Instructor: Margaret Bates and Midnight Voss
Start Date: Monday, October 5, 2026
End Date: Friday, October 30, 2026
Type: Group.io
Duration: 4 Weeks
USD Fee: FF&P Member – $20; Non-Member – $25

Diversity and inclusion are beautiful things, especially in romance where every character deserves a happy ending. Maybe as a writer, you’re interested in trying something new and writing a romance involving queer men or women. This class will talk about the history of queer fiction, the art of writing a gay romance, how to avoid stereotypes and harmful tropes, and where to find sensitivity readers and more information about the queer community.

About the Instructors:

Margaret Bates graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University with a B.A. in psychology. Additionally, they were ABD while studying toward their Ph.D. in childhood development at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and hold a master’s degree in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Baltimore. They have decades of experience in academic writing and editing. Also, they have worked with creative writing students as well as undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Baltimore’s writing center as an on-staff writing tutor.

Currently, they have returned to academia and are earning a master’s in professional writing from Towson University. Their research focus areas include both the ramifications of tropes in romance as well as how romance readers’ personal values drive their book-purchasing decisions. They also work with the Towson University Business Department as a writing tutor.

In the realm of fiction writing, they possess over ten years of experience as a ghostwriter and freelance editor, knowledge which gives them a keen eye for pacing, plotting, and character GMC based in psychological underpinnings. As an editor, they have contracted with Mascot Books and NineStar Press previously. They’ve also created a stable of well-respected writing workshops they’ve taught online for Contemporary Romance Writers and Savvy Authors. In October of 2024, they and Midnight Voss presented the workshop “Pacing, Plotting, and Pancakes: What Makes Readers Stop Reading” at the Maryland Writers’ Association annual conference.

Midnight Voss earned her master’s degree in American Literature from the University of Oklahoma and her doctorate in Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy from the University of Houston. Her entire life has been dedicated to writing and the teaching of writing, both in academia through composition and literature classes as well as in one-to-one consulting sessions in the writing center with writers of all levels. Her focus on cultural and disabilities rhetorics has given her a specialty in depth of meaning and structure.

However, alongside her academic specialty, Voss has worked with creative writers for years in workshops and freelance editing and coaching. Her perspective on writing stems from both a literary angle as well as a reader and writer of fiction, enabling her to create focused classes that allow writers to hone their worldbuilding, connect their world to their characters, make use of adaptation theory to develop their manuscripts, and build their novel from in-depth looks at genre and theme. Her workshops and talks have featured in local groups like Central Valley Fiction Writers as well as online platforms like SavvyAuthors.

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