The San Francisco Writers Workshop is one of the oldest continuously running writing critique groups in the United States, meeting every Tuesday night, except for major holidays, since 1946. Successful published authors who first workshopped their books in the group include Khaled Hosseini, David Henry Sterry, Aaron Hamburger, Joe Quirk, Michelle Gagnon, Kemble Scott, Tamim Ansary, Erika Mailman, Zarina Zabrisky, and Ransom Stephens. Tamim Ansary has moderated the workshop for twenty-two years until his retirement in 2015. Currently, the workshop is moderated by Kurt Wallace Martin, Judy Viertel, James Warner, and Olga Zilberbourg. The workshop is free and open to all interested writers and genres, providing a forum to share work-in-progress and receive constructive critiques from other writers. The group meets at the Alley Cat Books, near San Francisco's Mission district. Sessions are uniquely structured so participants share, aloud, up to six double-spaced pages of their work at a time. Writers are not allowed to speak or respond while the group critiques their work.
San Francisco Writers Workshop Alumni
Some of the published authors who have emerged from the workshop: Note: Partial List - Updates Requested
Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York, ', Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, The Widow's Husband
George Benet, author of A Short Dance in the Sun, A Place in Colusa
Robin Bullard, author of I Came by Cab. Robin moderated the workshop from 2015 to 2016
Michael Chorost, author of Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet
Christine Comaford, author of Rules for Renegades
Elaine Elison, coauthor with Stan Yogi of Wherever There's a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California
Tim Floreen, author of Willful Machines
Michelle Gagnon, author of The Tunnels, Boneyard, The Gatekeeper, Kidnap & Ransom
Rip Gerber, author of PHARMA
Stan Golberg, author of Lessons for the Living
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Aaron Hamburger, author of The View from Stalin's Head, Faith for Beginners
Ilse Sternberger, author of Princes Without a Home: Modern Zionism and the Strange Fate of Theodor Herzl's Children
David Henry Sterry, author of Chicken: Self Portrait of a Young Manfor Rent, Master of Ceremonies: A Story Story of Sex, Drugs, Roller skates, and Murder, editor of Ho's Hookers, Callgirls, and Rentboys
Bryna Stevens, author of Frank Thompson: Her Civil War Story, Handl and the Famous Sword Swallower of Halle, Deborah Sampson Goes to War, Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica
Mary Tall Mountain, author of A Quick Brush of Wings, Listen to the Night, Light on the Tent Wall
