Medill accepted 10 mid-career journalists this March to its second annual George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop.

The seven-day workshop, running from July 9 to 16, will give the journalist fellows the opportunity to craft their first novel under the instruction of Medill Prof. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, the George R.R. Martin chair in storytelling, and hear from award-winning novelists, many of whom were once journalists themselves.

“This is a really unique workshop,” Tan said. “There are workshops for journalists to become better journalists and workshops for fiction writers to become better fiction writers, but there’s not really one that crosses the two for journalists to become fiction writers. So this is really something special.”

Ernabel Demillo (Medill MSJ ‘93), a 2024 GRRM fellow whose novel is inspired by her mother — who grew up in the Philippines during Japanese occupation — said the workshop was a “magical week.” She said it allowed her to devote all her time to her passion project while also engaging with a cohort of journalists who understood the transition to fiction writing.

Demillo said she and Tan knew each other from their time in the Asian American Journalists Association and that she learned about the workshop via a Facebook post by Tan.

“When I read what the criteria was I’m going, ‘Wait a minute, they’re talking to me,’” Demillo said. “Like, how many of these fellowships actually focus their criteria on working journalists who have a novel to write? It was almost as if a hand of God said, ‘Hey, here you go.’”

From reporters to filmmakers, the 10 fellows were selected from about 200 other applicants across the world for the 2025 workshop. Tan said this number is down from last year, when about 400 journalists applied for the workshop in its inaugural year.

This year’s application entailed the submission of a cover letter, a mission statement and about 20 pages from the novel the applicants hoped to workshop. Tan said this page count, up from 10 last year, might have deterred some would-be applicants, contributing to the decreased number.

Joseph Amodio, editor in chief of Focal Point, and Michal Schick, a writer of screen and prose and a former entertainment journalist, applied for the 2024 workshop and were not selected. But both reapplied and were accepted for this year’s program.

“The one thing that I always thought I would do, since I was a little kid and discovered like, ‘God, I love writing and gosh, I really want to be a writer when I grow up,’ is write a novel,” Amodio said.

Tan said she runs the workshop like a residency, allowing journalists to focus solely on their novels — and like a bootcamp, with set times for meals, writing, small group critiques and chats with accomplished guests.

This year, the fellows will hear from C.J. Farley and Lev Grossman, both journalists-turned-fiction-writers, and Scott Turow, an author and lawyer. They will also visit the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago for a class on drama writing.

As a screenwriter, Schick said she has attended many workshops and is excited about the opportunities to meet new people and talk stories and process.

“I know myself as a writer, and the writer deep inside me has many ideas and procrastinates incredibly,” Schick said. “So I’m really, really looking forward to just being in a focused, supportive environment.”

As she reviewed applications, Tan said she focused on selecting journalists who not only submitted compelling fiction pages, but also seemed likely to continue working toward finishing their novel after the workshop. She said one of the most important application criteria was that “the pages have to sing.”

As the fellows switch from non-fiction to fiction writing this summer –– a change that Amodio described as the difference between running a sprint and running a marathon –– Tan hopes to give them the tools and the confidence to succeed.

“I really want them to feel that they’re in a safe environment to take this huge creative leap,” Tan said. “We’re sending them off into the world to be like, ‘Keep writing. We’re here for you, and we’re all going to cheer one another on.’”

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