Craft Seminar: The Art of the Pitch with Sandy Ernest Allen
Craft Seminar: The Art of the Pitch with Sandy Ernest Allen
2 Sessions: Saturdays, October 3 + 10
1:00-3:00pm ET
Sandy Ernest Allen
Master the art of pitching with journalist and editor Sandy Ernest Allen. Sandy is a trans and queer freelance journalist, author, speaker and previous BuzzFeed News features editor. Sandy's own features and essays been published by Esquire, The Cut, Eater, The Boston Globe, and This American Life, amongst many others. His acclaimed debut work, a hybrid work of literary nonfiction, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise (Scribner) was called “a bracing work of art” in The Los Angeles Times. Sandy has an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and has taught nonfiction there and elsewhere.
Pitching is one of the most challenging parts of being a freelance writer. A longtime freelance journalist and essayist who was previously a features editor, Sandy’s been on both sides of the pitching game. Sandy’s been pitching to major publications for years, both successfully — but not without tons of failure. How do we freelancers keep going anyway, even when hearing no after no?
The class will be one part informal pitch workshop and one part peer support group … As a class, we'll review everyone's pitches during our first session together (one pitch per student). We'll return the second week to confer about how students’ efforts to actually send out their pitches went, which will hopefully help us stay brave and actually hitting “send". This class is open to nonfiction writers of all sorts, from reporters to memoirists to essayists and anyone in between.
What makes for a great pitch? What are editors at various sorts of publications actually looking for? How do freelancers develop resilience in the face of rejection? Together, we'll explore all this and more.
Highlights:
We'll refine and evolve your pitching game, each student having the opportunity share one pitch with the instructor and group for feedback.
We’ll also brainstorm specific publications and angles for each student to pursue.
We’ll develop and share strategies to strengthen confidence while pitching, including when and how to follow up, and other practical considerations.
Sandy Ernest Allen (he/they) is a journalist and author whose work focuses on gender and mental health. Sandy's pieces have been published by a wide range of outlets, including The Boston Globe, Eater, Cosmopolitan, The Believer, Esquire, The Cut, 99% Invisible and This American Life, and many more. His debut book, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise (Scribner) was long-listed as a top work of journalism of the decade by NYU’s journalism school amongst other accolades. Sandy's work has been praised by The New York Times, O Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and The New Republic ("A watershed in empathetic adaptation of 'outsider' autobiography."). Sandy has two degrees in creative nonfiction (from Brown, and an MFA from the University of Iowa) and he was formerly the Deputy Features Editor of BuzzFeed News. He has taught nonfiction writing and literature to a variety of people, from teenagers to retirees (at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth, Iowa, and in person and online for Catapult). He writes a newsletter about self-care called What's Helping Today.
