The Invitation

AYS Writing Bootcamp is an invitation to pause, reconnect with your creative voice, and spend a few hours in conversation and practice with a community of people who believe stories matter.

Conversations with Writers and Storytellers: Hear directly from writers about their creative process: how they find ideas, navigate doubt, and transform rough drafts into meaningful work.

Craft and Voice: Explore the building blocks of storytelling: voice, rhythm, narrative tension, and the courage to write what feels most true.

Writing as Practice: Discover ways to build a sustainable writing practice; from daily habits to creative rituals that help you stay connected to your voice.

Experiential Writing Sessions: Participate in writing exercises and prompts that help bring ideas off the page and into your own creative work.

The Experience

Throughout the Bootcamp, guest writers and storytellers will share insights from their own work, from memoir and essays to poetry and cultural storytelling. 

Together we'll get into:

• First drafts, revision, and the full arc from raw page to finished work
• Personal narrative as investigation, writing your own life with rigor and honesty
• Identity, reclamation, and writing back against the stories told about you
• Restraint and the power of the short form
• The path from manuscript to bookshelf: agents, editors, and getting published

Your Guides

Noor Tagouri (REP: A Story About the Stories We Tell)

Rupi Kaur  (milk and honey, the sun and her flowers, home body)

Hala Alyan  (Salt Houses, The Arsonists' City, I'll Tell You When I'm Home)

Joél Leon  (Everything and Nothing at Once)

Aymann Ismail (Becoming Baba)

Zaron Burnett III  (Black Cowboys, Ridiculous Crimes, and Noor's Co-Writer on REP)

Meg Leder (Editorial Director, Penguin Life)

Logistics

• Dates: Sunday April 12

• Time: 11AM - 3PM EST (New York)

• Format: Live virtual gathering on Zoom

• Recordings: Available to registered participants

Schedule

Intention Setting with Noor Tagouri 

Before you can write the story, you have to know why it matters to you. Noor opens the summit by inviting attendees to name the story they came here to move closer to, and the fear standing between them and the first word.

First Drafts + Polishing Poetry and Prose with Hala Alyan and Joél Leon

Hala once told Noor: First drafts are meant to be burned. This session is about surviving them anyway: how to get the raw, sticky, unformed thing onto the page without cleaning it up too soon, and then how to return to it with the precision and devotion it deserves. Hala and Joél work across poetry and prose, and together they map the full messy arc from the first terrifying sentence to the one that finally says what you meant.

Writing to Reclaim the Narrative with Aymann Ismail 

The stories told about our families, our cultures, and our faiths are rarely the ones we would have chosen. Aymann brings his background in visual journalism and cultural criticism to a session about how to write back — how to approach identity not as a topic to defend but as a source of genuine complexity worth investigating on the page.

— Writing Exercise —

— Movement Break —

Excavating Your Deepest Truths with Noor Tagouri and Zaron Burnett

The story you keep writing around is the one you were born to write through. Noor and Zaron go deep on the investigative approach to personal narrative — how to treat your own life with the same rigor, curiosity, and unflinching honesty you'd bring to any subject worth reporting on.

The Business of the Book: Agents, Editors, and Getting Published with Meg Leder and Guest TBD

What actually happens after you finish the thing? Two of publishing's most trusted advocates —a literary agent and an acquiring editor—demystify the path from manuscript to bookshelf. How to write a query, what agents are actually looking for, what editors do to a book once they love it, and how to protect your voice through the whole process.

The Short Form is Not the Small Form with Rupi Kaur

A technical session on compression, white space, and why restraint is one of the hardest and most powerful skills a writer can develop.

Closing: Group Shares + Ceremony with Noor Tagouri Attendees share one line from the writing exercise — not the most polished line, the most honest one. Noor closes by reading the questions submitted throughout the summit, because the questions we're still living inside are the ones most worth writing toward.

Who This Is For

• Writers developing their voice
• Artists using words as their medium
• Creatives curious about writing as a practice
• Anyone who's been circling a story they haven't told yet

You don't need to call yourself a writer to belong here. Whether you're an experienced writer or just starting to explore your voice, this gathering is designed to meet you where you are.

What You'll Receive:

• 4 hours of conversations, writing exercises, and creative sessions
• Access to recordings of all sessions
• Your own AYS Clubs account and content library
• Access to the AYS Community Discord to connect with other writers and creatives
• Early access to upcoming AYS programs, clubs, and workshops

Investment & Access

Full Investment: Sliding Scale Starting at $99 (Full Value: $499)
Your registration includes all live sessions, recordings, resources and broader AYS community access including our Discord channel, meetups and more.

Scholarships Available
No one should be kept from this work due to finances. If you'd like to request financial assistance, please email community@ays.media and we will be in contact with options.

Sponsor a Seat
Gift a seat to someone requesting scholarship. Any amount that you contribute over the $99 suggested fee directly supports the scholarship fund for someone in your cohort.

Join Writing Bootcamp

Spots are limited to preserve the intimacy of the container.

Full session themes and details will be shared prior to our first gathering.

 For questions and inquiries: community@ays.media

At Your Service