.
Annie has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She holds degrees from the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, and Hamilton College. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and dog.
She also hosts a podcast with Tessa (and the writer Ellen O’Connell Whittet), but for some reason Tessa didn’t mention it in her bio. Maybe she’s embarrassed, perhaps for good reason. It’s called GOOD MOMS ON PAPER, and it’s about writing while parenting and we’d be very glad if you listened.
Poet in Residence
susannah nevison
Susannah Nevison is the author of Lethal Theater (The Ohio State University Press, 2019), the recipient of the Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize from OSU/The Journal, and Teratology (Persea Books, 2015), the recipient of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Most recently, she is also the author of In the Field Between Us, a collaborative collection with Molly McCully Brown (Persea Books, 2020).
Her honors include the 2014 Patricia Aakhus Prize from Southern Indiana Review, the 2013 American Literary Review Poetry Prize, an Academy of American Poets / Larry Levis Prize, and recent Pushcart Prize nominations in both poetry and nonfiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, The National Poetry Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Southern California, Columbia University, and the University of Utah, she currently lives and teaches in Virginia.
Our Programs
writer’s workshop
Build that writing muscle in one of our writer cohorts. We offer a flexible month-to-month option or an annual membership with a free month.
poet’s workshop
Join a group of poets tackling the unique challenges of writing and publishing. We offer a flexible month-to-month option.
writing camp
An immersive weekend away with your writing besties. Join us at our annual camp getaway for 5-days-and-4-nights of ass-in-chair writing action.