This eight-week workshop takes place virtually, via Zoom. It is aimed at people who either have a book idea that needs more development or who have a defined book idea and are seeking support and accountability to get the work of drafting a book proposal done. Past attendees have largely worked on books relating to science, but all nonfiction topics are welcome.

The group will be capped at 12-14 people and carefully curated to ensure a mix of attendees who will be a good fit for supporting one another. The first six weeks will have two 90 minute sessions (Mondays and Thursdays, starting on a Thursday). One weekly session will be an informal instruction seminar featuring discussions and Q&As with guest speakers. You will have an assignment for the other session of each week, during which you will discuss and workshop the homework. Depending on your objectives and where you’re starting from, you can either use each week’s assignment as an opportunity to hone your ideas or to complete a draft of that part of the proposal. The meetings will include discussion with the whole group, and you’ll also work in smaller breakout groups to share feedback and support on the assignments. During the final two weeks of the class we will meet once per week to workshop homework assignments.

In addition to the two 90 minute Zoom meetings each week, plan to spend at least two hours (but potentially much, much more) on the homework, depending on what stage you’re in with your idea. Also expect to spend some time each week reading work from your colleagues. What you get out of the workshop and the discussion sessions will be highly dependent on the time and effort you put into the homework.

Although the instruction and feedback you’ll get in this workshop are front and center, you’ll also become part of a community of peers for support during and after the workshop has concluded. Peer-to-peer support and participation is a crucial part of the experience.

Our January workshop will be the seventh iteration of this program. 

Testimonials from previous attendees:
“Christie’s workshop taught me everything I needed to know to write a book proposal and get a book deal. I went into the workshop with an inkling of an idea that I wasn’t sure what to do with. By the end of the class, I had a viable draft and a firm understanding of how to finish the process and get an agent—plus a great community of colleagues and friends. I’m deep in the book-writing process now, and would never have reached this point without the workshop. Highly recommended!” — Emily Sohn, author of The New Wilderness: How life finds a way in the most unexpected places, forthcoming from Sourcebooks.

“Christie’s book proposal workshop was a turning point for me. She broke the process down in a way that felt approachable and doable, and her feedback was sharp, thoughtful, and tailored for science writers. I came in with an idea — and walked away with a clearer vision, a stronger pitch, and the confidence to take the next steps. I credit her workshop for helping me land an agent and a book deal.” — Kevin Gepford, author of Tortoise!, forthcoming from W.W. Norton. 

“I started the Book Proposal Factory with mere seeds of an idea. Those seeds germinated into a real plan for a book thanks to support and feedback from Christie and my fellow writers as well as the perspectives of inspiring guest speakers. The workshop helped me understand what I needed to do to evolve an idea into a proposal and, eventually, a book.” — Lisa S. Gardiner, author of Reefs of Time: What Fossils Reveal about Coral Survival, published by Princeton University Press (2025).

“Christie’s book proposal course forced me to get my butt in gear and work through all the toughest parts of my proposal. It both got the work done faster and helped me understand my own project better.” — Erin Zimmerman, author of Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science, published by Penguin Random House.

Instructors:
Christie Aschwanden is author of the New York Times bestseller, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery, co-host of EMERGING FORM, a podcast about the creative process, and host and producer of UNCERTAIN, a podcast from Scientific American. She’s the former lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and was previously a health columnist for The Washington Post. She’s Vice President of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, and her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Wired, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Slate, Popular Science, Discover, Science, and Nature. She’s received fellowships from the Santa Fe Institute, the Carter Center and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She lives on a small farm and winery in Western Colorado.

Betsy Mason is a freelance science journalist and lecturer in the Science Communication Program at UC Santa Cruz. Her work has appeared in publications including National Geographic, The New York Times, Science, Nature, WIRED, Science News, Scientific American, Outside, and Discover. She is coauthor with Greg Miller of All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey. Betsy was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2015-2016 and a 2022 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow. Previously she was senior editor at WIRED, and science reporter at the Contra Costa Times. She has a master’s degree in geology from Stanford University and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. 

Past speakers include:

David Baron is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and author of The Beast in the Garden, American Eclipse and his latest book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America. A former science correspondent for NPR, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications. David recently served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Alia Hanna Habib is author of Take It from Me: An Agent’s Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career (Penguin Random House, 2026), a Vice President and literary agent at The Gernert Company, where she represents MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, National Book Award finalists, and numerous New York Times bestselling authors. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Alice Martell of the Martell Agency is agent to such writers as Bethany Brookshire, Gail Collins, David Haskell, Roberta Kwok, Linda Marsa, Domingo Martinez, Gretchen Soren, Chelsea Wald and Christie Aschwanden.

Courtney Young is an executive editor at Riverhead Books. She specializes in idea-driven non-fiction with a focus on natural and social science, business, technology, culture, and narrative journalism. She has edited books by a number of award-winning and bestselling authors, including Randall Munroe, James Nestor, David Epstein, Jing Tsu, Carlo Rovelli, Deb Chachra, Gretchen McCulloch, and Michael Lewis.

Matt Weiland, vice president and senior editor at W.W. Norton & Company. A former editor at Granta and The Paris Review, he is also the co-editor, with Sean Wilsey, of State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. 

Also: Rebecca Boyle, Farley Chase, Amanda Cook, Rick Horgan, Thomas “TJ” Kelleher, and Annalee Newitz.

Dates & Times
Coming January 2027
Each session is 90 minutes