I first ‘met’ Kathie Giorgio when she taught a fiction course for Writers’ Online Workshops. She was patient, encouraging, supportive, and yet, she was very straight with her students. She could spot problems and communicate them effectively. Toward the end of class, Kathie mentioned AllWriters’ Workplace and Workshop, her own writing school. Through a web search, I learned that the school was located in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a town of about 70,000 residents located less than 20 miles east of Milwaukee.
        AllWriters’ Workplace and Workshop offers online and on site courses covering a variety of subjects, such as business writing, speech writing, playwriting, poetry, creative nonfiction/memoir, and both general and genre-specific classes in fiction. The studio offers coaching and editing services as well. AllWriters’ has a faculty of fourteen teachers, including Kathie. Faculty members are required to be  currently publishing in their genre and actively writing. The majority have advanced degrees in creative writing.
        Since I first met Kathie, I’ve taken several online classes through AllWriters’. I’ve found them to be reasonably priced and more helpful than either WOW or Gotham classes. With a superior level of instruction, I was curious about AllWriters’ and asked Kathie if Calliope could interview her.
    
Tell me about AllWriters’ Workplace and Work-shop.
AllWriters' is a creative writing studio offering on-site and online classes in all genres and abilities of creative writing.  We also offer coaching, editing and marketing services.  Our number one goal is to provide a community for writers, a place of encouragement and education for both the beginner and the pro.  We will be five years old in January!
    
When did you start the workplace?
January of 2005.
    
Can you tell me why you started it?
The primary reason was to provide a community for writers.  We don't have a water cooler to gather around at break time, to swap stories and frustrations and triumphs.  Writers work primarily all by themselves.  But we don't need to be alone all the time. 
        Finding support and camaraderie with people who not only do what we do, but understand what we do, is just so important.  I also formed the studio because I was frustrated with the level of education being offered.  At least in my community, people were taking writing classes from writers who had no clue what was really going on.
        People were teaching who hadn't published in years, and they were teaching cross-genre, poets teaching fiction, novelists teaching memoir, memoirists teaching poetry.  In one horrifying example, someone was teaching a noncredit creative writing class at a community college whose sole qualification was that she liked to read a lot!  I wanted to make sure that writers were getting cutting edge information.  So the writers who teach for me have to be actively publishing in their field.  They need to know the current market conditions and just what's going on out there.
    
Tell me about yourself: when did you start writing? What types of writing do you prefer to do?
I'm one of those writers who has been writing forever.  Before I could write, I told stories, and once I could write, I began tracing the pictures out of my picture books so that I could rewrite the stories the way I felt they should be rewritten. 

I was in fifth grade when my English teacher told me I was a writer, and it just fit.  I published for the first time at fifteen.  It's just something I've never questioned...I'm a writer. Primarily, I write literary fiction, both the short story and the novel, though I prefer the short story.  I also write poetry and creative nonfiction.  But my passion is literary fiction.
    
Has managing AllWriters’ had an influence on your writing? And if so, in what way?
Managing AllWriters' has made me even more disciplined at writing than I already was.  I believe strongly that I can't teach writers unless I am writing myself.  I can't tell writers to find time in their day to write unless I manage to do that too.  I can't tell them to submit unless I do too.  Teaching writing and writing, for me, goes hand in hand.  I can't do one unless I'm doing the other.
    
What has been your most gratifying experience in teaching others the art of fiction?
Boy, it's hard to pick just one.  Definitely seeing my writers start publishing is way up there.  The first sold short story, the first novel.          They're ecstatic, and so am I!  But I guess overall it would just be seeing people realize that what they do is important, not just a hobby.  Writers tend to come to me as if they've been hiding in a closet, they're too worried to say out loud that they write or that they want to write.  But when they get with others that value the art of the written word, and they see that what they do really does take work and persistence and passion, they just open up!
    
How can classes help students improve their work?
By letting someone else's eyes see it.  We're all close to our work.  And sometimes it takes that third party to not only see the flaws, but to see the strengths.
    
Between teaching and managing All Writers, how do you find time to do your own writing?
It's not easy.  I teach about 65 hours a week, plus there's just the putzy stuff that comes with running a business.  But again, I wouldn't feel right about teaching writing if I wasn't actively doing it.
        So my afternoon hours are pretty much sacred. I write after lunch, starting around one o'clock.  I take a break at 3:30 to pick up my daughter from school, and then once I get her home and settled with a snack, I can usually work in a couple more hours before the evening of teaching starts.
    
What's next for Kathie Giorgio?
Well, I've been through four agents, and still haven't managed to get a novel published.  I definitely hope that's next on the agenda!  I still have more goals to reach with the studio.  I would like to see my faculty teaching full time as well, so that I'm offering writers support not only through taking classes, but by giving more writers jobs as teachers. 
        I have a magazine, Quality Fiction, which is currently on hiatus until the economy starts to pick up, or until I decide to make it an e-zine, whichever comes first.  And, if I have everything go my way, which is a big if, I'd like to someday start my own publishing house, one that would especially feature those writers who have been censored and rejected for writing on controversial subjects.  So what's next is whatever I can tackle and embrace.
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Note: For more information on All Writers’ workshops, go to www.AllWriters.org.