The Nest is an online home for women writers, making it possible for more of you to benefit from the mentorship of a seasoned peer who cares about the story you have to tell and your growth as a writer as much as you do, and has the professional expertise and experience to help you become the writer you want to be. 

Eight years ago, Kate Moses – internationally acclaimed novelist, bestselling memoirist, cofounder of Salon’s Mothers Who Think, award-winning editor, beloved teacher – decided to dedicate herself exclusively to the development of other women writers and their work. As a lifelong feminist, a voracious reader who trained on the job as a literary editor, a much-published storyteller who’d established herself without an MFA, a teacher who’d never read a literary craft text until she faced a classroom of students, Kate wanted to “pay it forward,” sharing what she had learned about writing with other women writers. Through Birds & Muses Kate has worked with hundreds of women writers individually and in small groups, and can attest that to tell a woman’s story is to change lives – the storyteller’s, and those who hear her tell it.

Kate’s unique ways of mentorship and literary teaching aren’t typical, and they take time, nurturance, and mutual commitment. Committing yourself to this kind of writing is like agreeing to walk around with your heart in your hands, so a scaffolding that invites creative risk and supports vulnerability is essential. The program structure and online membership of The Nest will take advantage of the energy, validation, and sense of belonging that’s consistently inspiring and productive in Kate’s mentoring of small groups, while allowing for more writers to participate – and have one-on-one time with Kate as well.

• If you identify as a woman writer in some foundational way, 

• If you are striving to make art with your writing, 

• If you take your writing seriously, whether or not you have a specified project or an 

MFA or are published, and are willing to develop your “core muscles” as a writer – willing to put in the time, leaps of faith, questioning of assumptions, and self-assessment that growing artistically requires, 

• If you long for a like-minded community of writers as generous of spirit and conscientious with their attention as you are,

• If you believe that women’s stories are both more essential and more imperiled than ever, 

The Nest is intended for you.     

While The Nest has no requirements for previous publication or advanced literary education, or even a specified “project” you’re working on, it is intended to be a challenging program for literary artists who are striving for advanced creative development and discovery in narrative-based literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid works, in community with other writers who share that aim. For this reason, The Nest is not best suited for beginning writers, or writers who are working in primarily formula-based genres such as romance, fantasy, mystery, YA, science fiction, guidebooks, or self-help. If you wonder if you and your work would benefit from The Nest, please do get in touch with Kate at kate@birdsandmuses.com.   

Magalí Morales, MSW, is a Latina writer, counselor, and healer. Trained by the best trauma theorists of our time, she has spent the past 20 years integrating the ancient methods of astrology and shamanism with cutting-edge trauma healing techniques, yielding excellent results for her clients. She works with individuals, couples, families and groups with a somatic, experiential, and process-oriented method. Magalí is Certified by the Organization for Professional Astrology, where she also serves as Vice- President of the Board, Ethics Chair, and Consulting Skills faculty. She has done significant work in the realm of dismantling oppression, and is an activist at theintersection of social and climate justice. Magalí offers healing and astrological services in English and Spanish at www.magalimorales.com

Kate Moses is best known for her acclaimed novel Wintering, published in 17 languages, her memoir Cakewalk, and her tenure as a founding editor of Salon’s Mothers Who Think and coeditor of the bestselling anthologies Mothers Who Think and Because I Said So. Kate and her books have received numerous international prizes and awards, including an American Book Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, a Prix des Lectrices de Elle, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, Poets & Writers Debut Fiction selection, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. Her four decades of experience in book, magazine, and online publishing, nonprofit arts administration, community organizing for women artists, and advanced-level teaching of writing began at North Point Press, where she was the senior acquiring & developmental editor at age 25. Among the writers Kate has worked with as an editor are Gina Berriault, Evan S. Connell, M. F. K. Fisher, Anne Lamott, Denis Johnson, Carole Maso, Peter Matthiessen, Jayne Anne Phillips, James Salter, and Ayelet Waldman. Works under Kate’s editorship have won the James Beard Award, the Narrative Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award,the PEN Faulkner Award, and the Pushcart Prize, among many others. Kate established Birds & Muses in 2017 to share her expertise with aspiring women-identified writers through ongoing, one-on-one mentorship and hands-on, collaborative editorial guidance.

Six 90-minute Craft Classes over 15 weeks will cover both fundamental principles of literary narrative craft and process – the vital importance of emotional investment and expression, how readers read, how images and tension work in stories, how your subconscious expresses your questions -- and advanced topics such as how to approach revision, punctuation as an art form, layering of levels of story, revealing versus telling, and finding your story’s meaning, among many other possibilities. Kate will shape the topics of her classes to the needs of the member writers and their writing projects.

Nest Members will have live access each week to one Craft Class during their cohort’s schedule, and recorded access to all six of the Craft Classes during each 15-week session.

Mentorship is different than simply being a teacher of craft or an editor of a writer’s work. Mentorship is an ongoing mutual investment in not just a particular writing project, but in a writer’s artistic growth and capacity for achieving their literary goals throughout their life. Mentorship is holistic, looking at what a writer’s put on the page and also why, and what’s not there, and what is at stake for the writer, not just the characters they create. A literary mentor offers her years of training and expertise to be your creative thought partner, a midwife and coparent to your writing, the person who knows your work and your vision and your heart as well as you do – and sometimes even more deeply. Working toward that artistic depth, encouraging and guiding you to take that risk and standing beside you as you do, is the hallmark of true mentorship.

As a Mentor, Kate is known for her deep and expansive attention, and her curiosity – about what you’re writing, and why. She leads with questions and observations, often about things the writer doesn’t realize is there, but that the subconscious knows has a place in the story. Her instincts about the craft of storytelling are both visceral and honed by a practiced study of how literary writing works on the page and in the minds of readers. Nurturing and generous, she will guide you toward writing beyond what you think is your limitation.

For The Nest, Mentorship will take shape in two ways: as 90-minute group discussions (once every 5 weeks of the 15-week program)  in which members can bring up their questions and concerns regarding their writing practice, their project and goals, and what Kate calls “the business of being a writer”: how we move from the private space of our imaginations and our desks to being a writer in the world. Also, each member will have 1 Office Hour to schedule with Kate included in the program, and a membership discount for additional Office Hours. Office Hours with Kate are a time to talk one on one about your own writing, your goals and your challenges, and to receive Kate’s input for moving forward.

The Emotional Support Group is a nonjudgmental space for exploring the challenges and joys of being a woman writer in the world. It is for witnessing each other, being listened to deeply as we examine and consider our experiences, our gifts, our obstacles, our victories.

We’ve included the Emotional Support Group in The Nest to help writers build resilience to sustain their practice, and to provide some of the most important elements essential to thriving and healing: the space to grieve and the opportunity to tell a new empowered story about our creative and personal lives.

We won’t give advice because we trust each person’s wisdom to decide for herself.  We won’t rescue each other because we know each writer is powerful.  We will simply give each other the gift of radical witnessing as unconditionally supportive creative allies.

Most of us start writing to understand and assimilate our experiences. To be alive is to be touched by loss, cruelty, abandonment and a thousand forms of violence. We weave our stories with the complicated threads of our moments in time. How do we untangle them and select the most beautiful, the most resonant, the most compelling to interlace into stories that will move our readers and change the world?

Building something meaningful out of our raw materials is tantamount to extracting pain and loss and rage and sorrow from our very cells and alchemically transforming it into the lifeblood of art.  To do so frees us and allows us to do our best work.

Our stories are more important than ever, in this time when patriarchal capitalism is destroying the natural world, misogyny and fascism and bigotry are rampant, and there is so much to fight for—and to gain.

Facilitated by Kate and Magalí, the Generative Write-Ins are included in The Nest to help members keep their core writing muscles strong! Writing in community is a means to create accountability, maintain momentum, and refresh inspiration and imaginative problem-solving. Every time a musician picks up her violin or jams with a group of friends is not a concert – and every time we write is not necessarily pages for your project. Those practices (what we’re calling Generative Write-Ins) are playful, curiosity-inducing improvisations that can open up your imagination to new ways of seeing even a long-standing writing project. We will start each Write-In with a provocative prompt to get you going, and we’ll end with a question to help you carry what you’ve done toward your ultimate goals. 

There will be 6 Generative Write-Ins each 15-week session, and all Members are invited to attend as many as they like. 

Reading to each other is one of the most foundational, beloved aspects of all Birds & Muses group events. Free of the obligations and stress of traditional workshop sharing, our Group Readings carry forward all the joy of being read to for the listeners, alongside the gift of attention and curiosity the writer receives from her audience.   

All members in a cohort will have an opportunity to read at each of the 3 Group Reading per 15-week session. 

As feminists we object to Meta’s policies to eliminate factchecking and suppress information for women’s reproductive health. However, Facebook is a public forum that most people are familiar with using. Until we have identified an easy to use, accessible alternative, we will start our private Community Discussion Group on Facebook.

The Nest is intentionally and decidedly not a workshop, which has become the foundational method of literary education despite its well-recognized potential to shut down creativity during a writer’s most vulnerable moment – when her work and her practice is in the process of becoming. As writer Michael Martone illuminated in a 2012 essay in Triquarterly, the modern literary workshop is largely a product of the GI Bill following World War II, finding its way into academia along with returning veterans who had stories to tell – and training, under fire, in tactical military goals (ie, winning battles, and doing what you have to do to survive). “The traditional workshop is designed for attack, with a clear objective to produce not just writing but ‘great’ writing,” Martone wrote. “This tactical approach creates a classroom that places the work under fire . . . my point is that the drama of combat was written into the DNA of the form.” A workshop, then, has winners and losers, and “the environment is hostile by definition.” The traditional writers workshop is also, we would add, an expression of the patriarchal waters we all swim in. 

The Nest, and all work with writers through Birds & Muses, is based on a far more right-brained, feminist model: cooperative, inquisitive, holistic, nurturing, intuitive, collegial, imagistic, and concrete. When writers share their work, they will be invited to share their intentions and their challenges, and listeners will be asked to respond with their emotions, questions, and observations, not just to craft but also to content (which is typically avoided in academic settings).