Where Working Writers Connect.
The Writers Grotto is a creative community of writers and artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve been around for 25 years, and our more than 140 members include narrative artists of all stripes. We are always looking for serious storytellers to join us in the work.
Join us in our new location: 1663 Mission Street, #602, San Francisco,CA 94103
Our mission
The Writers Grotto is a community of working writers and narrative artists who connect in physical and virtual space, pooling our talents to support each other, mentor and teach others, and engage the wider world. The Grotto fosters a literary culture that is generous in spirit and deeply inclusive, elevating writers of all backgrounds.
Our vision
The Writers Grotto will expand the audience for meaningful storytelling—from poetry to journalism—and amplify seldom-heard voices. Our support for daring work will embolden and inspire those within our community and beyond.
Equity and Diversity
As part of its mission to amplify marginalized voices and engage the wider world, the Writers Grotto is committed to enhancing and promoting equity of voice, audience, and opportunity as a way to create a more deeply inclusive literary culture and community. Accordingly, our policies, programs, and other activities should always seek to push back against the inequities we see in the publishing industry, so that we might better support historically underrepresented voices.
Our classes
Writing classes taught by professional writers, published in their genre.
We offer a full slate of classes and shorter write-in sessions online, via Zoom and Wet Ink. And our members continue to support each other in the work of producing world-class novels, memoirs, short fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, films, comedy, and more.
For more information on our classes, visit our classes page here or on Facebook. To get news of the Grotto and early notice of new classes, sign up for our newsletter.
Come study at the Bay Area’s longest-established and highest-rated writing center. Writers Grotto teachers are exclusively working professional authors: only published novelists teach novel writing, and only published memoirists teach memoir. As seasoned pros, we emphasize giving you the tools you’ll need to take your own leap from dreams to action. Browse our class calendar or our upcoming classes page, and don’t miss out!
Our books: Lit Starts
The Writers Grotto is known for its books on the craft of writing, including the 642 Things to Write About series. Our latest, Lit Starts, is a series of six pocket-sized guides to different aspects of craft, with lots of prompts and pages for you to write in. Get yours today!
