The writers gather at a high table under a single overhead lamp as their elbows compete for space with bottles of seltzer, thick slices of cake and dutifully annotated pages of paper. It’s Thursday night in Tomales, and the members of the Tomales Writers Group begin—carefully and earnestly—to pick one another’s words apart.
The group was founded a decade ago by Blair Fuller, an acclaimed writer and editor who helped found The Paris Review. When…