COURSE LENGTH
START DATE
COMPLETION DATE
AVAILABILITY
COST
9 MONTHS
March 2025
NOVEMBER 2025
TAKING ENROLMENTS
R 16900
When I started tutoring creative writing short courses online, I realised that many writers wanted some sort of supervision after the course. Writing is not easy and to have a reader on hand to bounce ideas off, many writers find useful. Also regular deadlines give you something to aim for and the feedback that comes with them can be reassuring: it’s one way to know you are on track. For these reasons I launched The Writers’ Masterclass in 2013. This online class is ideal no matter your goals. If you want to break into the publishing world it will help you write the best manuscript you can. Similarly, should you want to leave an entertaining family history for future generations then the class will give you all the direction you need. If you want to write a book in the virtual company of other writers and with constant feedback, then you’re a fit with The Writers’ Masterclass.
What you need to know
What is the Writers’ Masterclass
The Masterclass is a nine-month supervisory class with space for between 20 and 25 writers. It is open to fiction writers and those writing non-fiction narratives and it caters for all genres. Registration is in early February each year and final reports are sent out in the opening weeks of November. The first text submission is at the beginning of March and there are a further six submissions at roughly six-week intervals through to the final one in October. Submissions are kept at 8000 words which I’ve found most writers can manage. You get helpful feedback with each submission.At the end of the year you receive a detailed review of your submissions (i.e. manuscript) written during the year. The Writers’ Masterclass process is based on supervision only, there are no notes but the chat-room forum allows discussions among the group on various aspects of writing or current literary debates. This forum is the place to keep in touch with me and your fellow writers so that the Masterclass becomes a writers’ group. The Masterclass has a library of audio interviews with publishers, agents, book reviewers and writers. We’ve also opened a private Facebook page for the group. For me, the most rewarding part of the Masterclass is that writers return year after year. Often I’ve heard it said, no Masterclass, no book. Next year Qarnita Loxton will join me as a supervisor on the Masterclass.
What has happened since 2013
The Masterclass has run for twelve years now and in that time, I’m pleased to say that some of the writers have done particularly well and launched their writing careers. There’s Qarnita Loxton in Cape Town, for instance, who has published five books with Kwela: Being Kari, Being Lily, Being Shelley, and Being Dianne . Being Kari was also published by btb Verlag in Germany. Qarnita joined the Masterclass in 2014 and has returned year after year because she says it’s become crucial to her writing life. Her latest is listed below. And, Qarnita, will be on the 2025 Masterclass as a supervisor. Another long-standing member is Jennifer Friedman in Sydney, Australia: she has published two memoirs with Tafelberg, Queen of the Free State and The Messiah’s Dream Machine – has completed a third and is now writing a saga of outback weirdness, again on the Masterclass. In 2021, a number of books by Masterclass writers hit the shelves. First came a novel by Luc Zwaenepoel, John Paul Sartre in the Congo (Boekscout); then Michelle Edwards with Go-Away Birds (Modjaji); A’Eysha Kassiem’s Suitcase of Memory (Kwela); Dugald Macdonald’s memoir Ja-Nee (Flyleaf); and Maretha Marais Fat Boy No More (Europe Books). The following year A’Eysha won the UJ Prize for a debut novel with her Suitcase of Memory, and Maretha had her second novel in her YA “Fat Boy” series (Former Fat Boy) accepted for publication. In earlier years there’d been Maria Phalime from the first class who published her award winning memoir Postmortem with Tafelberg in 2014; this was followed by Martina Dahlmann’s memoir A Person My Colour (Modjaji Books, 2018) and the following year, muso and film maker, Carsten Rasch, published his music memoir – Between Rock and a Hard Place – with MFBooks. Another of the 2014 class – Melissa Volker – published her award winning romance novel, Shadow Flicker, with Karavan Press in 2019. In 2023, Anthony Sauerman published his novella The Box (Goldcrest Books), and this year (2024), Luc published his second novel, Murder in Matjiesfontein, (Boekscout), Qarnita added to her collection with What’s Wrong with June? (Kwela), Natalie Conyer published her second crime novel, Shadow City, (Echo Publishing) in Australia, and Maretha published the final in her Fat Boy trilogy, Fat Boy Nevermore. In 2025, there will be new books on the shelves from Lindsay Norman (to be published by Jonathan Ball) and Bonnie Espie (to be published by Kwela). There are more waiting in the wings.
Course Registration
If you’d like more information about my courses, please get in touch via the Contact page.
To register for The Writers’ Masterclass, please click the button below.
Registration is now open for The Writers’ Masterclass 2025.
The class starts in March and will continue until the final reports are completed in November 2025.
PAYMENTS
Those who have registered will be invoiced in March 2025. There is an optional three-tranche payment plan. For more information about the payment plan please email mike@writeonline.pro.
The cost of The Writers’ Masterclass is
R 16 900
REFUNDS
Should you decide to cancel your participation on the class a 50% refund will be considered before the second submission.
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