The Writing Group Book: Creating and Sustaining a Successful Writing Group

In this insightful guide, more than 30 members of writing groups explain how and why they found a group to join or established their own, how they have kept their group flourishing, and what it has enabled them to accomplish—from simple self-expression to a lifetime of published work. Poets, playwrights, screenwriters, fiction and nonfiction writers, memoirists, and children’s writers share advice on how to give constructive critiques, manage difficult members, delegate responsibilities for maintaining the group, and keep meetings productive. Online groups, international groups, and women-only groups are represented, and a resource section details ways to market and sell finished work and how to parlay one success into a writing career.

Lisa Rosenthal is a professional editor, playwright, and the founder of the Chicago-based Playwrights Collective. Her many staged plays include Just the Sweet Stuff, ReTreaT, and Under Our Clothes. She is the author of A Dog’s Best Friend. She won the Tremaine Fellowship in 2002. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.