CANCELLED Workshop: Pitches and Queries, with Mason MFA alum Samuel Ashworth
Thursday, April 16, 2020 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM EDT
Fenwick Library, #4010
Samuel Ashworth (MFA '18) is a regular contributor to the Washington Post Magazine and Eater.com, and his fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Longreads, Hazlitt, Barrelhouse, Catapult, the Times Literary Supplement, NYLON, and others. He wrote the semi-regular "Dispatches from the Swamp" column for The Rumpus, and is an assistant fiction editor at Barrelhouse Magazine.
If you want to be a working writer, few skills matter more than knowing how to pitch your ideas to editors and agents. Novels and nonfiction books start life as queries; articles and essays start life as pitches. Coming up with pitches and proposing them to editors is a non-negotiable part of life for freelancers. But because editors and agents receive so many of these letters every day, their correctness is every bit as important as their content.
This 3-hour workshop will teach you:
1) How to craft a successful pitch or query
2) The etiquette of dealing with agents and editors (such as how and when to follow up on a pitch or a draft)
3) How to talk about and ask for money
4) How a pitch becomes a published piece
5) How to vastly expand your range by folding basic reporting skills into your repertoire
We'll work from sample literary queries and pitch letters for various different outlets. If possible, fiction writers come with drafts of query letters, and nonfiction writers with pitch concepts; if we have enough, we will workshop them together.
