Can We Be Friends? Writing Friendship in Fiction & Poetry with Emily Nemens

We're overjoyed to offer this fantastic generative writing workshop with novelist Emily Nemens!

About the workshop:

Friendships can be some of the most important relationships in our lives—though IRL and in literature, they often play third fiddle to romantic entanglements and familial obligations. In this generative workshop, we’ll look at examples of fiction and poetry that foreground friendship and work through generative prompts to imagine how platonic relationships can inspire and expand our creative work.    

About Emily Nemens:

Emily Nemens is the author of two novels. Clutch, to be published in February 2026 by Tin House/Zando, is “impressive…. Full of intelligence, social consciousness, and cultural engagement,” according to Kirkus Reviews, while her debut, The Cactus League, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and named one of NPR’s and Lit Hub’s favorite books of 2020. Emily spent a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College and lives in central New Jersey with her husband and dog.