Hello,

My name is Lawrence Everett Forbes, and I’m a disabled writer looking to raise $2,700 (plus administrative costs) for a 10-month intensive online Young Adult Novel workshop with New York Times bestselling author Betsy Cornwell at The Writer’s Center this fall through spring. The tuition is $5,400, and I have $2,700 of my own money saved for the course.

My goal is to write my first YA Novel called Brotherhood: The High Cost of Belonging, about a closeted 18-year-old Black man who pledges an all-white fraternity. Think School Ties meets Get Out from a Black gay perspective.

I am a published writer with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998), whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Salon, WIRED, and the 2026 Lambda Literary Anthology. (I was a 2025 Lambda Literary Fellow.)

My disability stems from having four levels of cervical spinal fusion (C3–C7), and I also help care for my 92-year-old West Indian father, a US Army veteran with advanced Alzheimer’s-related dementia, so finances are tight. But I believe in myself, this YA Novel, the class, and Ms. Cornwell.

Please donate what you can to help me pursue my goal. Thanks in advance!

Genially,

Lawrence