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O Brave New World:

The different paths for publishing your novel in mainstream, indie press, hybrid, or self-publishing

So you’ve finished your novel and you’re ready to sell it. Authors Nancy Bilyeau, Stephanie Cowell, Loretta Goldberg, and Susan Wands who have taken different publication paths will discuss the pros and cons of each to reach readers’ bookshelves. Faith L. Justice will moderate this panel to help you choose your way.

Join us on Wednesday, November 1 for this live event at our regular venue the Jefferson Market Library in NYC. We'll have refreshments and networking for the first half-hour starting at 6:00 pm (Eastern). Our program and the Zoom feed will begin promptly at 6:30.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS

Born in Chicago and a graduate of the University of Michigan, NANCY BILYEAU moved to New York City to work in the magazine business as a writer and editor. After working for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to Good Housekeeping, she turned to fiction. She wrote the Joanna Stafford trilogy, a trio of thrillers set in Henry VIII’s England, for Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. Her fourth novel is The Blue, an 18th-century thriller revolving around the art & porcelain world. Her latest novel, The Orchid Hour, returns to the early 20th century New York City of her novel Dreamland to once again tell a story of suspense revolving around a compelling heroine.

STEPHANIE COWELL has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival in NYC. She is the author of The Boy in the Rain, Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart, and Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet . Her work has been translated into nine languages and the Mozart novel was adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award. She has lived in NYC all her life.

LORETTA GOLDBERG earned a BA in English Literature, Musicology and History at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She taught English Literature at the Department of English for a year, before coming to the USA on a Fulbright scholarship to study piano with Claudio Arrau. Her published non-fiction pieces consist of articles on financial planning, arts reviews and political satire. She earned an MA (music performance) from Hunter College, New York; and a Chartered Life Underwriter degree from the American College, Pennsylvania. Member of the Historical Novel Society, New York Chapter, she started and runs their published writer public reading series at the landmark Jefferson Market Library. Her novel The Reversible Mask debuted in 2018 from MadeGlobal Publishing.

SUSAN WANDS is a writer, tarot reader, and actor. A co-chair with the NYC Chapter of the Historical Novel Society, she helps produce monthly online book launches and author panels. In London, she has lectured at Watkins Books for their Recorded Authors series, at Atlantis Bookshop and Watkins Books in London, and lectures at the Occulture Berlin Festival on tarot. Ms. Wands’ writings have appeared in Art in Fiction, Kindred Spirits magazine, and The Irving Society journal First Knight. Susan’s first book in her series about Pamela Colman Smith, Magician and Fool, Book One Major Arcana Series, is out by SparkPress. The second book, High Priestess and Empress, will be published in 2024, and Emperor and Hierophant, the third book in the series, is in final edits. 

This is a live event, November 1, 2023.

Networking at 6:00 pm (Eastern).

Program and Zoom feed at 6:30 pm.

Generative AI programs like ChatGPT are rippling through the writing world and are here to stay. The Authors Guild has been advocating for guardrails around their development to protect authors’ rights and prevent the markets from being inundated with low-quality AI-generated books. At the same time, generative AI can be a useful tool for writers, with many writers already using it to brainstorm ideas, organize drafts, and create marketing materials. This webinar will focus on how writers can make productive use of the programs in a variety of writing scenarios while avoiding their pitfalls.

A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for Authors Guild members who cannot attend live.

The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

Presenter

Laird Harrison has spent his life teaching sentences to behave themselves. A genre-nonconforming writer, he has published essays in Salon and The Nation, poetry in Catamaran and Chinquapin, and journalism in Time and Reuters. WUNC and KQED have broadcast his radio scripts. In 2012, Verdant Books published his novel, Fallen Lake. He has covered AI for Medscape Medical News and used it in his reporting. When not scaling the walls of the literary establishment, Laird has explored more the commercial purposes of prose, crafting ads, white papers and annual reports. He has taught writing at San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley Extension, Mediabistro and Royal Thimphu College.

Looking for Book Publicity help? Register for a 1-Hour "Publicity 101" Zoom Workshop!

In each session, the founder of Press Shop PR, Leah Paulos, draws on her decades of experience leading high-profile book publicity campaigns & offers her top tips on how to promote your work as successfully as possible.

OUR NEXT SESSION DATE:
Thursday, August 3 at 12 pm ET / 9 am PT

Press Shop is a Brooklyn-based independent publicity firm. We've worked with a wide range of authors and publishers on serious nonfiction, memoirs, literary fiction, and academic and lifestyle titles. Among the books we've promoted: MARCH, the #1 bestselling and National Book Award-winning graphic memoir by the late Rep. John Lewis; Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s final book JUSTICE, JUSTICE THOU SHALT PURSUE, #1 NYT bestseller ON TYRANNY by Timothy Snyder; SECRET CITY by James Kirchick; and Louise Aronson’s Pulitzer-nominated ELDERHOOD. Other press shop authors include Jell-O Girls by Allie Rowbottom; Accidental Gods by Anna Della Subin; Abandon Me by Melissa Febos; Everyone On The Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe; 100 Times and Things To Do When You’re Goth in the Country by Chavisa Woods; and I Hate The Internet by Jarett Kobek.

More info on other Press Shop PR workshops at PressShopPr.com/one-hour

Online Event URL: 

https://www.pressshoppr.com/one-hour

Uncertain about handling emotional nuances in your material? Start your journey of crafting a rich, flexible writer’s voice.

The best memoirs and personal essays convey emotional complexity, and what anchors readers is your voice. But will a whimsical aside in a serious essay throw readers off? Or maybe that funny turn in an otherwise tragic scene misrepresents our material.

Taking those risks is the key to capturing the full depth and texture of our lived experiences. It takes skill and practice to craft a voice that’s nimble and confident enough to hit a range of emotional notes. How do writers “stretch” their voices to account for nuance and personality, while bringing readers along for the ride?

In this webinar, we’ll explore techniques nonfiction writers use to achieve tonal richness. Factors like the choice of material, arrangement of details, sentence structure, and willingness to get honest all contribute to a flexible voice, and we’ll dig into some brief textual examples to see how they work. 

You’ll leave with targeted advice for negotiating emotional nuance in your material, along with some writing exercises to keep your voice limber.

In this webinar, you will:

• EXPLORE techniques for sliding and pivoting between emotional modes
• LEARN approaches for expanding a story’s tonal range, both in choosing material and crafting the work sentence to sentence
• CONSIDER passages by writers who deftly capture a range of feelings in a few words 

This webinar is ideal for personal nonfiction writers at all levels who want to navigate emotional nuance in their work with confidence.

Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

DORIAN FOX is a writer and freelance editor whose essays and articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, The Rumpus, Gay Magazine, Booth, The Pinch, Short Reads, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. His work has also been honored in competitions including the Curt Johnson Prose Awards, Atticus Review’s Flash CNF Contest and the SmokeLong Quarterly Comedy Prize. He lives in Boston and teaches creative writing courses through GrubStreet and Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop. 

Questions? Please email Info@craft-talks.com

Online Event URL: 

https://crafttalks.as.me/?appointmentType=49806191

CONTACT INFORMATION

CRAFT TALKS

info@craft-talks.com

Weekend Host, Amy Marie Turner celebrates the launch of her debut novel, "Voyage of the Pleiades" (Fauve Press). Join us for a virtual book launch party with a reading, Q&A, and social.

Available on pre-order now.

Join us to unwind, share laughs, and raise a virtual glass. Feel free to bring a short piece from your earliest days as a writer to share in celebration of our younger selves.

As an added bonus, we will have a special screening of Melissa Hacker's short documentary.

After working hard to achieve an MFA, it’s time to plan the next steps of your writing career. Should you be submitting to only the most prestigious journals and magazines, or spend time building a platform on social media or Substack? When is it time to find a literary agent? What are different paths creative writers have taken to earn income—and still have time and energy to write? And how much marketing do publishers really expect authors to do? In this panel, authors of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction will discuss their early-career experiences and what they wish they knew after the MFA.

Leigh Stein (author, What to Miss When) moderates this chat with authors Alex DiFrancesco, Ashley M. Farmer, and Darrel Alejandro Holnes.

A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.

The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

Mastering the media is a game changer for growing your brand and launching a book. How can you get the attention and interest of producers, editors, and bloggers? How can you make your work, your passion, and your expertise compelling to the media—and everyone who consumes it? You need to understand what the media wants, and how to give it to them.

Join media veteran Paula Rizzo for a crash course on how to crack the media code and craft the pitch that gets you attention. Bring your ideas, your ambitions, and a notebook, and strap in for a fast-paced session that will change the way you see your business and your potential.

During this session you’ll learn:

• Why the media is hungry for experts

• How to get the media to take you seriously

• How to pitch ideas that stick (and why you aren’t hearing back as much as you want)

• The things even pros get wrong about pitching the media

A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.

The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

Many writers take a leap forward with the help of a retreat or residency. While devoting the time to honing your craft, you can also make connections and discoveries that further your career. This is especially true for writers coming from outside the MFA track or without inroads to publishing.

This webinar will feature a discussion with writers who have attended or worked at residencies and fellowship programs. We’ll cover how to research programs that suit your needs, tips for successful applications, and how to approach the experience to maximize what you contribute and take away. Generative prompts will be provided to help you get started with an artist’s statement.

A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.

The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

Set in a distant future, “The Terraformers” is a sci-fi page turner about an ancient organization devoted to preventing ecosystem collapse. This is Annalee Newitz’s third novel, and L.A. Times reviewer Mark Athitakis calls it “an ingenious, galaxy-brain book.”

Copies of “The Terraformers" with a signed bookplate will be available from DIESEL, our local bookselling partner for this event.

From December 1st, 1938, through September 1st, 1939, nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children traveled from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Danzig to the United Kingdom without their parents. This rescue mission became known as the Kindertransport. In 1990, more than 50 years later, a group of Kindertransport survivors in New York City came together to establish the Kindertransport Association (KTA - www.kindertransport.org). This unique volunteer-run organization was founded not solely for survivors, but as an intergenerational group with the missions of connecting these child Holocaust survivors and descendants, educating the next generations on the Kindertransports as an important part of Holocaust history, and supporting and advocating for children at risk today, especially refugees and those without parents.

In 2019, KTA president Melissa Hacker, whose mother fled Vienna on a Kindertransport in January 1939, created and organized an 80th-year commemorative journey. Over two weeks four Kindertransport survivors, now in their late 80s and early 90s, returned to the countries they fled, accompanied by fourteen members of the second generation. Traveling by train and ferry, the travelers traced the Kindertransport journey, visiting memorials, learning from scholars, and conducting family research along the way. Melissa, a filmmaker, will discuss the trip and show excerpts from 256,000 Miles From Home, a new film she has just finished about this trip. She made her directing debut with the documentary My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering The Kindertransports, the first film made on the Kindertransports, which was shortlisted for Academy Award nomination. Melissa consulted on the 2018 exhibit Rescuing Children on the Brink of War, jointly presented by Yeshiva University Museum and Leo Baeck Institute and provided material for Without a Home: Kindertransports from Vienna, a 2021 exhibit at the Vienna Jewish Museum.

Wendy Henry, a JGSNY member and a longtime member of the KTA, will speak about her experiences on the trip. Wendy found family photographs she had never seen before in archives in Berlin and met in London with a member of the Schlesinger family who created the hostel where her mother lived. Wendy's mother, who was born in Berlin, became an early childhood educator and began working at hostels in Britain with child Holocaust survivors before emigrating to the United States.

Dr. Amy Williams, who spoke with the Kindertransport Journey travelers at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, will talk about her Kindertransport research. She recently completed her PhD in History at Nottingham Trent University, where she is a part-time lecturer. Her thesis, Memory of the Kindertransport in National and Transnational Perspective, is a comprehensive examination of the different national and international memories of the Kindertransport. Dr. Williams is writing a book on the Kindertransports for Yale University Press and is working with other publishers to produce new publications on their history and memory. Amy works with the KTA and is in New York City for 2023 on a postdoctoral fellowship at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School.

Ticket Info: $5 general; free for CJH, Leo Baeck, KTA members; registration required here. Free for JGSNY members; RSVP to program@JGSNY.org.

Note: To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

For authors, public speaking can take many forms depending on the genre, the venue, and the size of the crowd. The approach differs based on if you’re there to entertain, inform, or sell books.

As a follow-up to our recent webinar in which bestselling author Paula Rizzo gave practical advice on media training and public speaking, this panel will discuss the variety of real-life experiences that authors should anticipate, including questions that the media like to ask. Attendees will learn new ways to prepare for speaking engagements and media and to feel comfortable with interviewers and public audiences.

Panelists

Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, short story collections nothing untoward, commencement and rest area, as well as The Tribe middle-grade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins. You can visit him at www.claymcleodchapman.com.

Julia Royston is an author, publisher, speaker, entrepreneur, consultant, podcaster, and host of two weekly shows on Envision Radio. Julia’s why, purpose, and motto are “helping you get your message to the masses and turn your words into wealth.” To connect with Julia, visit www.juliaakroyston.com.  

Amelia Zachry was born and raised in Malaysia. She obtained a bachelor of commerce, majoring in marketing from Curtin University of Technology, Australia. When she met her husband, she moved to live with him in Japan, then Canada. During her time in Canada she obtained a bachelor’s in human ecology with a concentration in family studies from the University of Western Ontario.

She began writing her debut memoir after finding her voice, bringing to light secrets she had kept. Secrets of sexual assault and subsequently bipolar disorder. She is an advocate for mental health and sexual assault awareness, supporting causes to dismantle rape culture and normalize mental health. She maintains a blogwhere she writes regularly on topics of mental health, sexual assault awareness, life as an immigrant, and parenting.

When she’s not writing, she can be found tending to her many house plants or hiking with her husband and two daughters. Amelia currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

Paula Rizzo (moderator) is an Emmy Award–winning television producer, bestselling author of Listful Thinkingand Listful Living, media-training coach, speaker, LinkedIn Learning Instructor, host of the live-stream show Inside Scoop, and creator of the popular online training Media-Ready Author.

Special Thanks to Our Supporters and Partner Organizations

Special thanks to Broadleaf Writers Association and to the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning for collaborating with the Authors Guild Foundation on this panel.

With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Penguin Random House, and our donors, the Authors Guild Foundation is pleased to make Business Bootcamps for Writers free and open to the public.

Several writers organizations have partnered with the Authors Guild Foundation to help shape these programs. Our deepest appreciation to these organizations.