The Brainery

Online sci-fi, horror, and fantasy writing workshops and consultation services, and digital writing residencies

Every Brainery lab is taught by a working speculative fiction writer and built around real pages, real feedback, and real momentum. Choose your trajectory below.

As Featured In

The Brainery

Filters

Short Story Lab

Write, critique, and revise two new stories with a tight feedback loop and submission-ready polish.

Tentative start date: The week of August 1, 2026

Taught by Kira Lees

This workshop will be limited to 4 students and will run for 8 weeks.

Please Note: Every workshop member will be sent a survey to gather background, writing level, and motivations. All lab registrations are subject to a full refund if the instructor decides that it is not good fit for the lab at this time.

$300.00
Weird Girl Lit Lab

For the writers who grew up dog-earing the strange pages, underlining the unsettling sentences, and wondering why the most interesting character was always the weird girl This lab is a 8-week deep dive into the weird, the feral, and the gloriously uncategorizable fiction that slips between genres like fog through a keyhole. You will write women and girls who do not apologize, worlds that refuse to behave, and prose that hums at a frequency slightly outside normal human hearing. Prerequisites: feminist values, a tolerance for the uncanny, and a willingness to go a little feral on the page.

Tentative start date: The week of August 1, 2026

Taught by Dr. Jilly Dreadful

This lab is limited to 6 writers and will run 8 weeks.

Please Note: Every workshop member will be sent a survey to gather background, writing level, and motivations. All lab registrations are subject to a full refund if the instructor decides that it is not good fit for the lab at this time.

$400.00
Hope Has Teeth: Hopepunk Lab

Hopepunk isn't wishful thinking: it's a radical act. In this workshop, we'll explore the craft of writing short speculative fiction that chooses hope not as naivety, but as resistance. We'll examine what it means to build characters who care fiercely, communities that hold each other up, and worlds worth fighting for—without flinching from the darkness that makes that fight meaningful. Come ready to write fiction with warmth, intention, and a little bit of bite.

Tentative start date: The week of August 15, 2026

Taught by Dr. Jilly Dreadful

This lab is limited to 4 writers and will run 8 weeks.

Please Note: Every workshop member will be sent a survey to gather background, writing level, and motivations. All lab registrations are subject to a full refund if the instructor decides that it is not good fit for the lab at this time.

$400.00
Worldbuilder Lab

Engineer planets, politics, languages, and ecosystems that feel inevitable, but optimistic.

Tentative start date: The week of September 1, 2026

Taught by Dr. Jilly Dreadful

This lab is limited to 4 writers and will run 8 weeks.

Please Note: Every workshop member will be sent a survey to gather background, writing level, and motivations. All lab registrations are subject to a full refund if the instructor decides that it is not good fit for the lab at this time.

$400.00

No results found

No results match your search. Try removing a few filters.

Book an Appointment

Workshops not really your style? Looking for personalized one-on-one coaching and cheerleading support for your creative project? Dr. Jilly Dreadful can work with you to bring the first draft of your novel in 90 days, be a sensitivity reader, or help you worldbuild your project.

Our Writers Get Published and Win Awards

Reviews

I truly believe I would not be where I am at currently if not for you. Your support, feedback, and encouragement -- has been life-changing. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

— Kate Findley, former student

Who We Are

  • Our workshops begin with the assumption that you already have something worth saying. The work is in learning to say it with precision, strangeness, and intention. Jilly brings a scholar's rigor and a practitioner's instincts to every session — drawing on feminist theory, myth, archetype, and the long tradition of speculative fiction as a literature of resistance. Kira brings a reader's instincts and a writer's heart to every workshop session. Her critiques are incisive and generous—the rare combination that actually makes your work better. Together we believe the best workshops are less about rules and more about expanding what feels possible on the page, while creating a writing community that you will hopefully continue to co-create with long after the workshop is over. We read closely, write dangerously, and although we will take your writing seriously, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

  • We believe speculative fiction is inherently political. Our teaching is rooted in an intersectional feminist praxis, which means we’re committed to creating spaces where writers from marginalized perspectives find their work taken seriously on its own terms, not measured against a default. We value rigor without gatekeeping, experimentation without chaos, and community without false consensus. The best workshops are ones where writers leave more certain of their own vision, not more dependent on external validation. That's what we’re building here.

  • The Brainery began with a simple conviction: that speculative fiction writers deserve a workshop built specifically for them—one that takes the genre seriously as literature, as politics, and as art. I founded it because I couldn't find the room I needed, so I built it digitally.

    I'm Jilly Dreadful — author, playwright, and scholar of feminist science fiction. My work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology She Walks in Shadows. I hold a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from USC, and I've spent my career at the intersection of rigorous craft and radical imagination. I'm a member of SFWA, and I believe deeply that speculative fiction is one of the most important literary traditions we have—precisely because it refuses to accept the world as given.

    The Brainery grew out of that refusal. It was built for writers who are serious about the work: who want to read dangerously, write with intention, and be part of a community that holds them accountable without flattening them. Over the years it has been a home for emerging and established writers alike, a space where genre isn't a limitation but a launching point.

    Now we're rebooting — and we're doing it with more clarity about who we are and what we're here to do. The Brainery has always been a place for writers who believe the imagination is a form of resistance. That hasn't changed. We're just getting better at saying so.

  • Dr. Jilly Dreadful is a speculative fiction author, playwright, and scholar. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine and the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology She Walks in Shadows, where her work has been long-listed for Best Science Fiction and Best Horror of the year. She holds a Ph.D. from USC where she studied under Aimee Bender, Percival Everett, and. TC Boyle. She is the founder of The Brainery, as well as local writing groups.

    Kira Lees

Have Questions?

Whether you have a question, an idea, or perhaps would like to request to speak with a former student, please feel free to reach out. We’re here to help, and will answer you within 48 hours.