Notes from The Writer's Corner
The replay with author Liz Alterman, join us next week with author Christie Tate, and what's coming up in June!
Last week in The Writer’s Corner, our guest was author Liz Alterman. What an inspiring conversation! Liz has not only written across different genres, she has also found unexpected ways (with grit and determination) to get her work out into the world.
A few key takeaways from this discussion:
• How to keep going even when all you want to do is give up
• What to do when your book doesn’t sell right away
• How Liz took control of her work
• The case for writing in different genres
• And more!
To learn more about Liz’s work, visit her website or follow her Substack!
Next week …
June 1 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST
Christie Tate for Rejection, Persistence, and the Writing Life
Rejection is part of the writing life but that doesn’t make it any less brutal. In this conversation, best-selling author Christie Tate will join us to talk about how to survive the nos, the near misses, and the moments when giving up starts to sound better than sticking with it. We’ll talk about persistence, pivots, publication uncertainty, and how to stay connected to the work even when the path forward feels uncertain.
Christie Tate is an essayist and author who writes creative nonfiction and memoir. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese’s Book Club selection and has been translated into 19 languages. She is also the author of B.F.F.-- A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Her essays have been nominated for Puschcart Prizes, and Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s 2019 nonfiction contest. She writes about addiction, eating disorders, friendship, alienation, recovery, and her Grandma’s farm in Forreston, Texas. She grew up in Dallas and now lives in Chicago with her family. She has finally stopped telling people that she graduated first in her law school class. Please don’t hate her because she has no pets.
Join us in June for …
June 15 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST
A Book Club Conversation: Good Writing
Join Kathy Curto and me for a “book club” conversation on Good Writing by Anne Lamott and Neil Allen. We’ll chat about the principles from the book that resonated most with us, the writing advice we actually return to in our own work, and other craft books that continue to shape us as writers years later.
Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, and in the anthologies And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere (released in both Italian and English) and Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now. She has also published widely in a variety of literary journals and magazines. Kathy’s piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. She is co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop and serves on the board of the Italian American Writers Association. Kathy lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.
June 22 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST
Literary Agent Danielle Bukowski for Manuscript to Market
Join us for a candid conversation with literary agent Danielle Bukowski on the querying process, comps, and what actually catches an agent’s attention. Drawing from her Substack Just Reading All Day, she’ll break down what makes a query stand out, how agents think about positioning a book, and what “good comps” really look like in practice. This will be a practical conversation about how books move from manuscript to marketplace, and what writers can do to give themselves the best possible shot.
Danielle Bukowski is a literary agent at Sterling Lord Lit who represents critically acclaimed, award-winning fiction and nonfiction. Recent and forthcoming books include Palaver by Bryan Washington (Finalist for the National Book Award), Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani (Finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize), Alligator Tears: A Memoir-in-Essays by Edgar Gomez, I Leave it Up to You by Jinwoo Chong, and Obstetrix by Hugo, Lodestar and Nebula-award winning Naomi Kritzer.