Networking for Writers: Building Your Community

The anti-social writer stereotype is a myth! To tell human stories, we need human connection. This workshop reframes "networking" for writers as a practice of relationship-building, mutual support, and seizing opportunity, rather than self-promotion or career advancement alone. Many writers are alienated by traditional networking models that prioritize extraction, competition, or constant visibility. This session offers an alternative: networking grounded in curiosity, care, and long-term community.

Through guided discussion, low-pressure interactive exercises, and structured small-group exchanges, participants will practice ways of connecting that feel humane, accessible, and aligned with their values. The workshop emphasizes listening, naming shared constraints, and identifying forms of support writers can realistically offer one another.

Participants will leave with:

● Practical tools for initiating and sustaining writer-to-writer relationships

● Language for articulating needs and boundaries without pitching

● A clearer sense of what kind of writing community they want to build or participate in

This is not a workshop on querying agents, selling books, or branding. It is for writers who want to be a part of a community.

Jamie Stewart Crawford (she/they) is an author & nonprofit administrator in Cleveland, Ohio. She is one of two fiction writers selected for the Literary Cleveland Breakthrough Writing Residency 2026. Her literary work is published in many online journals and anthologies, such as Unapologetic Love: A Charity Anthology of Radical Resilience Vol. 1 and Driftwood and Dreams: Stories Set Along the Great Lakes .