This event is a fundraiser for the 2025 Salem Literary Festival; all proceeds will be used to fund festival programming.
Whether your characters are traveling through time, aisle 8 in the grocery store, or a broken heart, we’ll look closely at what makes them tick and how to make them feel like real people. We’ll talk about the building blocks of a scene: action, dialogue, and place. We’ll explore voice, conflict, the power of objects, and more. Expect lots of laughter, some lightbulb moments, and a sprinkling of magic. Whether you’re starting from scratch or have a few ideas brewing, you will return to your desk with new tools, fresh inspiration, and more confidence in your work.
Kristin Bair is a celebrated author who writes fiercely (and humorously) about women—those navigating the demands of family, ambition, and identity while confronting the patriarchal structures that confront them. Her fourth novel, Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, tells the story of a woman radicalized by her first hot flash. It will land in bookstores on October 14, 2025.
Bair’s last novel, Agatha Arch Is Afraid of Everything, was named a Best New Book by People magazine. She is also the author of The Art of Floating and Thirsty, as well as numerous essays about China, bears, motherhood, off-the-plot expats, and more. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Baltimore Review, The Manifest-Station, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, The Christian Science Monitor, Poets & Writers Magazine, and other publications.
A graduate of Indiana University, Bair holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago and has a proven track record of helping writers find their voices and shape their strongest material. She currently teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University and at the Yale Writers’ Workshop. In 2024, she joined the fiction editorial team at Pangyrus, a literary magazine based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A native Pittsburgher, Bair now lives north of Boston with her husband and two kiddos. Kristin appeared at the 2021 Salem Literary Festival.
Class is limited to 12.
Tuition: $200