Bring your questions to this winter’s Submissions and Publication Workshop series, featuring Eight Guest Authors sharing their experiences and tips publishing
novels, memoir, essay, poetry, and magazine writing. On January 30
th,
from 6-8 pm, we will meet the first three authors from the Tahoe/Reno/Nevada
City area. Subjects covered include: advice on finding and working with an
agent/editor/publisher, pros and cons of different paths to publication (self,
hybrid, university press, traditional, other?), tips on finding book
comparisons for book proposals, advice on writing query letters, and your
strategies for submissions in poetry/fiction/non-fiction works. Inspiring
collaborations? A story about what NOT to do?
This workshop is online and open for registration!
Often writers focus on being accepted by one of the big
4 publishers, self-publishing with a vanity press, or engaging a hybrid publisher.
Our first author will discuss her experience publishing with a University Press,
a path to publication that can be overlooked.
Suzanne Roberts is a Lake Tahoe-based travel writer,
memoirist, and poet. Her books include the 2012 National
Outdoor Book Award-winning Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight
Days on the John Muir Trail (Bison
Books, 2012; new edition, 2023), the award-winning memoir in travel essays Bad
Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), an
award-winning collection of lyrical essays, Animal
Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel
Award for the Art of the Essay), and four collections of poetry.
Her work has been listed as "Notable" in Best American Essays and
published in The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The
Rumpus, CNN, Longreads, ZYZZYVA, ISLE, 1966, River
Teeth, Terrain, National Geographic Traveler, The Normal School, and
Litro, as well as anthologized in The Kiss: Intimacies from
Writers, The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader, Tahoe Blues, Southern
Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly, Poems
Dead and Undead, and in two editions of Best Women's Travel Writing .
Suzanne was named "The Next Great
Travel Writer" by National Geographic Traveler.
Suzanne served as the El Dorado County Poet Laureate (2018-2020), teaches
for the low residency MFA program in creative writing at UNR-Tahoe, and works
with individual writers a coach and editor. She is working on a novel and a
craft book, 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative
Writer (forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press). You can order her books on her website.
Lindsay Wilson, former Poet Laureate of Reno, is an English
professor at Truckee Meadows Community College, and co-edits the magazine,
The
Meadow. As an editor since 1997, he brings a depth of knowledge about what
to do and what not to do about submitting work to literary journals. He will
share professional tips and field your specific questions. He has
previously edited
Unwound magazine and served on the editorial board
for
Fugue. I. His two full length collections are
No Elegies and
The Day Gives Us so Many Ways to Eat, and
hi poetry has appeared in the
Colorado Review, The Carolina
Quarterly, The Missouri Review Online Poem of the Week
, The Bellevue
Literary Review, and
Pank.
He's been awarded the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers' Hall of Fame,
the Quercus Review Press Book Award Spring 2014. He was a finalist for the
Philip Levine Prize, 2007, and has a special mention in the Pushcart Prize
Anthology. You can order his books at WordTech.
Kim Culbertson’s writing has succeeded in spanning
many genres. As she shares her experiences in writing and publishing, her supportive
attitude helps writers understand how important it is to not let the publishing
industry validate your practice as a writer. KIM CULBERTSON is the author of the YA novels
Songs for a Teenage Nomad (Sourcebooks 2010), Instructions for a Broken Heart
(Sourcebooks 2011), which was named a Booklist Top Ten Romance Title for Youth:
2011 and also won the 2012 Northern California Book Award for YA Fiction, Catch
a Falling Star (Scholastic 2014), The Possibility of Now (Scholastic 2016),
which was named a Bank
Street Best Children’s Book of the Year (2017 edition), and The Wonder
of Us (Scholastic 2017). Much of her inspiration comes from her background
teaching high school since 1997. In 2012, Kim wrote her eBook novella The
Liberation of Max McTrue for her students, who, over the years, have taught her
far more than she has taught them. Kim also works as a fiction mentor for
the Dominican
University MFA in Creative Writing. 100-word Stories: A Short Form for
Expansive Writing (Heinemann 2023) You can order her latest book here.
Suzanne Roberts started off the workshop with her story of how she found her editor and publisher through University of Nebraska Press. Almost Somewhere: 28 Days on the John Muir Trail was published by Bison Books. She talked with the editors about how they could represent more feminist authors in their line of books offered. Ten years later, she has brilliantly re-released this memoir with a new Afterward, Discussion Questions for book clubs, and more photographs of her original hike. Her tip is to consider a University Press and seek out one that publishes the niche of your manuscript.
Lindsay Wilson presented a rundown of the nitty gritty for submitting work to literary magazines. As an editor himself of a few different magazines, and currently editor of The Meadow, he shared the editor's eye view of submissions: "Keep a love for the process of writing separate from publishing. Ultimately, it's about the craft." The Meadow's reading period is August 15 - Jan 15 each year, accepting poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
