Summer Workshop

Our 2025 Summer Workshop Faculty readings are free and open to the public.

July 13th-20th
7:30pm
Cerf Amphitheatre, Reed College
Wheelchair Accessible (Map)/ASL Interpreters Provided

Sunday, July 13th
Olufunke Grace Bankole, KB Brookins, & Diana Khoi Nguyen

Monday, July 14th
Lucy Corin, Zara Chowdhary, Kim Fu, & Noor Hindi

Tuesday, July 15h
Isle McElroy, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Jake Skeets, & Deesha Philyaw

Thursday, July 16th
Jean Chen Ho, Julián Delgado Lopera, Franny Choi, & Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Friday, July 18th
Sidik Fofana, Jeanne Vanasco, Omar El Akkad, & Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Saturday, July 19th
Edgar Gomez, Kristen Arnett, & Danez Smith

Application Fee: $30
Tuition: $1800
Room/Board: $700
Early Arrivals: $75
Payment plans will be made available.

Dates:
July 11th/12th: Early Arrivals. Students may stay on campus for an additional fee of $75 per day.
July 13th: Opening Day. The program starts at 3:00 pm.
July 16th: Afternoon Off, with no workshop activities scheduled from 12 pm to 7 pm.
July 20th: Workshop Ends. 

The Tin House Summer Workshop is a weeklong intensive that consists of curated workshops, one-on-one meetings with faculty, craft lectures, author conversations, generative exercises, affinity group meetings, and student/faculty readings. Participants will also have the option of meeting with an agent (via Zoom) pre-conference. There will be plenty of opportunities for mingling, happy hours, and, of course, karaoke.

In an effort to create a better and more personal experience for our faculty and students,
we are dropping the number of students per class from 10 to 8 this year.

Participants will be expected to read up to seven other manuscripts and provide response letters for each project before arriving on campus.

The Workshop will take place at Reed College, located on 100 acres of rolling lawns, winding lanes, and magnificent old trees in southeast Portland, Oregon, just minutes from downtown and twelve miles from the airport.

Summer Workshop participants are housed in Reed College’s dormitories near the center of campus. All rooms are singles, with shared bathrooms (private stalls) on each floor. Most dorms include gender-neutral floors and facilities. Wheelchair-accessible rooms are available, as are dorms with elevator access. Please note that the dorms at Reed do not have A.C.

All classrooms, readings, panel presentations, dining, and reception areas are within 1/2 mile from the dormitories. Golf carts will be present throughout the week for rides to and from all dorms/events.

Lectures will be recorded and shared with participants at the conclusion of the workshop.

Meals are served in the college dining area and are catered by Bon Appetite. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and non-dairy items will be available, and we work closely with Bon Appetite to ensure other dietary requirements and restrictions are accommodated. Students who choose not to stay on campus can pay for meals individually.

We ask for one unpublished writing sample from the genre you plan to workshop in. You may apply in multiple genres, but we require a separate application for each.

For fiction/nonfiction, 4,000 words or less.

For poetry, four poems totaling no more than ten pages.

If you have previously been accepted/attended, please do not apply with the same sample. A different excerpt from the same project is acceptable.

Once admitted to Short Fiction/Poetry/Essay, you can workshop a manuscript different from the one you applied with.

If admitted in Novel/Memoir you may workshop a different excerpt from the same project you applied with.

In addition to the writing sample, the application asks for a brief bio and artist statement.

Applicants must be 21 by July 1st, 2025 to apply. 

Open to International writers.

There is no cap on the number of Tin House Workshops you may attend.

Applications are read by a board composed of Tin House Workshop staff and Reading Fellows (whose stipends are paid via the application fees). At least two readers will read all applications, and acceptance is based on the strength and promise of the writing sample and how much the board feels an applicant might benefit from the Workshop and contribute to the community.

Fee waivers: Through our Pay It Forward program, Tin House offers a limited number of application fee waivers. We will distribute these waivers on a first-come, first-serve basis. As an applicant, you can help cover the cost of another writer’s application fee through this same program. All excess application funds will go towards our Scholars Travel Fund.

For inquiries, please email workshop@tinhouse.com with the subject line “Summer Fee Waiver.”

All scholarship applicants are considered for general admission (you do not need to submit a separate general application). 

You may only receive a scholarship to attend an in-person Tin House Workshop once. An individual who receives a scholarship to attend our Winter Online Workshop is still eligible to apply and receive a scholarship to attend our in-person programming. We ask only that online scholars wait a year to apply i.e. you can accept a scholarship to attend the 2025 Winter Online Workshop and apply for a scholarship to attend the 2026 Summer Workshop.

Scholarships cover the total cost of the conference (tuition and room/board). 

The application does not require self-identifying information related to the award, nor do applicants need to apply with projects that speak to the scholarship they are applying for. 

We will notify scholarship winners (and all applicants) by the end of March. We announce our Scholars publicly after the workshop’s conclusion.  Our announcement does not delineate the specific award.

We will award two general scholarships per genre for our 2025 Summer Workshop.

In addition to our General Scholarships, we are offering the following specific awards.

Arab American Scholarship
This award is open to anyone who identifies as Arab American.

BIPOC Scholarship
This award is open to anyone identifying as Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color.

The Break Scholarship for Writers in Recovery
Tin House is pleased to partner with The Alano Club Of Portland in awarding a scholarship to attend our 2024 Summer Workshop. We welcome and encourage, without qualification, submissions by any artist recovering from alcoholism, drug addiction, and other addictive disorders.

The Carol Shields Prize Foundation Scholarship for Indigenous Women and Non-Binary Writers Tin House is pleased to partner with the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction to award a scholarship to a female/non-binary North American Indigenous writer. This award welcomes and encourages submissions by transgender woman authors and recognizes trans women as women without qualification. This award includes full tuition, room/board, and a travel stipend (up to $800). There is no application fee for this award. Email workshop@tinhouse.com to secure a waiver.

Debut 40 Scholarship
This award is intended for writers over forty years (by July 1st, 2024) who have not yet published a book (chapbooks do not count against this requirement).

North American Indigenous Author Scholarship
This award is open to any author identifying as Native American and/or Indigenous in North America. There is no application fee for this award. Email workshop@tinhouse.com to secure a waiver.

Own Path Scholarship
Open to any writer who does not have an MFA or is currently enrolled in an MFA Program.

Scholarship for Palestine
Open to any author identifying as Palestinian. There is no application fee for this award. Email workshop@tinhouse.com to secure a waiver.

Trans Writer Scholarship
This award is intended for any writer who is trans.

Without Borders Scholarship
This award is intended for any writer born outside of the United States.

Upon acceptance, everyone attending the 2025 Tin House Summer Workshop will need to email proof of vaccination/boosters. For those participants with approved religious or medical vaccination exemptions, proof of a negative COVID-19 PCR test must be sent within 72 hours before the workshop. 

Once on campus, face masks will be required (regardless of vaccination status) for all indoor activities, including workshops and communal dorm room spaces (lounge areas/kitchen/bathrooms). Outdoor activities such as readings and social hours will be mask-optional. 

Testing will be made available throughout the workshop. If participants test positive, they will be moved to an isolated room on campus. If this occurs, we will create a live stream for the workshop sessions and lectures and provide recordings of the lectures.

If you can’t attend via live stream and were scheduled to be workshopped that day, we will arrange for your workshop session to take place at a later date over Zoom.

These same procedures will apply should you no longer be able to attend in person for any reason (and we have passed the deadline to withdraw).

Please note that no tution refunds will be given due to illness.

Tin House Workshop Community Agreements 

I agree to read every manuscript before the workshop and come prepared with written feedback for each project.

I agree that writing shared in workshops is confidential and that I will not share or discuss a fellow writer’s work outside the workshop without their permission.

I agree not to record any portion of the workshop (classroom sessions, agent/editor meetings, etc.) or share/distribute any recorded lectures/readings made available to me without obtaining permission. 

I agree that it is my responsibility to investigate and better understand ​any words or cultural references I am unfamiliar with in a manuscript.

I agree to learn and use the correct pronunciation of my peers’ names.

I agree to use the correct pronouns for my peers, faculty members, and Tin House staff.

I agree to listen and engage with critiques of my work and/or comments I make during the workshop, especially if there are issues or questions of appropriation, harmful stereotypes, and/or language deemed to be racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, and ableist.

I agree to be aware of the amount I am speaking during the workshop and to make space for participants who may not be as vocal as me.

If there is conflict in my workshop, I will first seek mediation with my workshop faculty. If the conflict cannot be resolved or if the conflict is with my workshop faculty, I will notify Tin House Staff.

I agree to inform my workshop leader or Tin House staff if I witness harm being done to a fellow participant or me. 

I acknowledge that Tin House reserves the right to remove me from the Summer Workshop (without refund for tuition or travel) for violations of these Community Agreements and/or actions deemed detrimental to staff, faculty, and/or my fellow participants. This includes but is not limited to making unwanted sexual comments and/or advancements; using misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, and/or racially insensitive language; and aggressive or belligerent behavior.