Author: Sharla Yates

What tone to strike at the start? And how to shape an ending that responds? Learn how to make your essays move.

For Personal Essays

Essays sing. Beginning sentences open the tune—and connect to the endings in how the song ends. An essay’s opening says something about what the writer wants to explore through different lenses or truths. The beginning can nail the “what,” the essence of an essay’s quest, through an image or inflection or voice or rhythm of language (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). 

Essays move. Writers listen for a change—a mini-epiphany, an angle through the mind’s eye that frames in a fresh way, or a phrase like prayer in structure and sound. What might the last line say in response to the first? If beginnings and endings are siblings, what is the connection that links them? How might the closing not just echo the opening but instead extend it, go beyond what’s there?

In this practice-driven webinar (be ready to write), Jonathan Callard will guide you through possibilities in shaping strong openings and closings in essays and how they can work together to inspire movement and revelation in your work.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• EXPLORE key elements of strong openings in essays and how to express them on the page.
• DISCOVER how closings can respond to openings to deepen a piece and ways to write strong closings.
• LEARN how beginnings and endings can work with a “what”—a tension/question—to create a transformative essay that pivots toward a change/shift, a “then.”
• PRACTICE writing your own openings and closings in real time, guided by exercises designed to unlock movement and revelation in your essays.

This webinar is ideal for writers who …

• feel stuck on how to begin or end their pieces
• want to play with structure of narrative or idea
• want to hone their essays to engage agents, editors, and readers
• want to understand how a central tension or question can guide an essay

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Jonathan Callard is a writer, editor, and teacher who helps writers shape stories and find their voice. The winner of the Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Contest judged by National Book Award honoree Sarah M. Broom, his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, PublicSource, Creative Nonfiction, Hotel Amerika, Gulf Coast, Image, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh Magazine, Arts & Letters, and the Dallas Morning News, among others, and has earned fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts. Having previously taught for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, he currently offers writer-mentoring services and also teaches for the University of Pittsburgh, where he received an MFA in nonfiction writing. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Write your book’s “blurb”—the sharp, versatile pitch for submissions, promotion, and marketing that defines what your book is and why it matters.

All Genres

Whether you call it “jacket copy,” an “extended pitch” or the meat of your query, your book’s blurb is critical. This short piece of persuasive copy determines whether someone reads on, requests the manuscript, or buys the book. Just 150 words do a lot of heavy lifting: positioning your book in the market, introducing your protagonist and stakes, and making a promise that reading will be worth the commitment. 

But many writers get stuck with blurbs that sound generic or interchangeable with another author’s book. Shortcuts, AI, and borrowed language won’t sum up the heart of 100,000 words. You have to step inside your book and ask what it is truly offering—and then stress-test whether or not your manuscript delivers on that promise.

When I finally arrived at the right 150 words for my own memoir/reported nonfiction project, everything fell into place. I received thoughtful, encouraging passes instead of crickets, and in a very short period of time, two offers of publication. As I wrote and revised, the blurb became a microcosm of my story’s logic and the reason someone would choose my book over anything else in front of them.

Agents are looking for the blurb in your query letter (and will use it to sell your book to publishers). Editors are looking for the blurb in your book proposal. Marketers are looking for the blurb in your materials. And most importantly, your readers are looking to be fulfilled by the blurb’s promise. They want to read your book; give them every chance to be excited. This session shows you how to make those 150 words count.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• DEFINE what a blurb is (and is not) and see how it functions across queries, proposals, websites, and sales materials
• ANALYZE real blurb examples to see how a clear, compelling story or concept is expressed in 150 words
• STRUCTURE a blurb for yourself that introduces the protagonist/author, stakes, and take-away (without summarizing the entire book!)
• IDENTIFY and AVOID common pitfalls that weaken blurbs, including generic language and over-reliance on trends
• EVALUATE whether your blurb makes a promise your manuscript actually delivers on

This webinar is ideal for writers who are …

• not getting responses from their query letters or book proposals
• planning to self-publish and needing strong sales copy for online retail pages and author websites
• finished with their manuscript and need to articulate what the book is about
• struggling to describe their book clearly, concisely, and in a compelling way
• getting stuck in the weeds of their book and need to refine the premise

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Michelle Cutler is an award-winning screenwriter, storytelling coach, and developmental editor specializing in true stories and memoir, as well as an enthusiastic teacher. She has written more than 1,700 advertising campaigns for global brands, humanizing brand copy for short form content.

She holds an MFA in film from NYU and a diploma in advanced creative writing nonfiction from Cambridge. She is currently writing I WON’T LET YOU DIE ALONE, a reported memoir from the trenches of modern elder caregiving for Bloomsbury.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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In a crowded publishing marketplace, professionally reviewing books is a way to network and build your byline.

Focus: Creative Nonfiction though LARGELY THE PRINCIPLES APPLY ACROSS GENRES

Book reviewing is a time-tested, excellent way to connect with literary venues and network with writers further along in their careers. Whether you have a manuscript of creative nonfiction well underway or are just beginning to break into essay or memoir writing, reviewing also allows you to practice critical approaches to writing that transfer to resolving thorny issues in your work. 

In a time of thumbs up or thumbs down and dashed-off Goodreads reviews of “this sucked” or “loved it,” there’s an art to book reviewing—and a need for a blending of personal and critical analysis. But there are many different types and formats of book reviews and countless outlets that accept them, so it may be difficult to know where to get started.

In this webinar we will outline different types of book reviews and outlets, learn the do’s and don’ts (and the value!) in the writing and publishing process of book reviews, and take home craft tools to create a successful review of your own.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• LEARN do’s and don’ts of book review pitching and writing
• GAIN PERSPECTIVE on reviewing as a means of elevating your own writing and others’ 
• DISCOVER how searching for comps in a book review helps find comps for your own manuscript
• LEARN how the practice of analysis and critique leads to stronger writing
• DISCOVER venues for your reviews and the expectations for different outlets
• LEARN how reviewing is a valuable networking tool in the creative nonfiction and independent publishing communities
• DECONSTRUCT a sample review structure

This webinar is ideal for writers and readers of creative nonfiction who …

• hope to professionally network with others in the field
• seek practice pitching both critical and creative work
• are interested in book reviewing but not sure how to start

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Brooke Champagne is a native New Orleanian and the award-winning author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, named a Best Book of 2024 from Kirkus Reviews.  Her book of cultural criticism and reportage, Drive-Thru Daiquiri, is forthcoming with LSU Press.  Champagne serves as Book Reviews Editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction.  She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at the University of Alabama.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Do you want to write essays that speak to larger societal issues and learn how your personal narrative can speak to the cultural moment? 

for Creative Nonfiction

Powerful, of-the-moment creative nonfiction weaves our personal experience, as both subjects and witnesses, with larger issues to convey important themes and messages of social justice and advocacy. Our writing can speak against injustices occurring in the world around us and help question the status quo. But what skills do we need as writers to speak out on topics we are passionate about? 

Join Amy Shea, author of Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins, to explore the idea of the essay as activism. Learn craft techniques to combine your interior experience with wider themes to create effective messaging that readers will emotionally connect with. Develop your command of rhetoric, structure, and conveying meaning to lend a critical eye to the standards and norms held before us.

We will do close reading of some short examples from published essays, reviewing not only how but also what the author is doing. Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in some writing prompts and practice toward writing or revising their own culturally relevant essays.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• CLOSE READ examples to understand the choices authors make to convey meaning
• CONSIDER how to connect personal experience to collective importance
• PRACTICE using form and structure to explore larger themes
• EXPLORE different rhetorical devices/craft elements that can do the heavy lifting in meaning-making

This webinar is ideal for beginning and intermediate writers …

• looking to expand beyond the personal essay
• who want to learn how craft elements create effective messaging
• who want to use their craft for advocacy
• considering writing “memoir-plus,” who want to know how to weave the personal with the universal 
• who want to explore more experimental styles of essay writing

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Amy Shea is an essayist with an MFA and a doctorate in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and is the author of Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Portland Review, The Massachusetts Review, the Journal of Sociology of Health & Illness, among others. She works as the writing program director for Mount Tamalpais College, a free community college for the incarcerated people of San Quentin. Learn more about her work at https://amysshea.com.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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For Nonfiction & Fiction (prose)

Before you can effectively bring characters to life on the page, you must understand who they are and why they do what they do.

Your characters are the lifeblood of your stories, but writers sometimes overlook techniques that can make a character feel real on the page. Whether you’re inventing, researching, or remembering the characters you’re crafting, this webinar will introduce you to methods for uncovering the motivations, quirks, and inner lives of the people populating your pages.

In this prompt-driven webinar, you will explore proven techniques for writing memorable, believable, and indelible characters for both fiction and nonfiction prose. We will explore why your characters do what they do: their goals, secrets, and what screenwriters call the “ghost.” You’ll be able to apply these traits to your memoir or novel by showing unique behaviors, speech patterns, and physical traits that make us love (or not!) the people on your pages.

This generative (be ready to write!) webinar is a great fit for beginning and intermediate writers seeking practical, effective techniques for adding depth to their character portrayals (including real-life characters).

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• IDENTIFY your protagonist’s secret goals (and your antagonist’s too!)
• DISCOVER the quirks and behaviors that make your characters unique
• LEARN techniques for writing distinctive and realistic dialogue  
• DEVELOP a connection to your characters

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Jessica Handler is the author of the forthcoming novel The World to See. Her novel The Magnetic Girl was awarded the 2020 Southern Book Prize. She’s the author of Invisible Sisters, one of the “25 Books All Georgians Should Read,” and the craft guide Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss. Her nonfiction has appeared on NPR, in Tin House, Drunken Boat, The Bitter Southerner, Brevity, Salvation South, Five Points, Image, Creative Nonfiction, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Oldster, and elsewhere. www.jessicahandler.com

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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For Memorists

“Worldbuilding” calls to mind fictional settings—Hogwarts, Gatsby’s mansion, Alice’s Wonderland—but creating a vivid world on the page is just as essential in creative nonfiction.

Memoirs offer the unique opportunity to inhabit the inner world of the writer, accessing our deepest thoughts, feelings, and truths. Using hyper-specific detail and sensory images, memoirists can pull readers in, keep them engaged until the final sentence, and make them care about our stories and characters.

This webinar will explore why worldbuilding—both exterior and interior—is important in memoir and provide practical tips for creating memorable worlds that captivate your readers. We’ll look at examples from published memoirs to uncover how evocative settings make us care about a writer’s experience.

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• EXPLORE why worldbuilding is so important in memoir
• LEARN to apply worldbuilding techniques to your own memoir, including the use of “telling details,” specificity, and the five senses
• ADDRESS the practical challenges of worldbuilding in memoir, including memory gaps, which details to include vs. not include, and more

This webinar is ideal for writers…

• in the process of drafting a memoir
• revising a memoir and feeling their text could be richer
• who need help enhancing the “world” of their memoir, both physical settings and the spaces of interiority
  

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

This webinar was originally offered October 2024.

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Katie Bannon’s teaching is encouraging and practical, with step-by-step guidance and concrete tools. Writers who want to access deep creativity with a solid framework will love her classes! 

Katie Bannon is a writer, editor, and educator whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, ELLE Magazine, NPR, Newsweek, Narratively, and more. Her memoir manuscript, which charts her journey as a compulsive hair puller, was a finalist for the Permafrost Nonfiction Book Prize. A graduate of GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator, she holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Emerson College. She is a developmental editor who loves working with nonfiction writers to find the “story” behind the “situation” of their memoirs and essays. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two cats. Find Katie at www.katiebannon.com

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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Stop crossing your fingers and randomly sending out your work. Instead, learn to develop a strategy that’s fun and effective in getting your work published.

For all genres of literary writing: essays, flash CNF, micro-memoirs, flash fiction, short stories, and poetry

Our first submissions can feel overwhelming, and the endless rounds of sending our work to literary magazines can feel discouraging, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The process of publishing can be a fun and satisfying part of the writing life. During this live online class, Bethany Jarmul will demystify the submissions process and offer practical steps you can take to develop and achieve your writing and submitting goals. 

During the webinar, we’ll explore eight different submission strategies and how to decide which one is right for you. Discover the pitfalls to avoid and learn tips and tricks to get the attention of editors and get your work published. You’ll leave this workshop with defined writing goals and a strategy for how to achieve them. 

Can’t make it live? No worries—a replay will be available to all registrants.

In this webinar, you will:

• LEARN how to set realistic writing goals and achieve those goals
• DISCOVER eight different submission strategies and how to choose the one that’s right for you
• LEARN common submission mistakes to avoid
• EXPLORE tips and tricks to get your work published in literary magazines

This webinar is ideal for writers who…

• are new to submitting their work for publication
• feel like they’re guessing where to submit
• work in any genre, including essays, flash CNF/fiction, micro-memoirs, short stories, and poetry
• fear or feel bad about rejections
• want to get more acceptances from literary magazines this year
• want to set writing and publishing goals and get ready to achieve them

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

ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER

Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer, poet, writing coach, and workshop instructor. She’s the author of a poetry collection, Lightning Is a Mother, and a mini-memoir of flash nonfiction pieces, Take Me Home. Her work has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Brevity, River Teeth, and Chestnut Review. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature and Best Small Fictions, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. Twice, she earned first place in Women On Writing’s quarterly flash essay contest. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul.

Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

FULL REFUNDS ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.

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