“Once the work is done, it’s not yours anymore,” wrote Frank Chimero. “If the thing you make goes anywhere, it’s because other people carried it.”
The choice of if, when, and how to share our work with others is a deeply personal decision, both terrifying and exhilarating. How do you make that choice? And once it’s made, what do you… do?
This session reframes publication as a vital and informative part of the writing practice, as opposed to rejection/acceptance roulette. How can our unique publication goals influence the rewriting process? How does the consideration of a wider audience take our work to the next level and when should we leave those (scary and often very loud) outside voices at the door? And how can we demystify the nuts-and-bolts of submitting—finding the right literary journals, writing a solid cover letter, connecting with editors—and get back to what we’re all here to do: carry each other’s stories.
Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Tin House, and on National Public Radio. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor-at-large at Northwestern University Press.
