The McCormack Writing Center Places Artists and Community First

For many writers right now, the hardest question isn’t how to respond to the world, but how to keep writing at all without losing the joy that made the work possible. The pressure to address crisis—to be timely, responsive, morally legible—has begun to attach itself not just to what artists make, but to how they measure their own seriousness. For some, that urgency sharpens the work. For others, it turns art-making into another site of exhaustion.

I’ve been thinking a lot about where writers go when they’re trying to hold those tensions at once: the desire to stay awake to the world as it is, and the need for spaces that allow art to remain sustaining rather than punishing. Over the past several years, the McCormack Writing Center has become one such space, actively interrogating what care, accountability, and literary community actually look like in practice.

Formerly known as the Tin House Workshops, the organization became the McCormack Writing Center this year after Tin House Books was sold to Zando. With the support of Tin House founder Win McCormack, the workshop continues as a new entity, carrying forward its core values while shedding the constraints of a structure no longer designed to hold them. The change came with real loss. The Tin House name meant something to generations of writers. But it also clarified what had always mattered most: not a brand or a logo, but the people who showed up, the rigor of the work, and a commitment to generosity alongside ambition.

In the conversation that follows, I spoke with Lance Cleland, Executive Director of the McCormack Writing Center, about what it takes to sustain that kind of space through transition. We talked about naming the world as it is, the ethics of paying artists for their labor, and how leadership can remain collective rather than individual. At a moment when many literary institutions are being asked to reckon with their responsibilities, this conversation offers a candid look at what it means to place trust—and the artist themselves—at the center.

Alexis M. Wright: The name Tin House meant something very specific to a lot of writers. As the organization became the McCormack Writing Center, what felt essential to protect and carry forward?

Lance Cleland: One of the most important things for us was staying a value-driven organization—making sure everything we do continues to move through the lens of our core values. The more people you have to run things by, the harder it can be to hold onto that, so protecting that clarity really mattered.

We wanted to keep the same basic structure we already had. We have an owner I’m accountable to financially, but who largely trusts us to make decisions around values and programming. That structure mattered to me, to A.L., to Yimei, to Autumn—to our entire staff.

AW: And on the flip side, did the transition allow you to loosen anything? Things you might have felt attached to before?

LC: We thought about partnering with another organization that could offer more resources, maybe a college or something similar. But the more we looked into it, the more concerned we became about losing our ability to adhere to our values and respond to the moment.

If you have a board or a larger governing body that only meets once a year, and you’re saying, “We want to fund this scholarship now,” but the answer is, “No, we’ll revisit that in 2028,” that’s not the kind of organization we want to be. We want to stay nimble and respond to our community in real time.

AW: The transition was about protecting values and responsiveness. I’m curious how those values translate into the atmosphere writers actually experience. How do you actually hold space for joy while still being honest about what’s happening outside the work?

LC: One of the big things we try to do as an organization is name what’s actually happening. Not referencing “trouble in the Middle East,” but calling it a genocide in Palestine. Not a vague mention of immigration, but acknowledging that our neighbors are getting violently kidnapped by ICE.

By naming things right away, whether in opening statements, on our website, or in early communications, it lets people know this is a space where those realities will be acknowledged, and that they don’t have to carry the burden of naming them themselves. That kind of naming creates trust. And for anything to work in a workshop or residency space, there has to be trust in the organization. 

What we’re trying to do is create a space where writers can engage deeply with their practice without carrying that weight all the time—where people can be in community and celebrate one another without pretending the outside world doesn’t exist. That balance is hard, but it feels necessary.

AW: You’re talking about trust as a foundation. When that trust is really working, what do you hope writers actually walk away with after a workshop or program, especially beyond the manuscript itself?

LC: Early on, we were really focused on the manuscript itself, especially because we had a magazine attached to us. Seeing writers move from the workshop into the magazine or over to Tin House Books was great.

But over time—through my own interest or our staff’s—the focus shifted away from the business side and toward a bigger question: How do we nurture an artistic practice outside commodification? I think of writing as something that’s meant to sustain you for your entire life. When you look back, hopefully you’re happy not only with the publications and the wins, but with the fact that you dedicated your life to creation. And the question for us became: How do we nurture that?

AW: That longer view really shifts the frame. When you think about community over time, what actually makes it last? What have you learned about how writing communities sustain themselves?

LC: Institutions can create paths to mentorship, but the most meaningful mentorship often comes from peers.

When you talk about community, you’re really talking about sustaining it. I love seeing people who came through our programs as students return to teach, whether through our fellowship program, which you were a part of, or as workshop instructors. That cycle is what makes a community feel alive. So many of our strongest mentors were once mentored by someone who came through the program themselves. I love that cycle.

AW: You’re talking a lot about collective effort and shared responsibility. I’m curious how that plays out internally, especially in leadership. You’re a small but mighty staff, right? You and A.L. Major make up the programming leadership. How has that alignment shaped the work?

LC: Yeah, having an aligned staff really changes things. For the last five or six years, A.L. Major has brought so much insight and integrity to this work and has helped move the program forward in really meaningful ways. Having someone else on the leadership team with a different perspective—and who is also a working writer—is invaluable.

From a place of expertise, A.L. has pushed us to demystify the professional writing process, whether that’s helping writers think through artist statements or creating space to talk openly about things like query letters. They’re deeply committed to making this a place that supports writers at every stage of their careers.

AW: There’s a line I keep coming back to: “in nurturing the artist, you nurture the art.” I’m curious how you’ve seen that play out over time, and what kinds of support writers actually need, both during a workshop and after it ends.

LC: I think that’s where the community aspect comes in through things like affinity groups on campus and craft intensives that are more holistic, not just focused on advancing one part of the writing. There’s always a balance. We are here to work on manuscripts, but we’re not here just to make a manuscript better.

We’re here to understand what the writer is trying to do with their work and how we can help them get there. We’re all going to have different ideas about plot points or how a line of a poem should read, and those conversations can be useful, but ultimately, we want to listen to the artist.

The artist is saying, “Here’s what I’m trying to do with my work. Here’s my vision.” The question for us becomes: How can we, as an organization, help you get there? That’s where nurturing the artist ends up nurturing the art.

AW: I want to shift slightly here. Are there moments you can think of when something happened and you realized, “We’re losing people we actually want to keep”?

LC: The first thing that comes to mind is the shift we made to start offering targeted scholarships to bring more writers of color into the summer workshops. You start with the awards, then you begin diversifying the faculty.

And what you realize very quickly—and this is a very white instinct—is that none of that is a magic elixir. When you bring in communities that haven’t historically been supported or represented, they come with different expectations and different needs. You start to see the gaps you haven’t yet addressed in making the space genuinely welcoming and safe for those communities.

That’s something you always have to keep interrogating and adjusting. The work doesn’t stop at access. It’s ongoing.

AW: How did those moments change the way you approached leadership and equity going forward?

LC: We had to start asking ourselves whether we were actually bringing in writers who represented a wide range of identities. Not only in terms of sexual orientation, ethnicity, and background, but also genre, educational background, and approach.

And you learn. You have to learn. I’ve been fortunate to be in a position where I could learn, and where people were willing to teach me. 

AW: This is incredibly hard but important work. Now that the organization describes itself as a center, rather than only workshops and residencies, what does that shift make possible?

LC: I think we always felt a little constrained by a name that didn’t fully describe the totality of what we do. One of the reasons “center” felt right is that it reflects being a hub for many different kinds of activity.

At our physical location, for example, we have a bookstore on the first floor, Bishop and Wild, that’s become a real gathering place. Book clubs meet there. Other organizations use the space for activism and community engagement. We recently hosted a group of genocide survivors for the National Day of Remembrance. To be a space that can hold readings and something like that is very meaningful to me.

We also host the Constellation reading series, which pairs local writers with our residents, and we partner with the Alano Club to offer space and a residency for writers in recovery. What we’re trying to be is a community-facing place that other organizations can use, especially when they don’t have a physical space of their own.

All of this is adjacent to our equity mission. It felt like “center” named what we had been building all along, and being able to finally call it that was really exciting for us.

AW: So, if I’m a writer deciding where to invest my time, energy, and money, what do you hope I understand about MWC that isn’t immediately obvious?

LC: You’re going to be respected. And respect shows up in a lot of different ways. Do you know who’s reading your work? When we send a rejection, are we making sure we got your name and pronoun right? If you’re on a waitlist, are we telling you that we liked your work and how that process actually functions? Are we transparent about where the money is going?

If a fee is what it is, it’s because we pay our readers and we pay our faculty. Everyone who works with us gets paid. The economics of arts programming aren’t talked about enough, but people deserve to be compensated for their labor. All of that is about respect.

We also try to honor the fact that writers aren’t an inherently affluent group. Respecting that means being transparent about what we charge and offering payment plans. By the time many participants attend a workshop, they haven’t paid the full tuition yet.

That’s trust. We’re trusting our community to do right by us because we’re trying to do right by them. And transparency also means being honest when we make mistakes. Saying, “We tried this, it didn’t work,” and committing to doing it better next time.

AW: And when you look ahead a year, what does success actually feel like day-to-day inside MWC?

LC: That people know our name. [laughs] Not because we’re trying to distance ourselves from Tin House—we’re proud of that legacy—but because we want people to understand that we’re both a new and an old entity. Same people, new face.

AW: I think you’ve shown that you can do hard things.

LC: Yeah. I’d like to think we can.

AW: Is there anything that you wish I had asked that I didn’t ask? 

LC: I’m not sure what the question would have been, but I do want to acknowledge that we’re not the only organization that’s doing this kind of work. I’d like to think we’ve been a leader in some ways. Karaoke, certainly. [laughs] I see a lot of other workshops doing karaoke now, and I will fully take credit for that—that’s my one flag I’ll plant.

But seriously, a lot of organizations have made really meaningful changes, and that’s exciting. One thing that’s shifted for me is letting go of competitiveness. There was a time when I thought we were the only ones doing this work seriously, and that mindset doesn’t lead to growth.

I love that organizations are sharing resources and ideas now. I want the entire literary landscape to be more equitable home for nurturing all writers.

AW: Absolutely. So, what’s your go-to karaoke song?

LC: You know there’s not one!

AW: The people want to know, Lance!

LC: I mean, it’s probably gonna be Usher or Nelly. Those are the two I’ll lean back on, but really it’s gotta be new ones every time. As often as we’re doing this, you have to keep it fresh.