Writing and Selling Your Personal Essays

An artful personal essay showcases your wit, wisdom, and window on the world. This information-packed one-day workshop takes your essays from ideas to potential publication. The instructor draws on more than 20 years of magazine-essay-writing experience to share tips on style, structure, voice, the use of anecdote, and how to target what different publications want. Writers and editors share their expertise and perspectives in a panel about breaking into a variety of markets, including the expanding opportunities on the Web.

Chris Colin has written for the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Smithsonian, and McSweeney’s Quarterly, among others. A former editor at Salon, Colin is the author of What Really Happened to the Class of ’93? (Broadway Books, 2004).

Caroline Grant, Ph.D., is the editor-in-chief and a columnist for LiteraryMama.com. She is also coeditor of the anthology Mama, Ph.D.: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press, 2008).

Kate Moses is coeditor of the essay anthologies Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves (HarperCollins, 2005) and Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (Villard, 1999). A former senior editor and staff writer at Salon, Moses is also the author of Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath (St. Martin’s, 2003) and Cakewalk: A Memoir (Dial, 2010).

Autumn Stephens is coeditor of the East Bay Monthly and has edited two anthologies of personal essays: Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick (Inner Ocean, 2004) and The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives (Inner Ocean, 2006). She is also the author of the Wild Women book series and has written for the New York Times, San Francisco magazine, and numerous Bay Area publications.

Enroll Now:

Berkeley, Sat. Feb. 12, 10 am, 1 meeting