Workshops

SPRING

Stanford Public Humanities is excited to announce its first intensive three-day magazine writing workshop Friday April 14-Sunday April 16, led by Joshua Rothman, the ideas editor and a writer at the New Yorker. This workshop will cover three main topics:

1. Nuts and Bolts--Inside the magazine world. Pitches, genres, editorial process, etc.
2. Ideas--What makes a good magazine piece? How can your idea be appealing for a particular magazine's outlook? 
3. Writing--A deep dive into prose style and genre conventions of magazine journalism

Across three days you will get a chance to learn and interact in a small group (12 or fewer participants) with Josh and with visiting editors and writers from other magazines who will come to speak. 

You will also get a chance to meet 1:1 with Josh about your ideas. 

This takes place across a Friday/weekend in order to avoid teaching conflicts, so we will try our best to make the scheduling work for participants during those days. Rest assured we hope to offer this again if these days don't work for you this time! 

Please submit your application by Wednesday, March 8. You need to be signed in to your Stanford Google Drive account in order to apply. 

FALL (Applications closed) 

 We're excited to announce our third faculty workshop on trade books. The goal is to help you develop your book idea for a general/non-academic audience and plan the elements of a trade book proposal. 

Workshop leaders will be agent Amelia (Molly) Atlas from ICM Partners and editor Hilary Redmon from Random House, who are both publishing dynamos with impressive rosters and great ideas for working with academics. Their collective author list includes Tara Westover, Kathryn Shulz, Ed Yong, Ana Minian, Amia Srinivasan, Jenny Odell, Mark O'Connell, and many more. Longer bios for Molly and Hilary are available at the end of this email if you're interested. 

Molly and Hilary are both based on the East Coast, and the workshop will take place virtually over Zoom. 

Fall 2021--A month-long workshop  on writing a book for a general audience with literary agent Alia Hana Habib and editor Vanessa Mobley. 

Spring 2021--A month-long workshop on writing a book for a general audience with literary agent Tina Bennett and book editor Alexander Star (FSG). The goal: to help faculty develop a book idea for a general/non-academic audience and plan the elements of a trade book proposal.

Winter 2021--Following on the success of the first public humanities workshop, a second virtual workshop on writing and publishing op-eds with Lois Kazakoff, former deputy editorial page director of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Spring 2020--The first public humanities workshop: a month-long workshop held over zoom on writing and publishing op-eds with Lois Kazakoff, former deputy editorial page director of the San Francisco Chronicle.