Grow your book with Craigardan + Birds & Muses

The Bookgardan Program

Bookgardan participants devote a year to their book projects, writing and learning in community with an intimate group of dedicated women writers, guided from start to finish by the extraordinary literary mentor, Kate Moses. 

The program opens and closes with week-long fall residency intensives, during which participating writers are both Craigardan artists-in-residence and participants in the Bookgardan program — Bookgardaners. From the first residency onward Kate provides writers with the structure, foundational philosophy, technical tools, editorial and professional expertise, and individualized guidance required to develop and sustain their artistic practices, cultivate their manuscripts, and nourish their artistic and professional development, with the goal of bringing projects to an advanced level of fruition (a full first draft, a revised draft, or meeting an individual goal) by program's end. During Residency 1, scheduled to coincide with the Adirondacks’ dramatic fall color, each writer works with Kate to create a goal for their Bookgardan year and a plan to reach that goal. Residency 1 is also an in-depth introduction to Kate and the cohort, a rich opportunity to get to know each writer in the group and their aspirations, talents, and challenges, and what they bring to the group’s shared experience.  

Throughout the year, writers receive ongoing individual mentorship, including one-on-one access to Kate as needed in addition to monthly Zoom conferences in response to their manuscript submissions (a total of @360 pages over the year); writers receive extensive manuscript assessments, reading recommendations, tailored craft advice and other personalized input in conference, plus video & audio recordings and a conference transcription for every submission and its discussion. Writers also receive group mentorship from Kate in the form of Weekly Meeting video calls, during which writers keep each other up to date on their progress, share readings from their work (because who doesn’t love to be read to?), and become students of Bookgardan’s advanced craft & process curriculum, which prioritizes each writer’s emotional investment in their story, cultivating intuition and access to the subconscious, and the image as conveyor of meaning to the reader. Bookgardan teaches that technical craft is secondary to content -- the story's garments, not its life blood, as the late poet Linda Gregg would say. Monthly topics for discussion are curated to meet the particular needs and goals of the cohort, unpacked through seminar-style discussions of narrative elements, craft mechanics, and professional concerns, illustrated and supplemented by recommended texts, generative exercises, and input from notable guest writers and publishing professionals. Each week writers have the opportunity to participate in online Group Writes with their own cohort and Bookgardan alums, and there are numerous additional opportunities to take part in shared literary activities online and in person — readings, film watch parties, conferences, book launches — shared regularly by Kate throughout the year. 

Limited to a maximum of 6 participants per cohort, our writers are selectively chosen for the quality of their writings, and our cohorts are carefully assembled for the writers’ complementarity and the likelihood that they will both energize and be energized by each other’s writing projects and writing practices. The Bookgardan program culminates after twelve months — once again syncing with the arrival of breathtaking Adirondack autumn — during a second residency at Craigardan focused with the input of the cohort: previous themes of Residency 2 have been the business of writing and publishing, generative revision, writing intensives, and peer teaching. Always, Residency 2 includes individual conferences with Kate and the sustenance of lasting fellowship among the members of the cohort.

Kate’s reading of the Bookgardan writers’ full manuscript drafts follows the second residency so as not to cut short the full twelve months of the program’s curriculum and individual mentorship. At the completion of their Bookgardan year, Bookgardan writers are encouraged to stay connected with their cohort and Kate through a Bookgardan Alum membership, which typically includes continued Weekly Meetings, Group Writes, and special-topic online retreats. Alums may opt to continue in individual mentorship with Kate at a special Bookgardan Rate. Finally, Bookgardan writers who complete & polish their final-draft manuscripts with Kate have the option of submitting their work directly through Birds & Muses to our stellar (and growing) list of partnering agents. While submission is not a guarantee of representation, it is a rare chance to side-step the typical “over the transom” submission process and receive the attention of noted industry professionals to your finished manuscript. 

Unlike MFA programs and other independent manuscript development programs, Bookgardan is designed without the customary workshop model, which tends to place an unnecessary burden on the time and attention of writers, and can force them into tactical choices for their material when what the writers and their works-in-progress need is creative freedom, a delicate touch, and patience to develop. Instead of workshopping, we emphasize intuitive, generative, and organic development of works-in-progress supported by highly experienced literary mentorship and mutual peer encouragement, so that writers can keep their focus on their own writing project & practice throughout the program. Freed of the obligations of formal peer review, the cohort gets to know and trust each other through their shared experience during the first residency, when each writer introduces their project to the group and evenings culminate in writers reading their work to their curious, engaged, and interpersonally invested cohort.

How curious, engaged and invested?

The Bookgardan writers themselves were the instigators of weekly group meetings, thanks to their close relationships - it was the writers’ desire to have more continuity and contact with each other, to share accountability for their writing goals, and to continue to learn from each writer’s progress. These weekly meetings were so popular that we made them a cornerstone of the program, as fundamental to Bookgardan as reading to each other.

The 2018-19 Bookgardan cohort has elected to continue their tight connection with each other through a second, third, and fourth year together with Kate - an option open to all Bookgardaners through the Alum membership - even as some of the writers’ final manuscripts are now in submission to agents. The 2019-20 Bookgardan cohort planned a mid-year retreat because they missed each other too much to wait for their second fall residency; though their plans for a spring gathering at one writer’s rural home in northern California were dashed because of COVID-19, the mid-year retreat was held virtually nonetheless, including cocktail hour. The 2019-20 cohort has also continued into their third year together with Kate as alums. The 2020-21 cohort, our most recent alums, have started their first post-program year together with weekly peer teaching, and the full cohort will travel to Canada this summer for the wedding of one of their number. Members of Bookgardan ‘18-’19 and ‘19-’20 organized a writing intensive retreat for their two cohorts, and when all the Bookgardaners were offered the chance to spend a week together in-residence at Craigardan – completely separate from their Bookgardan programs – the available spaces filled in half an hour.

As a participant in Bookgardan, you can expect to build lasting connections with a handful of writers who get to know you and your work at a deep and meaningful level, relationships that will continue far beyond your year together as a cohort, and bely the idea of a writer’s life as a solitary endeavor.

History and Purpose

Bookgardan is the signature program for Birds & Muses, launched in 2018 in collaboration with Craigardan. With the benefit of three decades of informally mentoring individual writers and their book projects, coupled with her experience as a professional editor, as the author of acclaimed and best-selling literary fiction and nonfiction, and as a teacher of writing in and out of academia, Kate designed Bookgardan as her ideal structure for expansive literary development with Craigardan’s expertise in creating a community of trusted peers.

Kate knew firsthand the incomparable value of having a literary cohort, peers who are as invested in your writerly success as you are in theirs, whose friendships and guidance are unyieldingly trustworthy, generous, and wise.

Bookgardan was thus designed to offer writers of literary book projects the intensive, intimate, and lasting mentorship that is Kate’s innate talent and specialty, coupled with a small-group experience of literary camaraderie that relies on carefully assessing the professional needs and personal styles & values of each participant, plus a craft curriculum that emphasizes the intuitive, subconscious, nearly ineffable elements of literary craft that most literary educational structures are not designed to teach, altogether resulting in the kind of creative and supportive crucible in which each individual’s literary alchemy can occur.

Fellowships

Every year we award at least one Fellowship for enrollment in Bookgardan to a writer who is accepted into the program and could not otherwise attend due to financial constraints. The Fellowship covers 25% of program costs and, if needed, a preliminary Manuscript Reading of 200 pages. This brings the cost of the Bookgardan program down to the level of an individual mentorship with Kate, plus a gratis manuscript reading and all of the benefits of the Bookgardan program.

To be eligible, you must be accepted into the program; be a single mother; Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian; Disabled; or identify as LGBTQIA+. Expanded eligibility is available for 2023-2024 to include: Ukrainian women displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; or those severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bookgardan program applicants who indicate their intent to apply for a Fellowship will receive additional instructions upon acceptance.

Who Should Apply

Bookgardan is ideal for writers who are:

• Deeply committed to their own artistic development, and feel ready for advanced-level instruction, regardless of their previous training as writers

• Seeking the support and creative inspiration of a mentor who is devoted to their creative growth and professional success

• Invested in a long-form narrative book project of literary fiction (novel, novella, or short stories), memoir, topical creative nonfiction, lyric or personal essays, or a hybrid work of those forms

• Yearning for the creative energy and companionship of an engaged group of equally committed, talented peers

• Committed to the goal of traditional publication for their work, and intending to submit their manuscript to literary agents for representation

• In search of seasoned editorial assessment, ongoing & advanced technical guidance, accountability, and membership in a rigorous & sensitive community of serious writers

Participating writers may be at any stage of their project’s development, from a crystallizing idea to a full draft that needs refinement, and should be possessed of humility and generosity of spirit, a willingness to risk, and tenacity.

Bookgardan Writers:

Kathy Bratkowski

Maureen Cummins

Judy Haran

Gabrielle Prisco

Patricia Zaballos

Deirdre Gainor

Karen Hollis

Lisa Rizzo

Anna Soref

Sarah Balakrishnan

Donnaldson Brown

Kris Haines-Sharp

Julie Haupert

Tracy Mayo

Radhika Iyer

Crystal Cristophersen

Beth Kanter

Dantia MacDonald

Fredrika Sprengle

Rita Taryan

Tara Badstubner

Lorene Garrett

Meg Lamme

Ann Munroe Mullen

Michelle St. Romain Wilson