Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference

Home
United States
Mendocino, CA
Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference

The next Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference runs from July 31 - August 2, 2025.

Three days of morning workshops (covering a wide range of genres) and afternoon seminars, panels, and one-on-one consultations with authors, editors, and agents.

05/27/2026

2026 MCWC Workshop Spotlight: "A Plot To Be Desired" with illustrious author and MCWC Board Member, Emily Lloyd-Jones!

There is nothing more daunting than a blank page. When should you begin a story? What ideas can you include and which ones do you leave out? How do you introduce characters? And how do you hook a young reader? In this workshop, participants will study how to craft an emotionally resonant narrative for middle graders and young adults. Learn how to take your ideas and turn them into a whole story, from a gripping first paragraph to a satisfying conclusion.

Register for Emily's workshop today at https://mcwc.org/2026-general-registration.

*Also, a limited number of scholarships for Mendocino County high school students are available. Learn more and apply on our website!

05/22/2026

2026 MCWC Workshop Spotlight: "Building Strong Worlds" with Tara Sim

Whether you're writing fantasy, science fiction, or even contemporary, worldbuilding is an integral part of telling a story. A world is so much more than where your characters live; it's what they interact with on a daily basis, what forms their perceptions and opinions, what gives them food and clothing, etc. While the process of worldbuilding may seem daunting, this workshop will break down the most fundamental elements, such as society, economy, and culture, to provide you with the necessary questions to ask when building a world from the ground up.

Learn more and register at https://mcwc.org/2026-general-registration

05/19/2026

The Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference is seeking new volunteer board members! We hope to recruit 1-2 more board members local to Mendocino or Fort Bragg. We are also in need of a board member willing to serve as Treasurer. Contact [email protected] to learn more.

05/18/2026

2026 MCWC Workshop Spotlight: "It’s Alive! - Finding the Spark In Your Work" with writer and experience creator Syr Beker

What is the magic that makes a piece of writing or art feel so uniquely, irresistibly alive, and how do we connect to that aliveness in our practice? What if a better word for craft was inspiration?

In this workshop, we will focus on image, structure, worldbuilding, characters, and endings to ask: what makes this feel alive. We will borrow methods across genre and art forms, including theater, architecture, and visual art, and we will listen deeply to what draws us. The goal is to discover, beyond sometimes limiting notions of craft, the practices and concepts that give you, specifically you, access to that current of electricity that makes your writing come roaring to life.

Learn more and register at https://mcwc.org/2026-general-registration!

05/15/2026

2026 MCWC Workshop Spotlight: "(Don’t) Spare Me the Details: A Fiction Workshop" with Laura Warrell

The unsung hero of storytelling is, in large part, detail, what writer Francine Prose calls “the building blocks with which a story is put together” and “the clues to something deeper.”

Precise, perhaps even unexpected, details make plots riveting, characters compelling, and sentences elegant. In this fiction workshop, we will examine the multitude of ways authors incorporate details into their work and explore techniques for finding the perfect detail to make a story come alive on the page. We will workshop submitted manuscripts, paying close attention to the author’s use of detail. Generative work will hopefully reveal the untapped magic of our stories.

Save your seat at https://mcwc.org/2026-general-registration!

05/03/2026

Great news: we're extending our early bird discount through the weekend! Register for this year’s conference by Sunday, May 3 and get $25 off your registration fee. Spots are filling fast. Visit our website at www.mcwc.org to learn more & register today!

05/01/2026

2026 MCWC Instructors, Emily Lloyd-Jones (MG/YA) and Tara Sim (Speculative Fiction), share a conversation about their writing journeys, world-building, and the perfect witty line. Read more on the blog: https://mcwc.org/blog/tara-sim-and-emily-lloyd-jones

04/27/2026

2026 MCWC Workshop Spotlight: "Writing Crisis: Crafting the Literature of Turbulent Times" with award-winning author Roberto Lovato

Living in times marked by relentless and intersecting crises, the serious writer must ask, “Where is the literature that responds to this astonishing moment?” Our goal for this workshop is to answer the question by crafting our own, by writing crisis. This introduction to the art of writing the prose of crisis—memoir, journalism, different genres of fiction and science fiction—(and poetry if there’s interest) will begin by looking at the crisis in literature that has created the vacuum that we will fill with our own work, including work we will polish in the course of our session.

Spots for this year's workshops are filling fast! Register now at https://mcwc.org/2026-general-registration.

04/15/2026

2026 MCWC WORKSHOP SPOTLIGHT: Multi-Genre Prose Workshop with Lisa Lee

This workshop is about finding the heart of your writing—the stories, images, and experiences that are most compelling to you—because this is what will keep you coming back to the work amid all the distractions that compose a full life. For writers working in fiction and nonfiction who may not have a lot of time to commit to a writing practice, for all levels, including advanced writers and those without an extensive background in writing. Learn more and register at https://mcwc.org/.

Also, read our exclusive interview with Lisa Lee, author of the novel AMERICAN HAN, now on MCWC's blog: https://mcwc.org/blog/lisalee

04/10/2026

REGISTRATION FOR 2026 MCWC IS OFFICIALLY OPEN

Take advantage of our early bird special of $875 for tuition through April 30. Visit our website to learn more about our workshops spanning multiple genres, including poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, novel, memoir, speculative fiction, Middle Grade/YA, hybrid, and prose. Register today at mcwc.org/2026-general-registration.

Hope to you this summer July 30-August 1, 2026 on the coast!

Address

Mendocino, CA
95460

Website

http://www.mcwc.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Want your organization to be the top-listed Non Profit Organization in Mendocino?