Description
January-March, 2023
In this group we have our usual 50-60 minutes of writing. During the second hour, we’ll be doing a mix of sharing, talking about a particular aspect around the work of getting our writing into the world, checking in on progress and/or setbacks, and/or listening to guest speakers on a given topic related to submitting and publishing literary work. We all need support around this issue. We will remind each other how good our work is and how worthy an endeavor to continue to put it out in the face of (the inevitable) rejections. We’ll remind each other it’s a numbers game, not a meritocracy.
Topics may include:
-Applying for grants, fellowships, residencies
-Building a Social media platform
-Researching agents
-Tracking submissions
-Managing our limited resources to figure out which journals might be a good fit for our submissions
-Learning about the different paths to publishing (Big 5, Independent, Hybrid, Self-Publishing/Author Owned)
The first hour can look like anything from generative writing, revision, crafting a premise or log line, writing query letters, researching literary and mainstream journals, posting on social media, or doing whatever needs to be done to cultivate your readership. Who is your intended audience? What does your work need to allow it to shine from the slush pile?
2022 Fall Line up of Speakers (Winter 2023 speakers TBA!) All participants, past and present will have access to the Google files with videos of our Fall ’22 speakers and handouts.
Monday Oct. 10- Liz Chang on Duotrope and lit mag submissions.
Monday Oct. 17- Jocelyn Winn on prepping pieces for publication.
Monday Oct 24- Liz Greene on Social media and hashtags.
Monday Oct 31-Megan Rubiner Zinn on submitting to mainstream publications
Monday Nov. 7 Rhonda Zimlich on Querying agents and publishers.
Monday Nov. 14 Linda Murphy Marshall on Independent/Hybrid publishing.
Monday Nov. 21 Chanel Dubofsky on Social media and book reviews.
Monday Nov. 28 Liz Bedell on Residencies, grants and fellowship applications.
Monday Dec. 5 Hillary Stern on Self-Publishing novels on Amazon.
Liz Chang was 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Rock & Sling, Origins Journal, Breakwater Review and Stoneboat Literary Journal, among others. Her fourth collection, a chapbook called Museum of Things, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in early 2023. Her creative nonfiction recently appeared in Oyster River Pages, and her flash fiction has been published internationally. Chang’s translation of Claude de Burine’s work is anthologized in Paris in Our View from l’Association des Amis de Shakespeare & Company. She is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Moravian University.
Jocelyn Winn is a New Hampshire–based freelance writer and founder of The Eleventh Letter editorial services. She is a nonfiction reader for the Maine Review and Hunger Mountain and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her most recent work can be found in the online journals Eratio, Past Ten, and The Waterwheel Review and forthcoming in Fourth Genre as a Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize finalist. She currently teaches workshops on writing-related manifestation and synchronicity.
Liz brings over 22 years of experience in marketing and communications within the Creative and Health & Wellness Industries. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Skidmore College, and Trinity College, Dublin, she developed strategies to build robust communication channels that elevate brands with a distinct and vibrant presence. Liz’s superpower is multitasking. Being an artist, writer, marketing director, and Mama, she is able to move from task to task ensuring effective results. The variety of industries she works with keeps things fun and interesting. Liz loves being able to work from her laptop, as she often travels with her family to other countries and landscapes which further inspires her creative passion and gratitude.
Megan Zinn is a freelance writer and copyeditor. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in the New York Times Motherlode blog, DAME, Salon, Jezebel, Grown & Flown, and Michigan Today, and her book, Our Precious Pooper, was published by Knock Knock in 2016. Megan also hosts Writer’s Block on WHMP in Northampton, a weekly radio show about books and writing.
Linda Murphy Marshall has a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. Her memoir, Ivy Lodge: A Memoir of Translation and Discovery received a starred review from Kirkus. Her essays and stories have been published in numerous publications, includingThe Los Angeles Review,The Catamaran Literary Reader,The Ocotillo Review, Mom Egg Review,The Blue Earth Review, Maryland Literary Review, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere. In addition, she is a Trustee for the National Museum of Language and a docent at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Rhonda Zimlich teaches writing at American University in Washington
D.C. She writes about intergenerational trauma and the unbreakable
spirit of youth. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Past-Ten, American
Writer’s Review, and others. She is the recipient of the 2021 Mental
Health Fiction Award from Please See Me as well as the 2020 Nonfiction
Award from Dogwood Journal. More at www.rhondazimlich.com
Chanel Dubofsky (she/her) earned an MFA in Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015. Her writing on reproductive health, abortion access, religion, and pop culture can be found in New York Magazine, Lilith, Modern Fertility, and others. She is currently at work on a novel about American Jews in Israel and Palestine in the aftermath of the 1967 war, and appears in the new documentary My So-Called Selfish Life, about the choice to be childfree. She edits the Radicle Book Reviews column at The Maine Review, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Follow her on Instagram at @cdubofsky.
Liz Bedell’s recently completed novel, The Space Between, was shortlisted in the 2019 William Faulkner William Wisdom Competition, Novel-in-Progress category. She is a co-editor of Embody, a weekly feature column at The Maine Review. She holds an MFA Fiction and Translation from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and an MA in English from Middlebury College.
Nerissa Nields is a writer and musician/songwriter living in Western MA. She’s a founding member of indie-folk-rock band The Nields who have released 20 albums and toured North America. Previous publications include a YA novel Plastic Angel (Scholastic 2005), and All Together Singing in the Kitchen: Creative Ways to Make and Listen to Music as a Family (Roost Books/Shambala, 2011.) Her work has been published in American Songwriter, J Journal: New Writing on Justice, Performing Songwriter, The Huffington Post, The Maine Review, and the Boston Globe. The founder and director of Writing It Up in the Garden Workshops and Retreats in Northampton MA, Nerissa received a BA cum laude with distinction in the major (English) from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently working on her twenty-first album and the third novel in a trilogy about a family band.
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