S210.
Poets Learn to Pitch (& other practical tips for writing and publishing prose)
Saturday, February 10, 2024
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
So many poets have turned to writing prose—but the leap across genres can be intimidating. What does it mean to write “on spec”? What’s a fair fee for an essay, and how do you negotiate without annoying an editor? Panelists will address both practical concerns—when does it make sense to start querying agents? what’s included in a book proposal?—and issues related to craft, like adapting your process as you move across genres, or how the skills you’ve refined in poetry can translate to prose.
Participants
Nancy Reddy is the author of the poetry collections Double Jinx, a winner of the National Poetry Series, and Pocket Universe, and coeditor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her debut nonfiction book, The Good Mother Myth, will be published in 2025.
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of the poetry collection Beast Meridian, and a recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and lives with her son in Los Angeles, where she is a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California.
Tiana Clark is the author of two collections: I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood and Equilibrium. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Her next two books Proof, a poetry collection, and Begging to be Saved, a memoir, are forthcoming with Atria.
Hope Wabuke is the author of The Body Family as well as three chapbooks of poetry. She is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Chen Chen is the author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and United States Artists, he teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at Stonecoast and New England College.
