Freelance Writing Direct with Estelle

Aly Walansky has been covering lifestyle topics, with a focus on food, travel, and cocktails, for two decades. She's done all of this living and working (and eating!) from a tiny New York City studio apartment — so she knows a thing or two about cooking and eating well on a budget, in small spaces -- and sharing it with her audience. Her daily Substack newsletter goes out to close to 10,000 people...

Emily Paulsen has built a successful career as a freelance writer and editor. She has contributed to more than a dozen books, including three as co-author. She has covered a variety of subjects over the years, but specializes in health and healthcare, with an emphasis on health equity and improving the healthcare experience for patients and providers. She is currently president of the American Soc...

Sally Wiener Grotta is an award-winning writer, photographer and speaker. Her two most recent books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction (NobleFusion Press) and Daughters of Eve, an essay-based discussion & journaling workbook which mines the tales of biblical matriarchs to explore modern lives, concerns and crises (Bayit Publishing). As a journalist, Sally has traveled on...

Jessica Strawser is editor-at-large at Writer's Digest and the USA Today bestselling author of suspenseful book club novels, including Almost Missed You; Not That I Could Tell (a Book of the Month pick); A Million Reasons Why; The Next Thing You Know (a People Magazine Pick), and her latest, The Last Caretaker, an instant USA Today bestseller. Her seventh novel, Catch You Later, is forthcoming Oct...

Ann Hood is the author of a dozen books of memoir and fiction, including the bestselling novels THE BOOK THAT MATTERS MOST and THE KNITTING CIRCLE, and editor of the anthologies KNITTING YARNS and KNITTING PEARLS. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and New York.   In this episode: How Ann came up with the concept for her book [2:12] Writing characters born from life experience and cultural his...

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author of eight works of nonfiction and poetry. Her most recent book is Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul. Her previous book, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, won the gold star in Foreword Reviews Indie Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for Women's Literature. Other works include Love Sick: One Wo...

Mimi Zieman is a writer, physician, and speaker with a new memoir, Tap Dancing on Everest, about the risks we take to become our truest selves. She's written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, that has been performed in multiple cities and has co-authored 16 editions of a medical guide, Managing Contraception. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, The Sun Magazine, Ms. Magazine, The Forward, NBC New...

Lara Lillibridge (she/they) is the author of  The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning; Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent, and Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home. Lara is the Interviews Editor for Hippocampus Magazine and Creative Nonfiction Co-editor for HeartWood Literary Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from West Virginia Wesl...

Lisa Sharkey is the SVP and Publisher of the newly inaugurated HarperCollins imprint, Harper Influence , where her team acquires high profile non-fiction spanning popular culture, from general lifestyle and entertainment to stories of survival and inspiration. Whether in the fields of science, medicine, nature, music, lifestyle, spirituality, cooking, design, or news-driven narratives, the definin...

In this bonus episode, Estelle shares her first-hand experience of attending the 2024 U.S. Book Show as media, presented by Publishers Weekly and the Association of American Literary Agents.    The much-anticipated annual event, hosted by NYU's SPS Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts at NYU's Kimmel Center in New York City, brought the industry together for continuing education, discuss...

Amanda Churchill is a writer living in Texas. Her work has been featured in Hobart Pulp, Witness, River Styx, and other outlets. She was a Writer's League of Texas 2021 Fellow and holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. The Turtle House is her first novel.   In this episode: The challenges of writing a novel about family [3:24] Creating an ending in fiction y...

Peter Shankman is a top keynote speaker in marketing, social media, customer service, and neurodiversity in the workplace. The New York Times has called Peter Shankman "a rock star who knows everything about social media and then some." He is a 6x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate in-person and virtual keynote speaker, focusing on neurodiversity in the workplace and customer experien...

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers' Prize. Rakoff's books have been translated into twenty languages, and the film adaptation of My Salinger Year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming. She has been the recipient of fellowship...

Bob Eckstein (he/him) is an award-winning illustrator, writer, and cartoonist for the New Yorker, New York Times, Reader's Digest, Smithsonian Magazine, Atlas Obscura, and many others. His Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores was a New York Times bestseller and made many 'Best Of' 2016 lists and continues to be an 'Amazon Most Wished for Title' years later. He is also the author of The H...

Oregon-based journalist Melissa Hart is the author of seven books, including the award-winning middle-grade novels Avenging the Owl and Daisy Woodworm Changes the World, and the memoirs Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood and Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, CNN, Slate, The Washington Pos...

This is a new element to the show, where Estelle will do episodes where she taps into her 3 decades of publishing experience and  live coaches writers at every stage of their career on the next steps to take to elevate their work and navigate through issues facing writers.    Anna Medaris is a freelance health and lifestyle journalist with nearly 15 years of experience writing features, narratives...

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...

Kim Rittberg is an award-winning digital marketer and thought leader who helps professionals become thought leaders and businesses become brands through video & podcasts. She is the founder of Video Boot Camp and spent 15 years as a media executive at Netflix, PEOPLE Magazine, in TV News and launched the first-ever video unit for Us Weekly magazine and was integral in its $100 million sale. She no...

Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, Goldenrod, Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. Her newest book is My Thoughts Have Wings, a picture book for children, illustrated by Leanne Hatch. Smith's poems and essays have...

Amy Collins is an agent with the Talcott Notch Literary Services agency. She has over 30 years in the publishing industry and  is a USA TODAY and WALL STREET JOURNAL bestselling author. She has spent her career working with Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Target, Costco, Wal-Mart, as well as independent bookstores and libraries. Collins is a trusted speaker, and teacher, featured at conferences and i...

Amy Ferris is an author, a writer, a screenwriter, an editor and a playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions From a Midlife Crisis (Seal Press) was adapted into an Off-Broadway play in 2012. Amy has written for both the small screen (TV) and the big screen (Feature Films). As a screenwriter, she nominated for a Best Screenplay Award (BET, Black Reel Award) for her adaptation of...

William Kenower is the author of Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer's Guide to the End of Self-Doubt , Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence , and Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion , and the Editor-in-Chief of Author magazine. In addition to his books he's been published in The New York Times, Writer's Digest, Edible Seattle, Parent Map, and has been a featu...

Noah Michelson joins the Freelance Writing Direct podcast for the second time! Noah is the head of HuffPost Personal, which he launched in 2018, and the host of HuffPost's "Am I Doing It Wrong?" podcast. He received his MFA in Poetry from New York University, and has been featured on MSNBC, Fuse, Entertainment Tonight, and other outlets.   In this episode: Writing personal stories and essays [6:25...

Rita Rosenkranz founded Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency after working as an editor at major publishers. She represents almost exclusively adult non-fiction titles in all major categories. She looks for familiar topics presented freshly and lesser-known topics presented commercially. She works with mainstream houses as well as regional publishers for niche projects.   In this episode: How to resear...

There has been a big change in the industry recently, and in this episode Estelle covers what has been happening and why and what you need to do about it.    Estelle Erasmus has been in publishing for 3 decades — on both sides of the publishing wall — as a gatekeeper and as a journalist/writer who has found ways to break through the gate and get noticed — which is what she covers in her book, and...