Sunday 2/18 from 3:00pm-6:00pm MT
Saturdays 3/2, 4/6, 5/4, 6/1, 8/17, 9/14 from 10:00am-1:00pm MT
Wednesday 7/10 from 5:00pm-7:00pm MT
$200 x 8 payments or $1500 paid in full
Have you been writing personal essays for a while but never, or rarely, end up submitting them? Are you confused about what journals to submit to, whether you should submit with a particular strategy, how to know when an essay is done, or the role publishing in literary journals can play in someone’s overall writing career? In this eight-month Zoom class, you’ll go from lit mag newbie to submitter extraordinaire while developing a community that can keep you accountable.
Each class meeting will center around 2-3 essays published in The Best American Essays 2023 (ed. Vivian Gornick), allowing us to discuss what makes an essay feel “ready” or “done.” We’ll also discuss what makes an “essay,” a “best” essay, and an “American” essay—gaining grounding in how the series works, how the anthology differentiates from year to year depending on the guest editor, and what it means to be listed as “Notable.” We’ll look at draft versions of essays from in the BAE series, comparing them to their finals. And we’ll use the essays we’re reading as a launching point for some generative writing during each class, in case you’re not starting enough new work on your own.
Participants will also each research one literary journal included in Best American Essays 2023 or listed in the back in the “Notable” section, reading several issues and any available editor interviews in order to report back to the group about the journal’s aesthetic, history, submission cycle, fees, and recent great essays. While we won’t get to know every journal, participants will leave with an awareness of specific places they might submit particular types of work, and how they can familiarize themselves with more.
Finally, we’ll dig into the spiritual side of publishing by exploring the energetics of being seen. Where are you hiding in your life? What actions— seemingly unrelated to your writing—can you take in order to practice dancing with the vulnerability of exposure, creating a readiness to submit and/or be published? What might it look like for you to take writing and career risks with the resourcing you need to stay steady and healthy?
Along the way, we’ll also discuss topics like:
How to find literary magazines that might be a fit for you and learn their submission cycles
How contest wins and literary journal placements can help you build a career, including during your agent query process, while applying to residencies, grants, and fellowships, when seeking to teach at literary centers, and when your first book comes out
How to write a lit mag submission cover letter
How Rejection Competitions can help you get over the hump
How your writing habits move you toward publishing goals, or don’t
How to manage your submissions, from tracking to the problem of simultaneous submissions
Literary magazine resources to support your process
Participating in this class means you should expect to:
Read 5-6 essays a month between our BAE anthology and other materials
Carve out the time to show up monthly, even if you’re traveling (this class will not be recorded)
Complete independent research on a literary journal to present to your peers
Plan to write for 15-30 minutes during each class
Be a part of a community cheering each other on
Engage with the spiritual side of a writing career— if you’re allergic to “woo” and don’t want to do introspective work in a group with others, this class isn’t for you
Fill in your peers who missed class on what you learned— there’s no better way to anchor the information for yourself!
Work toward some kind of writing or publication goal, regardless of what stage you’re at
This course includes:
Seven 3-hour monthly classes and one 2-hour midsummer check-in
One 60-minute 1-1 meeting with Kati, to be used at any point in the class, to discuss your goals for your writing/publishing life and next steps
This course does not include:
Feedback on your work or an assessment of your revisions’ publication readiness
Instruction on agent query letters or book proposal writing
Please note that you do not have to be ready to submit during the course. Our work’s craft readiness has little to do with our understanding of the publishing environment. It’s okay to take this class before you have anything ready to submit, understanding that close-reading others’ essays and hearing about their process may help you move forward with your own revisions.
Please also note that this class is intended primarily for writers of nonfiction in all its forms (not fiction or poetry).
About your instructor:
Katherine Standefer’s writing career took off after her essay '‘In Praise of Contempt” won the Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction in 2015 and was then selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2016 by Jonathan Franzen. Agents queried her (rather than the other way around); a Big 5 editor who loved her work hooked her up with her eventual first agent; and other essays she published in literary magazines were included in anthologies, helping her build a supportive literary network through the AWP conference and other gatherings. Her earliest publications helped her retain a sense of momentum and hope, making the work of consistent revising and writing feel more “worth it.”
Kati has published in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, Fourth Genre, Camas, Indiana Review, swamp pink (formerly Crazyhorse), Essay Daily, LitHub, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The High Country News, Kenyon Review Online, Fugue, Cutbank, The Normal School, Terrain.org, and elsewhere.
Kati’s first book Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life was a Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice/Staff Pick, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Lightning Flowers was named one of Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of Fall 2020 and featured in People Magazine and on NPR’s Fresh Air and the goop podcast. Kati holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of Arizona.