May 14th-June 18th 2026

Tools and techniques to use at every stage of a creative career, including:

  • Moving out of fallow writing periods and back into creative flow
  • Conceptualizing and executing the entire arc of a project, from inspiration to revision and sale
  • Learning how to leverage your own creative interests into a story only you can tell
  • Exploring how new tools and drafting methods can transform your process
  • Re-centering your own intuition after receiving negative, conflicting, or overwhelming feedback
  • Gaining insights on how revision changes over the course of a career...and how it stays constant
  • Pivoting as a writer when the market, the publisher, and even your own interests change
  • And so much more!
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What is Listen In?
 
A multimodal, collaborative exploration of writing and creativity, taking place in early 2026, facilitated by Elana K. Arnold and Nina LaCour. During each of Listen In’s six weeks, you will receive: 


A recorded conversation between Nina and Elana, centered on that week’s theme. In this forty-five minute to hour-long conversation, we candidly and intimately wrestle with our own processes, evolutions, setbacks, and discoveries. These recordings are a series of wide-ranging, vulnerable discussions that dip into craft, the creative life, and insights about having and growing a voice and a practice. (Though designed to be listened to podcast-style, a transcript is available upon request.)


A thoughtfully curated bundle of invitations. We like the word “bundle”… it feels so friendly and fun! Perhaps deceptively so, because though each bundle contains just a few pages, they are designed to be delved deeply into. Each bundle is comprised of several “Conversation” invitations and a “Cultivation” invitation. Don’t be surprised if you spend many hours exploring these!

Access to a private forum. Here, Elana and Nina will craft additional conversation threads linked to the week’s topic. Participants should feel free to engage as often or as infrequently as they like. The forum will also provide opportunities to connect with other Listen In writers, and we hope you’ll form relationships that will continue growing after our shared time together comes to an end.

A weekly Conversation and Cultivation meeting. Each Thursday at 5:30PM PST, we’ll meet on Zoom. There will be opportunities to ask questions and share your voice as well as guided exercises to further cultivate a facet of the week’s theme. These are not simple Q&A sessions; they will be times of discovery and experimentation. If you can’t make the call live, that’s fine! You’ll receive a link to view the call each Friday morning.


A one-time, individual meeting with the two of us! This is your opportunity to explore a topic of your choice with us for twenty minutes. When we meet, bring a specific question or concern about your work or creative life, and we will put our heads together to offer our insights. We’re so looking forward to getting to know you this way, and will have plenty of time options available.




“What a gift to eavesdrop on two brilliant, kind, thoughtful writers as they talk about all aspects of the writing life. Over the 6 weeks we spent together my brain sparked with connections, ideas, and enthusiasm for my own work. Taking this course was one of the best gifts I've given my writing self and I know I'll continue to explore the work that was done during our time together for years and decades to come!”
-Jessica V.

Who is Listen In for?

Any writer with a creative life or the desire to foster one. During our time together, Nina and Elana will discuss creative writing across the spectrum—dipping into picture books, children’s and YA work, as well as adult projects. Whether you are a published writer seeking rigorous introspection and growth or a less-seasoned writer yearning for connection and guidance, Listen In is for you.


What will be discussed and explored in Listen In?

Below you'll find a week-by-week breakdown of the topics Nina and Elana will discuss. Each week’s conversations—in the recorded podcasts, on the forum, and in the live video sessions—will grow from concepts that are seeds for a creative life. While these topics will guide us, one of the truths of being an artist or a writer is that it’s messy work, and seeds planted in one place often result in growth somewhere else, so the conversations will range. 
 
In addition to the conversations, Listen In participants will have ample time to practice cultivation. At the beginning of each week, along with the podcast recording, participants will receive a thoughtfully designed bundle of prompts to explore at their leisure; these aren’t assignments, as much as they are invitations to explore their own work and processes from new vantage points.


Will my work get read and critiqued?

While Listen In provides opportunities to share your voice each week—during the live meeting and on the forum—writers will not submit work to be read and critiqued by Nina and Elana. However, during the private consultation, Nina and Elana will be glad to discuss whatever topic you’d like.
 
Additionally, Listen In writers may connect with other writers with whom they’d like to exchange work, though there will be no obligation to do so. 


Click below to listen to Nina and Elana introduce the class!


“Listen In exceeded my expectations! The weekly podcasts and bundles of conversation and cultivation prompts were brilliantly conceived and executed. Working with these resources took me to some wondrous places I had never been (or even imagined) in my writing process before. Nina and Elana shared profound personal insights and details about their methods and memories as professional writers that caused seismic, positive shifts in my own approach. It's easy to feel depleted as a writer, or just as a human, these days. Listen In counters those feelings with tangible techniques and exciting ideas that refresh, inspire and invigorate on a very deep level.”
-Debra M.

About Nina LaCour and Elana K. Arnold

Over the past seven years, Nina and Elana have worked together as teachers, co-writers, and readers for one another’s work. Some of our most fulfilling times are spent talking together about writing. 
 
We know from sharing our enthusiasm, our setbacks, and our discoveries how gratifying and joyful writing can be, even when it’s also often difficult and solitary. We want to create a space where others can experience this feeling of connection.

Nina LaCour is the bestselling, Lambda Award-winning and Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of picture books, a chapter book series, young adult novels, and adult literary fiction. Her novel We Are Okay was named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 YA Novels of All Time. Her adult literary debut, Yerba Buena, was a Book of the Month Club selection, Target Book Club selection, and Indie Next Pick. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Nina received her undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Her graduate thesis became her first novel, Hold Still, which received a William C. Morris honor from the American Library Association and won the Northern California Book Award. Nina loves cooking, gardening, and daytripping through the ever-inspiring regions of Northern California with her wife and their daughter. She lives in San Francisco.
 
Elana K. Arnold is the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels and young adult novels, including The Blood Years, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Sydney Taylor Book Award, as well being named a Boston Horn/Horn Book Award and California Book Award honoree; the Printz Honor winner Damsel; the National Book Award finalist What Girls Are Made Of, and Global Read Aloud selection A Boy Called Bat and its sequels. Born in Long Beach, California, Elana spent her childhood and teen years in many parts of southern and central California. She received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and her master’s degree in English and Creative Writing from UC Davis. Now back in Long Beach, Elana loves spending time with her family of humans and other mammals. 

Both Nina and Elana teach, guest lecture, and appear at conferences and conventions around the country and internationally. Garnering starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, The Horn Book, Booklist, School Library Journal, and others, their books have been translated into over a dozen languages. Additionally, their novels and books for younger readers are frequent Junior Library Guild selections. Their young adult novels have been named among the best books of the year by the American Library Association, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Rise: A Feminist Book Project, Seventeen, Bustle, The Horn Book, The Boston Globe, Boston Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and New York Public Library, and more.
Listen In's Weekly Topics

Week One: Inspiration
This week, Nina and Elana will focus on Inspiration. We’ll explore what inspiration feels like in our bodies; share stories about times when inspiration struck; investigate the question of bounty and scarcity when it comes to finding new ideas; and much, much more.

You will gain tools to know how to move forward when you don't feel inspired; what to do when your stories scare you, either in scope or in subject or public perception; how to move out of fallow writing periods; how to write through personal hardship; and strategies for dealing with comparison and self-doubt.

Week Two: Creation I
Nina and Elana will discuss Nina’s desire to know “everything about everything” about others’ creative process; the “short story writer-shaped box” Elana unwittingly kept herself in for many years; our evolving relationship with ideas and the creative process; and much, much more.

You will gain insight to the arc of a project, from inspiration to revision to sale; learn to harness play and experimentation to jump start your drafting process or rekindle your energy; and leverage your own creative interests into a story only you could tell.

Week Three: Creation II
This time, Nina and Elana dig into the nuts and bolts of creation. We discuss different tools and tactics we’ve used over the course of our careers to create and craft our stories; the structures of our days and how constraints both of time and of form can help shape the things we make; the ratio of ease to effort in our work; and much, much more.

You will explore how new tools and drafting methods can transform your process; determine when it's right to hold yourself to word count goals and when you need more room for flexibility and spontaneity; engage with insightful exercises to deepen your understanding of your own characters, settings, and plots.

Week Four: Communication
This week, Nina and Elana explore several facets of Communication and writing, including early experiences of sharing work with critique partners and writing workshops; how vulnerability and the willingness to share work allows them to see our projects more clearly; the gratification of seeing one another’s early drafts; the experience of being reviewed by critics and other readers; and much, much more.

You will gain strategies for getting more value out of your existing writing relationships; become a more responsive reader; develop tools to better analyze your writing by communicating with your own work; re-center your own intuition after receiving negative, conflicting, or overwhelming feedback.

Week Five: Revision
This week, Nina and Elana discuss the different sorts of revision we undertake throughout the life cycle of a project; the tools we lean on during the revision process; how one note from an editor or reader can change the trajectory of an entire new draft; and much, much more.

You will learn about multiple modes of revising; see your drafts from new vantage points; explore ways to stay organized and on track during a complicated, long revision process; gain insights about how revision changes over the course of a career...and how it stays the same.

Week Six: Restoration
To be honest: we are terrible at restoration! In our final week, we'll touch on the importance and elusiveness of rest, and then dive into the business of being a writer. Nina and Elana discuss how we recognize when we’re nearing the end of a project and what it feels like to let it go; what we imagine our restorative time will look like, versus what it actually is; the business of writing as a career and how that impacts and complicates restorative practice; restoring our definitions of ourselves over time; and much, much more.

Elana has published twenty-six books with five forthcoming. Nina has published ten books with five forthcoming. Both of us write across age categories and have worked with a variety of editors and publishers. We will share all that we’ve learned about the business of being a writer and answer any questions that feel potent for our group, including how to approach agents, understanding the terms of book deals and advances, juggling multiple contracts and deadlines, and promoting a book once it's published.


Writing can be lonely and overwhelming. But for the duration of Listen In, you will have Nina and Elana’s voices in your ear. Between the private podcasts, the weekly zoom hours, the ongoing conversations on our forum, and the personal call, you won’t be alone. And the bundles distill the overwhelming process of writing into discrete, actionable work that will make you more the writer you are, already.

You may feel like you’re listening in on us, but you’ll also be finding ways to listen into your own work, your own brain, and your own practice, so that even after our time together ends, you’ll feel connected and energized with new tools, techniques, and perspectives that you’ll be able to turn to time and again.

We began the project of creating this course inspired by Nina’s words: “All I want to know is everything about how people work.” Listen In: Conversation and Cultivation is our way of giving you everything we can.
Listen In is offered only once a year. The 2026 dates are May . Do you have questions about the class? Elana will be glad to answer them for you! Email her at [email protected].

Enroll in Listen In for $1250 (in a single payment or three monthly payments) and receive:

  • 6 podcast-style recorded conversations between Nina and Elana on a specific theme
  • 6 weekly bundles of invitations meant to spark discoveries in your work and creative practice
  • 6 Zoom meetings with Nina, Elana, and your Listen In cohort for conversation and guided exercises, held each Thursday at 5:30PM PST from May 14th-June 18th with recordings available
  • A moderated forum to continue conversations and share resources
  • A one-time twenty minute Zoom with Elana and Nina and YOU to discuss what's most on your mind
  • (We are so excited for our 6 weeks together!)

Click here to enroll!

Class space is limited. Enrollment closes on May 12th, or when our group reaches capacity.