Fast Response Deadline for Winter Cohort: December 15, 2024 Apply Now

Grow Your Writing with Gayle

Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss (Overcup Press.) Earlier books include the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press), the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns (Black Lawrence Press), shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press), the craft book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne) and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize, Self Storage (Ballantine), Delta Girls (Ballantine), and My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt BYR), a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Her work has appeared in such places as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Rumpus, and has won numerous awards, including the Columbia Journal Nonfiction Award and the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Prize. She lives in Highland Park, IL and teaches in the low residency MFA in Creative Writing programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe.

Spots Still Available

Apply to join Gayle’s small group of writers that she will lead through our unique 12 week mentoring and workshopping program.

Decide if Gayle's Right for You with Our Mentor Interview

What excites you most about writing?

“I’ve been writing since I was four years old. My first poem set the template for my writing life in many ways:

Blow, little wind,
blow the trees, little wind,
blow the seas, little wind,
blow me until I am free, little wind.

I still feel most free (and brave!) when the winds of writing course through me. That’s been with me from the start, from that first poem at 4. Writing always pushes me out of my comfort zone. It helps me pay deeper attention to my life and the world around me, and helps expand my sense of possibility and connection,” Gayle said.

What mindset does a writer need to grow?

“Openness—an open mind, an open heart, open senses. There’s always more to learn, to explore, to notice, to experience, to try, and staying open opens the scope of our writing and our life!”

What three words best describe you as a mentor?

“Nurturing, inspiring, liberating.”

What makes a good writing mentor?

“Meeting writers where they are and helping them move toward their vision (and expand their sense of what’s possible!”

What is your style of feedback?

“I use track changes and write directly on the document—I like to celebrate what’s working, ask questions to help writers move toward clarity, and point toward where the language could be honed, scenes could be deepened, or other ways the project could become more fully itself.”

What was the most recent "standout" book you read?

“I’ve read my friend and former student Amy Shimshon-Santo’s new poetry collection Random Experiments in Bioluminescence multiple times in various drafts, and am so blown away by its final state…it contains multiple languages, both human and beyond-human, and beautifully expands the scope of our conversation with the earth and one another on the page. A revelatory book.”