Tag: memoir

  • The Writers Bridge | All about the HUSTLE: Marketing Your Own Book

    The Writers Bridge | All about the HUSTLE: Marketing Your Own Book

    April 28 @ 1:00 pm 2:00 pm EDT

    What’s the best way to sell YOUR book?

    More than ever, authors are doing the lion’s share of marketing–even when traditionally published. But gone are the days of religiously posting to socials and desperately hunting for Goodreads reviews. Our guests have mixed new practices and unique publicity hooks to get their books in front of the readers who need them.

    Andromeda Romano-Lax, Jo Piazza and Stephanie Weaver will tell us how their marketing plans have changed in 2026, the ways they’re bringing their words to the world, and the surprising tactics they never thought would work! Find out the best new book marketing tricks of the trade, and what you already know that’s still working.

    Join us TUESDAY April 28th at 1PM EASTERN – live and FREE on Zoom, all welcome!


    Our special guests:

    Andromeda Romano-Lax’s first novel, The Spanish Bow, was translated into eleven languages and her next novels– The DetourBehave, Plum Rains and Annie and the Wolves have been Indie Next and Amazon Books of the month; one has been optioned for TV/film. With 2024’s The Deepest Lake (a Barnes & Noble Monthly Pick) and her 2026 novel, What Boys Learn, Andromeda has swerved into the world of suspense fiction, although she continues to write historical fiction, too. Her next novel, coming in 2027, is a speculative retelling of Sylvia Plath’s life.

    Jo Piazza is the national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance, Everyone is Lying to You, We Are Not Like Them, You Were Always Mine, Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, The Knockoff and How to Be Married. Her work has been published in ten languages in twelve countries and four of her books have been optioned for film and television.  Jo’s podcasts have garnered more than twenty-five million downloads and regularly top podcast charts. An editor, columnist and travel writer, her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, New York magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour and many other publications. Her next book, The Parisian Heist, comes out in July, 2025.

    Stephanie Weaver is a TEDx speaker coach and chronic illness advocate who distills complex human experiences into accessible, compelling narratives. Her fifth book, Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken is a heartfelt exploration of healing from childhood sexual abuse. Weaver’s personal journey as an abuse survivor who reconciled with her parents after years of estrangement informs her work, inspiring others to rewrite their own narratives and transform pain into purpose.

    Join your hosts Allison K Williams (SEVEN DRAFTS), Sharla Yates (CRAFT TALKS) and our special guests for this lively, funny hour of frank talk about publishing, platform, and always following your mission.

    FREE, all welcome! Sign up to receive the Zoom link the day before.


    Enjoy past recorded sessions here

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

    ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS

    Allison K Williams has edited and coached authors to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, St. Martin’s Press, and numerous small presses. An expert in author marketing and community building, her platform includes the Brevity Blog (80k+ followers), Instagram (10k+), a mailing list (12k+), and Facebook (5k+), with publications in the New York Times and appearances on NPR and CBC. Her book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, sold on proposal. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats and co-hosts The Writers Bridge.

    Sharla Yates is the author of the poetry chapbook What I Would Say if We Were to Drown Tonight, published by Stranded Oak Press (2017). She hosts a webinar series, CRAFT TALKS for writers on writing, and co-hosts The Writers Bridge with Allison K Williams. Her nonfiction essay, “Address” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the former Director of Education at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

  • The Writers Bridge | More Than a Writer: How Other Roles Inform Our Craft

    The Writers Bridge | More Than a Writer: How Other Roles Inform Our Craft

    March 31 @ 1:00 pm 2:00 pm EDT

    Three authors, three lives.

    Outside of our writing pursuits, we all have other roles: as parents, job-holders, athletes, volunteers, activists, etc. Writers often lament that these demands compete with our practice, but how can they improve our craft? But how can we balance the lives that surround our writing with the work we create–and more than that, how can our “regular” lives feed, complement, and support our creative process?

    Blair Glaser, Jocelyn Jane Cox and Jaque Gorelick will share the surprising ways their extra obligations (and passions!) provide inspiration, content, and transferable skills, and of course, how they handle all the multitasking. Get practical advice and strategies to get words on the page, not just in spite of your other roles but because of them.

    Join us TUESDAY March 31st at 1PM EASTERN – live and FREE on Zoom, all welcome!


    Our special guests:

    Blair Glaser is a recovering psychotherapist, executive leadership and career coach. Her essays have appeared in Longreads, Shondaland, Oldster, Quartz, HuffPost, Inside Higher Ed, and others, as well as in literary magazines such as Brevity, Scoop, Rain Taxi, and The Mantlepiece. She is the author of This Incredible Longing: Finding Myself in a Near-cult Experience (Heliotrope, 2026).

    Jocelyn Jane Cox was a competitive figure skater who became a national-level coach, balancing this role with her writing for over 25 years. She is the author of Motion Dazzle: A Memoir of Motherhood, Loss, and Skating on Thin Ice (Vine Leaves, 9/25). She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Offing, and the Colorado Review, among others.

    Jacque Gorelick is an elementary school teacher turned writer who spent years helping students turn ideas into stories. Her essays about motherhood, health, education, and estrangement appear in The New York Times, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, and The Kenyon Review. Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home (Vine Leaves Press 2026) is her debut.

    Join your hosts Allison K Williams (SEVEN DRAFTS), Sharla Yates (CRAFT TALKS) and our special guests for this lively, funny hour of frank talk about publishing, platform, and always following your mission.

    FREE, all welcome! Sign up to receive the Zoom link the day before.


    Enjoy past recorded sessions here

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

    ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS

    Allison K Williams has edited and coached authors to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, St. Martin’s Press, and numerous small presses. An expert in author marketing and community building, her platform includes the Brevity Blog (80k+ followers), Instagram (10k+), a mailing list (12k+), and Facebook (5k+), with publications in the New York Times and appearances on NPR and CBC. Her book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, sold on proposal. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats and co-hosts The Writers Bridge.

    Sharla Yates is the author of the poetry chapbook What I Would Say if We Were to Drown Tonight, published by Stranded Oak Press (2017). She hosts a webinar series, CRAFT TALKS for writers on writing, and co-hosts The Writers Bridge with Allison K Williams. Her nonfiction essay, “Address” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the former Director of Education at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

  • The Writers Bridge | Multiple Platforms, One Vision: Building Your Audience around Your Mission with Sari Botton

    The Writers Bridge | Multiple Platforms, One Vision: Building Your Audience around Your Mission with Sari Botton

    February 24 @ 1:00 pm 2:00 pm EST

    Discover how building your own audience springs from commitment to what YOU want to write.

    Sari Botton publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land and Adventures in Journalism to an enormous audience of Substack and email subscribers, social media admirers, and live event attendees. Over a long career from journalist to magazine publisher, she’s interviewed notable writers and, through Oldster Magazine, explores what it means to travel through time in a human body at every phase of life.

    She’s created an ecosystem of complementary publications, featuring her own writing, guest essays, interviews and more–and they all lead back to her vision of intergenerational communication and just plain good writing.

    We’ll talk about how Sari’s work has evolved over her career while staying true to her vision, how to make a living by creating what you care about, and finding the audience that cares, too.

    Join us TUESDAY February 24th at 1PM EASTERN – live and FREE on Zoom, all welcome!


    Our special guest

    Sari Botton‘s memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual “5 Over 50” feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies __Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork __and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. She was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.

    Join your hosts Allison K Williams (SEVEN DRAFTS), Sharla Yates (CRAFT TALKS) and our special guest for this lively, funny hour of frank talk about publishing, platform, and always following your mission.

    FREE, all welcome! Sign up to receive the Zoom link the day before.


    Enjoy past recorded sessions here

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

    ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS

    Allison K Williams has edited and coached authors to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, St. Martin’s Press, and numerous small presses. An expert in author marketing and community building, her platform includes the Brevity Blog (80k+ followers), Instagram (10k+), a mailing list (12k+), and Facebook (5k+), with publications in the New York Times and appearances on NPR and CBC. Her book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, sold on proposal. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats and co-hosts The Writers Bridge.

    Sharla Yates is the author of the poetry chapbook What I Would Say if We Were to Drown Tonight, published by Stranded Oak Press (2017). She hosts a webinar series, CRAFT TALKS for writers on writing, and co-hosts The Writers Bridge with Allison K Williams. Her nonfiction essay, “Address” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the former Director of Education at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

  • The Writers Bridge | Social Media Simplified with Jane Friedman

    The Writers Bridge | Social Media Simplified with Jane Friedman

    January 27 @ 1:00 pm 2:00 pm EST

    Discover what’s new in social media for writers in 2026.

    Should you be on social media? Which platforms? Do you need video? What about a newsletter or a Substack?

    Jane Friedman has been writing and reporting on publishing since MySpace. She’s seen the rise and fall of Medium, Twitter, and many more. And she’s done the research and knows the numbers: does #BookTok actually sell books, and which ones? Does it matter if you post video or stick to text? Is LinkedIn actually a social site? And what should be driving the choices you make about your writer platform?

    Cohost Allison K Williams co-founded The Writers Bridge and built platforms on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (RIP) and is currently refusing to be sucked into BlueSky. She swears by an email list, but needs to use it more effectively. And cohost Sharla Yates doesn’t do much social media at all–should she?

    We’ll talk about our own social media and platform-building dilemmas and YOURS on the next episode of The Writers Bridge.

    Join us TUESDAY January 27th at 1PM EASTERN – live and FREE on Zoom, all welcome!


    Our special guest

    Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Bottom Line, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.

    Join your hosts Allison K Williams (SEVEN DRAFTS), Sharla Yates (CRAFT TALKS) and our special guest for this lively, funny hour of frank talk about writing comedy, writing for TV, and the wonderful chaos of the writers’ room.

    FREE, all welcome! Sign up to receive the Zoom link the day before.


    Enjoy past recorded sessions here

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

    ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS

    Allison K Williams has edited and coached authors to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, St. Martin’s Press, and numerous small presses. An expert in author marketing and community building, her platform includes the Brevity Blog (80k+ followers), Instagram (10k+), a mailing list (12k+), and Facebook (5k+), with publications in the New York Times and appearances on NPR and CBC. Her book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, sold on proposal. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats and co-hosts The Writers Bridge.

    Sharla Yates is the author of the poetry chapbook What I Would Say if We Were to Drown Tonight, published by Stranded Oak Press (2017). She hosts a webinar series, CRAFT TALKS for writers on writing, and co-hosts The Writers Bridge with Allison K Williams. Her nonfiction essay, “Address” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the former Director of Education at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com

  • The Writers Bridge | From Zero to 100K Followers: Midlife Social Media

    The Writers Bridge | From Zero to 100K Followers: Midlife Social Media

    November 25, 2025 @ 1:00 pm 2:00 pm EST

    How can a midlife writer make a dent on social media?

    By showing up.

    When Lucie Frost first tried to sell her memoir, she heard the dreaded “not enough platform.” And she didn’t want to violate her own privacy or get trapped into following fads.

    Instead, she focused on what drove her writing: curiosity. Her Instagram and TikTok appearances, sharing what she wanted to know and why, built a multi-generational audience of inquisitive readers, ready for her book, How the Hell Did I Not Know That: My Midlife Year from Couch to Curiosity.

    In this months’ Writers Bridge, Lucie will share the tips and tricks she used to feel comfortable and happy building her platform, how she protected her online self, and how that platform led to a traditional publishing deal. She’ll also answer all your questions about how you can do it, too!

    Join us TUESDAY November 25th at 1PM EASTERN – live and FREE on Zoom, all welcome!


    Our special guest

    Lucie Frost is a no-longer-practicing lawyer and the author of How the Hell Did I Not Know That? (Trinity University Press, August 2025).

    She has written humor and satire for NextTribe, Slackjaw, The Belladonna, Points in Case, Emrys Journal, and others. She is active on social media, with 100k+ engaged followers across various platforms.

    She lives in Central Texas with her three needy, delightful dogs.

    Join your hosts Allison K Williams (SEVEN DRAFTS), Sharla Yates (CRAFT TALKS) and our special guest for this lively, funny hour of frank talk about writing comedy, writing for TV, and the wonderful chaos of the writers’ room.

    FREE, all welcome! Sign up to receive the Zoom link the day before.


    Enjoy past recorded sessions here

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

    ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS

    Allison K Williams has edited and coached authors to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, St. Martin’s Press, and numerous small presses. An expert in author marketing and community building, her platform includes the Brevity Blog (80k+ followers), Instagram (10k+), a mailing list (12k+), and Facebook (5k+), with publications in the New York Times and appearances on NPR and CBC. Her book, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, sold on proposal. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats and co-hosts The Writers Bridge.

    Sharla Yates is the author of the poetry chapbook What I Would Say if We Were to Drown Tonight, published by Stranded Oak Press (2017). She hosts a webinar series, CRAFT TALKS for writers on writing, and co-hosts The Writers Bridge with Allison K Williams. Her nonfiction essay, “Address” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the former Director of Education at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and teaches creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Questions? Please email Info@craft-talks.com