In this interactive Creative Course, bestselling novelist and screenwriter Amy Ephron will explore the art of writing secrets, suspense, and narrative tension. Drawing on excerpts from her novel Unseasonably Cold, Amy will reveal how carefully placed clues, unanswered questions, and hidden truths can keep readers turning pages long into the night. Through close reading, discussion, and guided writing prompts, you’ll learn practical techniques for building suspense and crafting stories that linger long after the final reveal.

Bring whatever you’re currently reading (or thinking about reading) and come ready to share a passage, idea, or question that’s stuck with you. We’ll swap recommendations and talk about what’s actually on our minds lately. No prep, no pressure, and a great way to meet new (and familiar) faces.

What if the most radical thing you did this season wasn’t accomplishing more—but resting without guilt? Join us as we begin our next So Iconic Book Club journey with Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. Over the next three months, we’ll explore what it means to reject hustle culture, reconnect with ourselves, and embrace rest as a practice of healing, creativity, and liberation.

Join us for a discussion of This Is How You Lose the Time War, a genre-defying romantasy that blends science fiction, fantasy, and one of the most unforgettable love stories in modern speculative fiction. Told through a series of beautifully crafted letters exchanged between two rival agents on opposite sides of a war spanning time itself, the novel explores love, loyalty, identity, and the ways stories can transform even the deepest divides.

Join us to find out why you fall in love before chapter one and practice making your own cover. Guest hosts Cait & Court’s Cozy Corner and cover designer Cat of TRC Designs have created an interactive workshop exploring the art behind unforgettable romance covers. Follow along in Canva, Photoshop, or Pinterest as you learn how typography, color, imagery, and visual storytelling create books you can’t help but add to your shelf.

Whether you’re outlining your first novel, revising a memoir, experimenting with short stories, or simply hoping to build a more consistent writing practice, this is a welcoming space to connect with others who understand the excitement and uncertainty of creating something from nothing. We’ll introduce our current projects, discuss our writing goals, explore the routines and rituals that keep us returning to the page, and begin building the kind of community where great stories can grow. Rather than a formal workshop, this is a place for writers committed to encouraging one another and showing up for the work.

When you sit down to begin something, what matters most to you? Before the salon, you'll answer this question and discover your Lit Society archetype. Based on your response, you’ll receive a curated selection of books exploring Communication. Choose one title and plan to start reading it at the salon. Then gather with us for an afternoon of quiet reading, thoughtful conversation, cocktails, and reflection.

Join Lit Society and HarperCollins to celebrate the release of Taipei Story, bestselling author R.F. Kuang’s widely anticipated novel about cultural exchange, coming-of-age, and Asian American identity. This immersive evening will explore the invisible distances between cultures, generations, languages, and identities. Join us at Hue House: a cultural and creative hub dedicated to celebrating the richness and diversity of Asian heritage. Beginning with a playful passport-inspired cocktail experience, guests will journey through a series of interactive cultural moments before gathering for a moderated literary salon exploring migration, memory, belonging, translation, and what it truly means to be understood.

This month, we’re heading to Japan and reading two novels written nearly 90 years apart. Natsume Sōseki's Kokoro and Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives both center center around a connection between a student and an older teacher figure, but the nature of those relationships—and what they reveal about intimacy, authority, and social convention—could hardly be more different. Reading them side by side gives us a fascinating view of Japan nearly a century apart.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest espionage novels ever written, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold moves beyond spies and secrets to ask larger questions about loyalty, morality, sacrifice, and the human cost of political conflict. Together, we’ll explore how le Carré transformed the spy novel into literary fiction and why this story remains as compelling today as it was upon publication. Whether you’re a longtime admirer of le Carré or discovering his work for the first time, join us for an evening of thoughtful discussion with fellow readers.

Join Lit Society Editor Annie Lyall Slaughter and Urmila Seshagiri, Distinguished Professor in Humanities at the University of Tennessee for a mini-lecture on A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s landmark essay on women, writing, and artistic freedom. We’ll explore Woolf’s central argument that women need money, space, and intellectual independence to create, and consider how she makes that case through vivid storytelling, literary history, and social critique. The lecture will also look at the essay’s enduring relevance today, from questions of access and authorship to the ongoing challenges of balancing creative work, material security, and selfhood.

When you sit down to begin something, what matters most to you? Before the salon, you'll answer this question and discover your Lit Society archetype. Based on your response, you’ll receive a curated selection of books exploring Communication. Choose one title and plan to start reading it at the salon. Then gather with us for an afternoon of quiet reading, thoughtful conversation, cocktails, and reflection.

Join author, educator, and editor K Hank Jost (A Common Well Journal, MadStone, Gotham Writers Workshop), for a four-week intensive on building a writing practice. Through studying the lives of great writers of the past, emulating their practices, and close readings of their work, students will learn to transform the material of their everyday lives into the stuff of true literature. Jost will guide students through weekly writing exercises and journaling, both on one’s reading and one’s quotidian experience, toward the development of an ironclad, productive practice unto the discovery of each student’s fundamental, individual, ineluctable genius.

Join Lit Society and Zando Publishing’s SJP Lit imprint for a salon inspired by the novels of Nao-Cola Yamazaki. This immersive literary evening serves as the opening chapter ahead of Lit Society’s October theme, In Translation, exploring the subtle ways love, care, and belonging are communicated across cultures. Beginning with an interactive cocktail experience inspired by Japanese words that have no direct English equivalent, guests will move through thoughtfully curated cultural moments before gathering for a moderated Literary Salon (with a very special guest!) exploring intimacy, translation, ritual, and what it truly means to feel understood.

The Draft Room is a collaborative monthly workshop where writers come together to write, troubleshoot, and encourage one another through the messy middle of the creative process. Whether you’re wrestling with a chapter, refining a character, searching for the right ending, or simply trying to get words on the page, this is a space to bring your work and your questions. We’ll begin with a guided writing prompt and dedicated time to write, then transition into an open workshop where members can share challenges, ask for feedback, brainstorm solutions, and support one another’s work in progress.