The DC’s Writer’s Workshop applications were the talk of the town over the summer as more than 1500 people applied to be taken under the wing of Scott Snyder for a 13 week writing workshop course. Just about everyone at every level of the industry applied, although it’s now clear that the whole “you must be published already” criteria was one of the important ones.

The eight writers selected include two women and two African American men, and an indigenous writer. They’re mostly people who have found some measure of success in other fields – as in one is a Peabody Award winner — widely considered the Pulitzer Prize of broadcast media – and another a Bram Stoker Award winner.

The winners are:

Owl Goingback (Bram Stoker award winner for Crota, Sealed With A Kiss)

We had our first DC Writers Workshop class tonight, and I loved it. Great instructor, very talented classmates. Looking forward to next week — Owl Goingback (@OGoingback) September 22, 2016

Writing partners Erica Harrell

and Desirée Proctor (writers of MTV’ Happyland andThe Walking Dead: Michonne for Telltale Games)

Al Letson (Planetfall, Imperfect, Peabody award winner for NPR’s State of the Re:Union)

David Accampo (Lost Angels, Sparrow & Crowe)

Aaron Gillespie (LadyDemon, Bionic Man)

Ryan Lindsay (Ghost Town, Negative Space)

Tony Patrick (X’ed, writer of short film Black Card).

“We were blown away by the positive response to the DC Writers Workshop program,” stated DC’s Vice President of Talent Development, Bobbie Chase. “After reading through thousands of entries we’re confident this new class of 2016 represent the best and brightest aspiring writers in comics.”



Scott Snyder said, “I’m so thrilled and honored to be teaching this class again. The level of incoming talent is incredibly inspiring, and I’m deeply grateful to DC for giving me the chance.”

The pilot program for the Workshop was run last year and included Adam Smith, Christopher Sebela, Emma Beeby, Erica Schultz, Hena Khan, Joëlle Jones, Matthew Rosenberg, Michael McMillan, Michael Moreci, Verónica Muñiz-Soto and Vita Ayala. Their work will be included in the upcoming one-shot comic NEW TALENT SHOWCASE, which comes out on November 30.

You’ll note that this list includes several pretty well established writers, and several have gone on to write DC books, so the workshop works. (The artists included Khary Randolph, Annie Wu and Sonny Liew, so…yeah not too much to learn there…) Consider this “grad school” not a breaking in program.

But there were a lot of broken hearts around the internet. Patrick Gerard has a particularly wrenching (and not for the reaosn you’re thinking) account here.