These are events available for free to members of the Florence Literary Society. To attend an event, sign up as a member here and reserve your place following the links below. Looking for free writing events in Florence? Sign up for the newsletter to see the list of ALL English speaking writer and author events in Florence.

Thursday, January 22

FLS Launch Party & Raffle

Join us for an aperitivo and the official launch of the Florence Literary Society 2026. Learn about the scope and objectives of FLS while enjoying a glass of wine in the heart of Florence. There will be an opportunity to become a member at the event and learn about the upcoming events in 2026 as well as a literary minded raffle!

Free ticketed event. You must have a free ticket to attend.

Tuesday, January 27th

Writing Workshop: First drafts with Ros Belford

Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott is one of the most popular – and sanity saving – essays on the challenges of writing. In this workshop, Ros Belford invites courageous writers to share a shitty (or messy) first draft. ‘If there is anything I learned from writing my first book, it is not only that you have to sit with the chaos of a first draft and trust that you’ll be able to sort it out, but have fun with it and enjoy the process of digging into and behind what you have written. Sharing the process as part of a workshop is really liberating. You stop feeling that you are alone with your writing, you get invaluable reader feedback, and best of all, everyone can let their imagination and ideas run wild…’

Ros will bring along one of her messy first drafts, and suggests that writers bring along up to 500 words of their own work.

Ros Belford will also be presenting at a Meet the Author event at the British Institute the day before on January 26th about her novel Children of the Volcano. She is also the author of numerous guidebooks and articles about Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean. You can find her work in Rough Guides, Fodor’s, DK, Condé Nast Traveller, The Telegraph, The Independent and on Amazon.

This first FLS event of the year is a FREE ticketed event for members and non members. You must have a ticket to attend. Click below to get your free for information on timing & location.

February 27th-March 1st

Join FLS at TESTO!

Join the FLS community for a special meet the author event and an event centred around Flash Fiction. More information tbd.

Saturday, March 28th

Writing Workshop: Time Sensitive: Magnifying, Minimizing and layering time in your writing
with Poet Kevin Craft

This “time sensitive” workshop centers around ideas of anachronism and synchronicity in writing. Writer’s will practice playing with various measures of time in lyric and narrative structures. Kevin Craft is fascinated by the compression that lyric modes afford, scrunching hundreds or thousands of years into the space of a single sentence, or blowing up the minutiae of a moment into many stanzas, paragraphs, etc. Mapping one era onto another is another form of this: think of The School of Athens, that cinematic instant in which a slice of both classical and Renaissance philosophical vision run side by side. Or the Medici princes in the Journey of the Magi. Attendees will see various representations in prose, poetry, and painting (not to mention geology), and will learn techniques to work the 4th dimension in all its forms through generative exercises in class.

What to bring: Writing materials

Kevin Craft lives in Seattle and directs the Written Arts Program at Everett Community
College. A frequent visitor to Italy, he also served as a faculty director of the University of
Washington’s Writers in Rome Program. His books include Traverse (Lynx House Press, 2024),
Vagrants & Accidentals (UW Press, 2017), Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books, 2005), as
well as five volumes of the anthology Mare Nostrum, an annual collection of Italian translation
and Mediterranean-inspired travel writing (Writ in Water Press, 2004 – 2009). Recognitions
include fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, MacDowell Colony,
the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), the Camargo Foundation (France), 4Culture, The Jack Straw
Cultural Center, PLAYA, Artist Trust, and a Statewide Literary Achievement Award from
Humanities Washington. He has also worked as a writer in residence at Olympic National Park.
Former editor of the magazine Poetry Northwest, he now serves as publisher, and edits the book
imprint Poetry NW Editions. His writing explores the intersections of memory, landscape,
kinship, and travel, through the lenses of deep time (art history, archaeology, geology) and under
contemporary pressures of profound ecological change.

RECENT WORK:
Letter from Rome, on the Fly (Poetry Foundation)
Mediterranean Poetry (Four Poems / Online Journal)
Short Interview and Sample Reading (Jack Straw Cultural Center)
Longer Interview (Her Deepest Ecologies Podcast)
Editorial and Publishing Work (Poetry Northwest)

This event is open only to members of the Florence Literary Society. Click here to become a member in advance, or you can pay the membership fee of €40 at the event. Membership gets you free access to all upcoming events (listed here) and early bird access to publishing day.

Saturday, May 9

Writing Workshop: Dialogue for Literature & Cinema with Kristina Darling

This workshop will consider what makes dialogue engaging for readers, regardless of the writer’s chosen genre. How can memoirists and novelists craft charged, suspenseful, and meaningful exchanges between characters? When is exposition more efficient than dialogue in moving a story along, and how can we as writers be more intentional about when to offer snippets of conversation in the characters’ own voices? For a poet, what is gained by letting readers eavesdrop on conversations between characters, rather than summarizing? We will look at several examples in class, from Philip Roth’s The Counterlife to Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Claudia Rankin’s Citizen, and Juliana Baggott’s Lizzie Borden in Love: Poems in Women’s Voices, as well as other texts as determined by participant interests.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over thirty volumes of poetry, essays, and fiction. A twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar and consultant with the United States Fulbright Commission, her work has been recognized with residencies at Yaddo, the Villa Lena Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, and a nomination for the Distinguished Visitor Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. She has held academic appointments across Europe and lectured at institutions including Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Webster University’s Geneva campus, where she leads a writing workshop for diplomats. Born in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between Greece, Spain, and the Amalfi Coast. Over 100 of her students have published books and received major fellowships, reflecting her focus on professional empowerment. New Books from Persea, Penguin, Dzanc, & Bloomsbury. https://kristinamariedarling.com.

This event is open only to members of the Florence Literary Society. Click here to become a member in advance, or you can pay the membership fee of €40 at the event. Membership gets you free access to all upcoming events (listed here) and early bird access to publishing day.

Ticketed event: Free for members.

Saturday, June 6

Writing Workshop: Essay Craft with Wallis Wilde Menozzi

The workshop will offer participants examples of contemporary essays that illustrate briefly the importance of scenes, dialogue, point of view. How does one find authentic language? How does one deepen or charge one’s voice? What is a personal essay, a nonfiction essay, an opinion piece? There will be exercises to discover or rediscover the freedom and power you need to take yourself and your essay seriously.

Wallis Wilde Menozzi has published three books of memoir/nonfiction with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as a novel, poetry, and (FSG, 2026) a bilingual Selection of Antonella Anedda’s poetry. She has published essays in many journals including Kenyon Review, Agni, Southwest Review, Tel Aviv Review, Literary Hub and anthologies including Best Spiritual Essays and Best Essays of the Twentieth Century.

This event is open only to members of the Florence Literary Society. Click here to become a member in advance, or you can pay the membership fee of €40 at the event. Membership gets you free access to all upcoming events (listed here) and early bird access to publishing day.

Date tbd: September or October

Pitching Workshop

Not unlike speed dating, an in-person pitching session requires preparation. In this workshop, Lori Hetherington will guide you through the steps to prepare for a typical 10-minute, face-to-face pitching session with an agent or editor. We’ll also do timed practice sessions, followed by feedback and suggestions to help you get ready for the FLS Publishing Day event or any other opportunity you have to pitch your work.

Lori Hetherington is a translator, ghostwriter, and editor and has more than 10 years of experience pitching the work of her clients. She is also a founding member of the Florence Literary Society.

This event is open only to members of the Florence Literary Society. Click here to become a member in advance, or you can pay the membership fee of €40 at the event. Membership gets you free access to all upcoming events (listed here) and early bird access to publishing day.

Ticketed event: Free for members. Limited space available.

Saturday, November 7

Publishing Day 2026

Florence Literary Society’s flagship annual publishing day event! See more information on the official page.

Ticketed event: Publishing day will have an additional cost to membership costs. Early access for members.

Saturday, November 21st

Writing Workshop: Journalistic Writing with Jamie Mackay

Workshop the journalistic skill of identifying the most compelling entry point into any story. Bring participants’ own manuscripts—first pages of novels, essay openings—and workshop them using journalism’s lede-finding techniques.

Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence. His work has appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, Frieze and elsewhere. The Invention of Sicily is his first book.

This event is open only to members of the Florence Literary Society. Click here to become a member in advance, or you can pay the membership fee of €40 at the event. Membership gets you free access to all upcoming events (listed here) and early bird access to publishing day.