History
Anna and Colleen are long-term writing partners and the most kindred of spirits. Before they’d heard the term “accountability parters,” they were playing that role to each other—sharing weekly check-ins and posting snippets of new writing on a secret blog for one another to cheer on and respond to. There came a point, though, when they felt like they’d never finish their book drafts unless they created a more intensive structure, one that nurtured the spirit as much as the sentences. They devised a month-long challenge, and the Incubator was born.
It was a two-woman Incubator at first, a tiny container with a sense of urgency and bottomless emotional support. But that month was mighty in unexpected and lasting ways: creatively generative, emotionally grounding, and transformative for their books-in-progress. Their bespoke Incubator practically demanded to grow to include more writers. After the success of a beta Incubator in January 2022, a pilot program for two writers, they launched the first official Incubator—a cohort of six multi-genre writers—in fall 2023.
Colleen Kinder is the co-founder of the nonprofit magazine Off Assignment and editor of Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us (Algonquin Books). She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic.com, AFAR, National Geographic Travel, Creative Nonfiction, A Public Space, Ninth Letter, Best American Travel Writing, and The New York Times “Modern Love.” She has received fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, Breadloaf, and the Fulbright. A graduate of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, Colleen is a passionate educator and has taught writing the Banff Literary Journalism Program, Semester at Sea, and Yale.
Anna Vodicka is a Seattle-based writer and editor who leads generative workshops at universities, prisons, retreats, and writing centers. Her work has appeared in AFAR, Brevity, Electric Literature, Guernica, Harvard Review, McSweeney’s, and Ms., and earned fellowships to Hedgebrook, PLAYA, and the Seattle Film School. Her essays have been shortlisted in Best American Essays, and featured in Best Women’s Travel Writing, Best of Brevity, The Innocent Abroad (Lonely Planet), and Letter to a Stranger. Anna is the editor of Artist Anthology: 40 Creatives of the Pacific Northwest (2024), and moonlights as a carpenter. She works with writers of all levels to nurture and sustain writing as passion, profession, and practice.
“Anna and Colleen have developed something exceptional: a matrix of strong and diverse writers who support one another sincerely and generously while daring one another to defy our own limitations.”
—Amber Meadow Adams
“I am in awe of the work that Anna and Colleen did to create the Incubator--the exact challenge I needed to reconsider my existing patterns as a writer.”
—Haley Mlotek