Award Ceremonies and a Book Proposal Course

Greetings from Philadelphia, where I joined Darius Stewart, winner of a ALA Stonewall Honor Title for his memoir, Be Not Afraid of My Body, at the annual librarians convention, held this year in the city I lived in during the ‘90s, a city I absolutely adore. It’s been hot but fun. Here he is signing copies for eager librarians after the ceremony

I am definitely enjoying this new “accompany authors who have received awards” part of my job—in March I was in New York for the NBCCs—and I hope to have plenty more such trips in the future.

In a bit, I’ll head to gorgeous 30th Street Station to board the Pennsylvanian, the Amtrak train that will slooooowly cross the Commonwealth and bring me back to Pittsburgh. And then I’ll get ready to teach my next online course on nonfiction book proposals (apparently this genre is imperiled, so I’m going to do all I can to promote the importance of research, reporting, and facts in books! No offense to the many versions of fantasy currently being written and proposed.)

For well over a decade (!) I’ve offered courses online. I adore teaching them. Back in the day I focused on helping academics freelance and “write for the public”; these days, I focus on helping people—lots of academics but also lots of plain old writer-people— write non-fiction book proposals (this is entirely separate from my day job, fyi: the impulse stems more from my earlier career as a teacher, and also my experience as an author).

The course starts on Monday. It lasts for two weeks (twelve days to be precise), and is entirely asynchronous. Every day I post a “lesson” and, in the first week, assign an exercise geared at helping you focus your proposal. In the second week we have Q&As with editors and agents, discussions of agents and presses and the like, and more optional “assignments”.

A byproduct of the courses is often community, during the course itself, as participants read and comment on their drafts, and, often, afterwards, as they create writing groups that extend past the life of the course. There’s more information here.