On the first day of the 2024 workshop, Anne Midgette threw away 65 pages of her novel draft. The former chief classical music critic for the Washington Post had spent years trying to make the leap from journalism to fiction. Within a year of that moment on Northwestern's campus, she had a complete manuscript.

"I wanted to be a novelist long before I wanted to be a journalist," Midgette told The Daily Northwestern.

Her story captures what the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop is built to do. The program, now in its third year at Medill, brought 10 fellows to Evanston from July 7 through July 15 for a fully funded writing bootcamp focused on helping mid-career journalists draft novels. This year's cohort included Stella Bugbee, styles editor at The New York Times; Dotun Akintoye, a staff writer at ESPN; Laura Wides-Muñoz, director of standards at NBC News; and Una Mullally, a columnist at The Irish Times. Fellows came from the U.S., Ireland and Canada, selected from hundreds of applications, according to Medill.

The workshop is funded by "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin, a Medill alumnus who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the journalism school in 1970 and 1971. Medill professor Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, who holds the George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, created and runs the program. Tan said she built the workshop to be the program she wished had existed when she made her own transition from journalism to fiction. She published her first novel in 2011.

Each day on campus began with an 8 a.m. breakfast, followed by a morning craft class and small-group workshops. Afternoons were reserved for writing. Fellows often worked together on benches outside the library or on the porch of a hotel near campus.

The curriculum covered techniques for livening up scenes, lessons on pitching a book to publishers, and fireside conversations with industry leaders. This year's guest speaker was author and former Cosmopolitan books editor John Searles. Tan also hosted literary agents from The Wylie Agency and Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. In previous years, best-selling authors Lev Grossman and Gillian Flynn spoke at the workshop.

Across three years, 32 fellows have gone through the program. Five have completed manuscripts as of July 2026, according to The Daily Northwestern. Monica Eng, an Axios Chicago reporter and 2024 fellow, turned in her manuscript in July 2026 and found her literary agent through the program by returning to the workshop in 2025 to connect with agents Tan brought in.