Freelance Writing Direct with Estelle

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.   In this episode:  How the Pandemic pushed Athena into writing essays [...

Christie Tate is an essayist and author who writes creative nonfiction and memoir. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese's Book Club selection and has been translated into 19 languages. She is also the author of B.F.F.-- A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney's Intern...

Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the IAN awarding-winning author of Strip: A Memoir. Strip, Swards first book, has received the attention of authors such as Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, Melissa Broder, and NYT Bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt who called Sward, "One of the most moving and honest memoir writers. So eloquent, so brave."    Sward has spoken on dozens...

Krishan Trotman is the co-author of the Queens of the Resistance series and Vice President, Publisher of Legacy Lit, an imprint at Hachette Book Group in New York. She was recently profiled in the New York Times and Essence magazine as one of the few African American publishing executives. She has committed over fifteen years to publishing books by and about multicultural voices and social justice...

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels, most recently Days of Wonder, which was a CBS/Mary Calvi bookclub pick, the recipient of a MidAtlantic Arts Foundation grant, and which was translated into Russia and has a shopping agreement for film. The co-founder of A Mighty Blaze, the book program begun the day of lockdown, she writes a column blog "Runs in the Family" fo...

The publishing industry is going through a groundbreaking sea change, reminiscent of the early days of the Internet. In this episode, Estelle Erasmus speaks about the current state of the publishing landscape, changes she is seeing, how to traverse them,  and what to expect going forward.    Estelle discusses the significant challenges faced by editors and writers due to the rise of AI, ongoing la...

Julie Pfitzinger has been with Next Avenue, a digital publication of Twin Cities PBS, for seven years and is the Managing Editor and Senior Editor for Features. She has worked as a writer and editor for more than 25 years; her work has appeared in publications including the Star Tribune and Minnesota Parent. For several years, she was a managing editor for the community lifestyle magazine group at...

Ann Garvin, Ph. D. is the USA Today Bestselling author, finalist for the Thomas Wolf Fiction Prize, and freelance contributor at the New York Times. Ann is a nurse, scientist, educator and author of six funny and sad novels. She writes about women who do too much in a world that asks too much from them. She currently teaches creative writing at Drexel University in their low residency MFA program...

Abigail Thomas has four children,12 grandchildren, two great grandchildren, eleven books, and a high school education. She was asked to leave Bryn Mawr freshman year when she told the Dean she was pregnant, and she never went back.  She had always wanted to be a writer, but for a long time the closest she came was bopping around her kitchen to Paperback Writer, by the Beatles. When she was forty-e...

Deborah Copperud is a freelance writer, independent podcast producer, and former reference librarian. Her writing has been published in Glamour, Racket, Defenestration, Great River Review, Potomac Review, Door Is A Jar, Another Chicago Magazine, and Blue Earth Review, and her Substack newsletter Deborah Copperud Shops at Target. Her work is forthcoming in The Rumpus and Good Tape. She co-hosts the...

Betsy Lerner is the author of the recently released novel, Shred Sisters (Grove Press, October 2024). She is also the author The Bridge Ladies, The Forest for the Trees and Food and Loathing. With Temple Grandin, she is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns and Abstractions. She received an MFA from Columbia Unive...

Kristi Coulter is the author of EXIT INTERVIEW: THE LIFE & DEATH OF MY AMBITIOUS CAREER, out now in paperback. Her previous book, the memoir-in-essays NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Kristi's work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Paris Review, Elle, Longreads, and many other publications. Her Substack newsletter, Loose Canon, offers p...

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 novels, most recently Days of Wonder, which was a CBS/Mary Calvi bookclub pick, the recipient of a MidAtlantic Arts Foundation grant, and which was translated into Russia and has a shopping agreement for film. The co-founder of A Mighty Blaze, the book program begun the day of lockdown, she writes a column blog "Runs in the Family" fo...

Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works and writes at the intersection of storytelling and healing, and combines her personal experiences with suicide loss and CPTSD with her clinical training to help writers turn tough experiences into art. Her essays and stories have appeared on Risk! and in The New York...

Carinn Jade is a lawyer, writer, and cohost of the Pop Fiction Women podcast. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, Daily Worth, and Motherwell. She has attended the GrubStreet Novel Generator, Yale Writers' Conference, and the Northern California Writers' Retreat. Carinn grew up on the North Fork of Long Island and lives with her family in New York City. The Astrology House is her...

Priscilla Gilman is the author of two memoirs, The Anti-Romantic Child (Harper, 2011) and The Critic's Daughter (Norton, 2023) and a former professor of English literature at Yale University and Vassar College. The Critic's Daughter was a Washington Post Best Book of 2023, a New York Times Book Critics' Favorite Book of 2023, a Good Morning America Must-Read, one of the Los Angeles Times' book cri...

Robin Finn, MPH, MA, is an award-winning writer, teacher, and coach, and the founder of Heart. Soul. Pen.® women's writing workshops and Hot Writing™ where midlife and menopause inspire the desire to say what you mean without apologizing. She is the author of the new book, Heart. Soul. Pen.: Find Your Voice on the Page and in Your Life and the novel, Restless in L.A. Robin's writing has appeared i...

ALIZA LICHT is an award-winning marketer, bestselling author, podcaster, personal branding expert, and the founder of LEAVE YOUR MARK, a multimedia brand and consultancy. She advises businesses and mentors individuals on brand building and career development. Licht leverages over two decades of expertise in marketing, communications, and digital strategy in the fashion industry. She was named one...

Ruth Bonapace's surrealistic comic novel The Bulgarian Training Manual  is an Elle Magazine 2024 top summer read. Publisher's Weekly called it a "whimsical delight." Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Hippocampus, The New York Times and elsewhere. A former women's magazine editor and sports writer, Ruth has an MFA from Stony Brook University. In this episod...

Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of  The Hot Sheet , the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is THE BUSINESS OF BEING A WRITER (University of Chicago Press), which re...

Wade Rouse is the USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and #1 internationally bestselling author of 17 books, including five memoirs and 12 novels. His new novel, The Page Turner, will publish next spring from HarperCollins.    Wade's books have been translated into nearly 25 languages and have been bestsellers across the world. His novel, The Secret of Snow, was recently optioned for a TV movie by the pr...

Jeannine Ouellette's lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women's Literature. She is also the author of the picture book, Mama Moon. Her literary essays and short fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Masters Review,...

Rona Maynard found happiness at 65—a story she tells in her new memoir Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging and Loving This World. She first broke into print at 14 with a short story about bullying and still receives fan mail from teens who are reading it in class. Rona capped a stellar career in magazines with a decade at the helm of Chatelaine, Canada's leading magazine for women. Her editor's...

Elissa Bassist is the editor of the "Funny Women" column on The Rumpus and the author of the award-deserving memoir Hysterical. As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she's written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. Most recently her writing appears in her newsletter, Tragedy Plus Time. Elissa teaches humor writing at The New School, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Work...

Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021, teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi where she is a four-time teaching award winner. She's received grants from the N.E.A., the United States Artists, the Academy of American Poets, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize and three times been included in The Best American Poetry Series. Fenn...