IT STARTED AS a simple experiment, a flyer posted on Beacon Street in Brookline. In 1997, Eve Bridburg, a Boston University writing instructor, put out the call for students for two fiction workshops she’d dubbed Grub Street Writers. Six years later, Bridburg’s little experiment has blossomed into a bona fide writing mecca, with offerings in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, and several master-level classes. Last summer, Bridburg and supporters reconfigured the organization as a nonprofit entity, allowing Grub Street to offer scholarships, a fiction fellowship, special events, and other activities. Their mission: to make Grub Street the center of literary arts in Boston.

Q: Why’d you start Grub Street originally?

A: I was teaching writing at BU at the time in the graduate program, and I loved teaching it, and wanted to see if I could do it on my own. Almost immediately, it was clear that there was a niche out there of people that weren’t being reached by either continuing ed or the university, so it was kind of a place in between. And it grew pretty quickly.

Q: Did that surprise you?

A: Yes! I had no idea what to expect. I definitely didn’t think that seven years later I would still be talking about Grub Street.

Q: Why the name Grub Street?

A: The George Gissing novel called New Grub Street, which is a great novel all about the hard work it is to create anything, whether it’s a magazine piece, a serious literary novel, pulp fiction, a dictionary entry — how difficult it can be when you want to start from nothing and create something word by word. So that book sort of inspired me, because I wanted to make sure from the beginning that we were not going to be literary or snobby in any way — that everyone would feel welcome.

Q: What’s been Grub Street’s genesis over the years?

A: Quickly we expanded from fiction to poetry and creative nonfiction and screenwriting, and we just sort of got bigger and hired more teachers and I think got better at what we were doing. But the biggest change was over this past year, when we took the year off and turned it into a nonprofit.

Q: How come?

A: The main reason we did that was because I couldn’t run it anymore, and I also for a long time had wanted to do things that I couldn’t do without extra money. Grub Street was just kind of paying its own bills, and not paying them very well. It’s always been a nonprofit. It was just a non-profiting for-profit. So I just couldn’t do it anymore. I had two babies in rapid succession, and couldn’t run it anymore, and I couldn’t find anyone to take it over. A lot of people were interested, but then when they sort of saw the bottom line, they said, " Well, this is kind of nuts. " You know, this is a lot of work, and there isn’t much financial reward; it seems like a lot of work and responsibility, and when you’ve created something, you don’t really think about whether it actually makes sense from a distance to be doing it. So it was actually an interesting process for me, too, because then I started thinking, " Yeah! Why am I in this? " It is a lot of work, the payoff isn’t great, but yet, I created it, I was really proud and happy that the classes were going so well, and I felt like we were doing something that was meaningful in the community, so I didn’t want to just let it die, which was what I almost did. But when I thought about letting it go, I had a really rough time, and I heard from a lot of people who didn’t want to see it just disappear, so I put the word out that I wanted to turn it into a nonprofit to see if I’d get enough support, because I really couldn’t physically do it alone.

I was kind of overwhelmed by the number of people willing to lend money, time, expertise. And so we took a year and a lot of people worked hard to make it survive. So now we’re back, reconfigured as a nonprofit. The biggest difference is that we can offer scholarships; we already are offering a fellowship this winter, which is really exciting, which we never got to do before, never had scholarships before. We have really neat and innovative events happening on Saturdays and on weeknights that we didn’t have before, and we’re just open to anyone who has an idea about programming.

Q: How do you recruit instructors for Grub Street classes?

A: Now we’re known enough that we get interesting résumés. But in the early days, we would just shake down all the local universities with MFA and MA programs and say, " Who are your best students this year? Do they want to teach? Send them to us. " And that’s how we sort of started, and we still have to do that from time to time, if we don’t have enough qualified people. But for the most part, at this point it’s great — we don’t have to look that hard; people come to us. So that’s a shift that is really nice.

Q: What are the things you think make a good writing instructor?

A: God, there’s so much. I think that teaching writing is an art. I mean, first of all, just knowledge of the craft, and authority, is very important. I also think it’s important to be able to tell people difficult things in a way that’s going to make them want to get back in front of the keyboard the next day.

Q: But what do you do when you have somebody in a class who really isn’t very good? What do you tell that person?

A: Well, um ... I guess what we tell them is ... first of all, there’s always something you can find in every piece of writing that’s worth building around.

Q: Really?

A: I think so. Yeah. It might even be something that’s not on the page yet but an idea that is evoked by what they’re trying to do. I guess we try and figure out, what are you trying to do, and how can you get there? Why isn’t this getting you there right now? But I think that, yeah, if you’re reading something generously and someone is writing sincerely, there’s always something there to work with.

Q: What kinds of people take classes at Grub Street?

A: There is a big range. I think we have all ages represented; probably if you had to classify our students, they’re very well-educated, and most of them are professionals, but that’s not always the case. But we have a whole lot of computer engineers and doctors and lawyers and marketing executives; a lot of people with a lot of expertise in different fields who also want to write. I think that was one of the things that surprised me when I started Grub Street, the caliber of people and the amount of talent out there, which makes for great classroom experiences. At the same time, I’m hoping that with more money to market in different markets, we’ll get a bigger cross-section of the population. I’d like to attract a more diverse crowd.

Q: How often do you have a student whose work you read and you immediately think, this person could make it as a professional writer?

A: I think if you were to talk to the people teaching our advanced classes, they would say that a lot of people have talent, and that they’re writing stuff that’s going to get out there. We’ve had several students publish books. We’ve had a lot of success stories, both with our teachers and with our students. Our teachers are kind of emerging writers themselves, so it’s been really fun. We have three teachers who are putting out their first books this year, which is really exciting. And we sent two students last year to Iowa’s writing program. One of them, she didn’t know that she wanted to write seriously at all when she first came and took a class with us, and she’s just fabulous and is doing really well, so we’re excited about her. We’ve had other students publish books, stories, articles. I’ve heard them reading things on the radio, on NPR, that they’ve written in class. So there’s been a lot of activity.

Q: What do you tell people who may be afraid to write?

A: That’s one of the things we encounter all the time in class. I guess I try and tell students, and I think that a lot of teachers here do, that there’s nothing to be scared of, really. You just sort of have to get over yourself a little. And then put it out there and see what happens. But I think it takes a lot of practice to be comfortable in a workshop; I know it took me a long time.

Q: What’s the dynamic among students in a workshop?

A: We try and make it a very comfortable place for people to share work. It’s hard; you’re walking a fine line: you want the comments to be honest and meaningful, and at the same time you don’t want them to be damaging. So that’s what we encourage in the classroom, to really think hard about how, if they were in the other person’s shoes, how they would want information imparted to them. And for the most part, people are fine. We’ve had very few problems.

Q: Have you ever had a workshop where the dynamic just isn’t working, or it’s gotten too competitive?

A: Sure.

Q: So then what do you do?

A: We talk to the people involved and try and diffuse the situation. And on a very rare occasion, we’ll ask someone to leave the workshop. I think that’s happened twice in seven years. Our teachers are very good at what they’re doing, so they control the tone, really. And if somebody is out of line, they’ll talk to them privately, and that usually solves things. We’ve had a few instances where people have gotten, I don’t know, snobby about work that they don’t deem literary, and it’s very interesting; the work that they didn’t deem literary enough, that work got published in both cases. We also try and remind people that everyone has different goals and ambitions.

Q: And readers have different tastes.

A: Exactly. And that nobody, including the teacher, has the answers. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen with anybody’s work, or what they’ll be capable of from one week to the next.

Q: How do you think Boston compares to other cities in terms of nurturing up-and-coming writers?

A: I think the reason so many people have gotten on board for turning Grub Street into a nonprofit is because something like this is desperately needed here. I think there’s a lot of good literary stuff going on, but it lacks cohesion, so what we’re trying to do is sort of become a center for that. We really want to support all the bookstores, everything happening everywhere. Have a central place for people to go, and they can say, " Oh, I can go to Grub Street’s Web site and I’ll know all the readings going on tonight. " I think that Boston’s missing that, and most other cities of our size have it.

Q: Where would you like to see Grub Street go? What’s the goal?

A: I would like see it reach more people, and become a Boston institution that has longevity, no matter what the people now involved with Grub Street end up doing, so that we create an organization that will last in the city. That will reach more people, will have more innovative programming, and will become a place that people associate with the literary life of the city.

Grub Street and Salon 350 present " Girls’ Night Out, " at which writer Steve Almond will lead a workshop on constructing the ultimate personal ad and the salon staff will award makeovers to two participants, on February 11, at 7:30 p.m., at Salon 350, 350 Newbury Street, in Boston. Call (617) 623-8100 for reservations. For more information on Grub Street, visit www.grubstreet.org, or call (617) 623-8100. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com