Welcome to the Writers’ Collaborative Learning Center
We grow connections – to ourselves, to each other, and to our craft. If you dream about writing, here’s where you belong.
What is the WCLC?
WCLC is a community writing together.
Our community improves your confidence as a writer. It is our shared passion for writing, along with our diverse experiences and perspectives, that helps you find your unique voice, and enables you to tell meaningful stories.
WCLC is a supportive and motivating learning community, with classes for all types of writing disciplines. I came away from my class with not only more knowledge, but also more confidence in my abilities as a writer!
Liz
This course took something overwhelming and scary, and made it completely digestible. If you have any interest in writing, or any inclination to writing, but feel intimidated by where to start, how to start, whether you’re good enough, whether you have anything to say, this course is for you.
Amanda
This is the place I always needed as a writer. Camaraderie. Support. And skilled knowledgeable instructors.
WCLC writer
Why WCLC?
Build and nurture your craft
Here, your craft improves with routine writing, thoughtful observation, and nurturing conversations that help reinforce your instincts and choices.
Collaborate with other writers
We use a collaborative learning approach that values shared knowledge, participation, and dialogue. Our courses build upon the writers’ personal experiences, language, culture, and ideas. Together, we set realistic writing goals.
Create space for yourself and your writing
We understand the value of a dedicated writing space, so we created a place for you to write alone or with a group that is supportive, productive, and helps you connect to yourself and others.
Joining our community is easy.
Here’s how it works:
1
Try a Writing Circle
A loosely structured gathering to provide focused writing time – build your habit, increase motivation, and get feedback. In your first month, join our weekday writing circles for free, when you sign up.
2
Meet with a coach
We want to hear about your writing. No matter where you are on your writing journey, we’ll help you get started with our community and programs.
3
Join our community
We believe in the strength of community. Our writers come together to practice, support, inspire, laugh, and learn – to grow connections – to each other, ourselves, and our craft.
Programming
Writing Circles
A loosely structured gathering to provide focused writing time – build your habit, increase motivation, and get feedback. Writing Circles are offered Monday-Friday 10am to 3pm EST.
Courses
Strengthen your skills and understand where you can improve by enrolling in our courses. We offer novel writing, memoir, playwriting, and other genres. You’ll learn strategies to accomplish your writing goals and you’ll discover tools to help with critiquing and revising.
Coaching Circles
Writers can use Coaching Circles to develop ideas, get feedback, set goals, solve plot problems, or create a publishing plan. It’s up to you! Schedule these with any of our leads.
Workshops
Learn solutions to your writing challenges and gain new knowledge as a result of the practical training offered in our workshops. We explore the business and craft of writing in these formal, structured, and guided sessions.
Intensives
Commit to your writing practice, become accountable to your writing goals, and understand the steps to achieve your vision. The goal of our multi-session, six month intensives is to engage you in the deep, immersive efforts required to produce a creative work.
Events
Join our community events, whether open mic nights, author readings, or speaker engagements. They’re a wonderful way to connect with our writing community, build your network, learn something new, and enjoy an informal night out!
Membership
We offer in-person and virtual experiences, in a collaborative environment.
Choose which format is best for you.
In-person membership
$59/month
- Dedicated writing space, both private and communal
- Complimentary snacks, drinks, refrigerator, and more
- Initial writing consultation
- Unlimited Writing Circles
- 10% off Coaching Circles and workshops
- 20% off Courses, Intensives, and Events
virtual membership
$29/month
- Initial writing consultation
- Weekly virtual writing Circles
- 10% off Virtual Coaching Circles and Workshops
- 20% off virtual Courses, virtual intensives, and virtual Events
While our programs and facilities will always be evolving, at this early phase, we have limited program offerings and limited use of our space, but with the promise of more to come. Join now to enjoy this discounted rate on your WCLC membership.
Schedule
Join us in downtown Reading, MA!
Our writing space is a community for people seeking a space to write, share feedback, develop skills, and connect.
The building features a coffee bar, shared open tables and chairs, private workspaces, and an event space for member programming.
We’re conveniently located directly across from the MBTA Commuter Rail station, on the Haverhill line.
We can’t wait to write with you.
2 Haven Street, Suite 102 & 103 Reading, MA 01867
Our course leads use a collaborative learning approach
What does that mean? It means we personalize our programs based on your writing level and goals. It means we value and build upon the knowledge, experiences, language, and culture that you, as a writer, bring to the course.
Laura Hatosy
Course Lead
Background
Laura was born in NJ, which means she has to fight her genetic predisposition for big hair and pork roll. She received her degree in education from Rutgers University and her Masters in history from Harvard. Her teaching experience ranges from museums to libraries and classrooms. It was while teaching the Holocaust curriculum, Facing History and Ourselves, that she learned about the story of Terezin, the camp on which Drawn from Memory, her novel, is based.
expertise
Laura specializes in young adult and adult novel writing and independent publishing.
wip
Adrift, a YA contemporary fantasy. Sixteen-year-old homebody Thea Deveraux gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle while shooting her father’s travel reality television show.
Nancy Parsons
Course Lead
Background
After a long career in advertising, Nancy turned to writing her own material, including several published memoirs. She has also published two essay collections and eight novels; memoir, however, is her special interest.
expertise
Nancy is an enthusiastic advocate for memoir.
wip
Old Crow, a novel written during the WCLC’s recent challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Return to Goshen, the third in the Goshen Island novel series.
Evea Raye
Course Lead
Background
Evea received her Bachelor’s in creative and professional writing from Central Washington University, her Master’s in English with a Writing Specialization from Salem State University, and her Master’s of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of New Hampshire, where she taught English Composition and fiction courses.
expertise
Evea specializes in speculative fiction with an emphasis on the uncanny, including fantasy, world building, magical realism, and realistic fiction.
wip
Evea is working on an untitled, speculative fiction/fantasy novel. It is still in the early stages, but can best be described as Tim Burton meets Stranger Things.
Claudette Sabbag
Course Lead
Background
Claudette is a retired teacher living in Reading, Massachusetts. In addition to reading and writing, she enjoys golfing, hiking, skiing, and the beach.
She is currently writing realistic fiction in short story or novel form.
expertise
Fiction, short-story and novels.
wip
The Deer in the Road
“A troubled young man has an encounter with a deer, setting off a series of events that force him to make life-changing decisions that will reverberate into the future.”
AJ Smith
Course Lead
Background
AJ studied film and creative writing at Boston University and now runs his own independent publishing company. He has three illustrated children’s books published with plans to release a three-part novel series in 2025.
expertise
Fiction, supernatural, realistic magic, horror, mystery, children’s illustrated.
wip
A three-part series of magic and mystery about four high school kids, who, while doing a history project around Salem, MA, uncover a secret which will endanger their lives, threaten their souls, and change history forever.
Asa Sutton
Course Lead
Background
For more than a decade, Asa has been writing short—and long-form narrative. He publishes his work at www.mattcantorwriting.com.
expertise
Asa specializes in surrealism and fabulism, with an emphasis on folklore and mythology.
wip
Moonlight in Her Hand, Surrealism/Historical Fiction/ “At the height of Spain’s Inquisition, a Morisco girl finds herself following in the shaky footsteps of the recently deceased Don Quixote to try and right the unrightable wrongs unfolding all around her.”