Portland State University's Center for Excellence in Writing

Liz Nakazawa

This is a workshop for beginning students interested in journalistic, non-fiction article writing who want to learn how to develop ideas for feature articles for magazine and newspapers. We will explore the process of writing query letters to editors, researching, interviewing, and writing and editing final articles. We will also discuss the best ways to approach editors with story ideas. There will be several in-class exercises.

Local author Liz Nakazawa has been freelancing since 1984 and has published over 90 articles on such diverse subjects as food, gardening, education, small businesses and non-profit organizations. Her articles have appeared in The Oregonian, Oregon Business Magazine and PSU Alumni Magazine. She has also published in Psychology Today, Alaska Airlines Magazine, Horizon Air and Northwest Travel Magazine.

Dan Kaplan

What poet doesn’t have obsessions? The question is: how can you, as a poet, revisit the same subject effectively? We’ll study examples of contemporary poets’ handling of recurring subjects in their work—considering both individual poems and the cumulative impact of a group of related poems—and discuss various strategies for addressing your own obsessions.

We’ll also cover how to submit a group of poems to literary magazines (editors often welcome seeing a series of related pieces)—what you should and shouldn’t include in a cover letter and with your submission, as well as how to present your work.

Dan Kaplan is former editor-in-chief of Black Warrior Review and a current editor of Del Sol Review. His poetry chapbook Skin, a bilingual, letterpress-printed edition produced in collaboration with Cuban artist Julio Cesar Peña and translator Maria Vargas, will be published by Red Hydra Press later this year. His poetry manuscript Bill’s Formal Complaint was recently a finalist for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Third Coast, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, and many other publications.

Polly Campbell

Most writers have no shortage of ideas, but not every idea leads to a saleable story.

This workshop will explore how freelance magazine writers find and shape marketable story ideas into query letters that sell. We will discuss how writers develop a story focus, research markets and finally write the query. Participants will also learn how to structure a magazine article, work with editors and publish the finished piece. By the end of this intensive workshop participants will have their own well-focussed idea and be ready to write the query.

Half-ton pumpkins, environmentally-conscious entrepreneurs and jail-bound embezzlers are a few of the subjects Polly Campbell has written about during her career as a freelancer.

Campbell specializes in nonfiction feature articles. Her work has appeared in Family Circle, The Writer, VIA Magazine, American Profile, Pages, Arthritis Today and other consumer and trade publications. She is a frequent contributor to The Oregonian.

Ellen Bishop

The landscapes of the Pacific Northwest seem timeless. But in fact, they have a long and thought-provoking history. The Pacific shoreline has stepped westward from Idaho to Mitchell to Silverton to Astoria. Vine-infested, banana-laden forests once shrouded much of eastern Oregon, giving way to oak savanna, then grassland, and finally glacial ice and torrential floods. Climates, landscapes, and ecosystems and have changed. And the record of all this rich and vibrant history—the foundation of today's landscape—is fertile ground for writing.

This day-long workshop will explore opportunities for using geology, including past climates, extinctions, and long-vanished landscapes, as a basis for story and for informing us about environmental change. The class will include examining how some modern writers have applied geology to story, how to find information about local and regional geologic history, and suggestions about how to use this information as a subject or highlight of writing. The afternoon will include a short trip to examine local geologic features and use them as a basis to write an essay or story.

Geologist and photographer Ellen Morris Bishop is the author of four books, the most recent being In Search of Ancient Oregon: A Geological and Natural History from Timber Press. She has taught geology, wrote a science column for The Oregonian, and was the science reporter for The Columbian.

Lisa Nuss

This class is for anyone who has dreamed of writing for newspapers or magazines but doesn't know where to start. Steps we will cover include:

How to turn an idea into a publishable piece
How to write a query letter
How to contact editors
What to expect once an article is assigned
How to negotiate fees and copyright issues

Each participant should bring one story or column idea. After the presentation and with the help of in-class exercises, participants should leave class with the pieces in place to pitch their first story.

Local author Lisa Nuss publishes freelance opinion columns in major daily newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Houston Chronicle. She writes a periodic opinion column for the East Oregonian and has published features and profiles in regional publications including the Tacoma News-Tribune. Her work was recently excerpted in the Utne Reader magazine. She is also an attorney and co-authored a book on the history of Oregon's labor laws.

Craig Ryan

Tom Wolfe has argued that great writing is 65% material and 35% talent. Why do writing programs spend so little time on strategies for locating and harvesting great material? Interviewing is an essential skill that successful writers of both fiction and nonfiction use to add detail, color, and authenticity to theirwork. This workshop examines time-tested techniques for planning, conducting, and using interviews as literary tools, and demonstrates how creative writers can use the fruits of their interviews to attract publishers and readers.

Craig Ryan is the author of The Pre-Astronauts (Naval Institute Press), the inspiring story of the pioneer days of the American space program. His latest book, Magnificent Failure (Smithsonian Books), is part biography, part adventure saga, and part historical detective story.

Cheryl Coupé

Writing (or ghost writing) contributed articles for technical trade publications is a great way to enhance your resume, promote your company or service, or expand your writing markets. Writing for these publications combines aspects of technical writing, journalism, and public relations. We’ll cover researching and targeting publications, finding and using editorial calendars, defining the article and developing an angle, pitching the article, and working with editors to write the article. Class will include hands-on exercises based on ideas, topics, and industry preferences that attendees bring to class.

Cheryl Coupé has been writing for Northwest technology companies since 1989. She has ghostwritten, placed, and edited articles that have appeared in Electronic Engineering Times, Computer Design, Electronic Business, Microsoft Embedded Review, Windows Developer’s Journal, Machine Design, and a host of even more arcane technical trade publications.

Cornelia Becker Seigneur

“Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.” – Maxwell Perkins

It is not just the famous that are writing about their lives. We all have a story to tell. People are discovering that their personal stories have relevancy and can touch others. By writing our personal stories we begin to understand ourselves and the way we manage relationships. It is through the art of writing that our stories are preserved. Memoir writing is popular for a reason!

Join this freelance writer, teacher and 25-year veteran of journal and diary writing in a workshop designed to inspire you to write your life story through journal writing exercises. Participants will use various writing prompts to help find their personal voice and unique story. Opportunity to purchase a popular hardbound journal will be available.

Participants will:

Read passages from published memoirs.
Use numerous mind exercises, memory joggers and writing prompts to write parts of life stories.
Focus on certain elements of their lives to recall life-changing details and conversations.
Analyze their writing to find life themes.
Draw on personal monuments to help tell their stories.
Use sensory and memory activities to capture dialogue, musings, summary, and scenes.
Begin to find relevancy to others in their life stories.
Touch on basics of the freelance publishing world.
Discuss the difference between a memoir, journal, diary and autobiography, and reflect on their individual uses.
Read out loud from their writing to gain valuable feedback.
See how, as poet Emily Dickinson said, words are our “truest friends”.

Freelance journalist, editor and teacher Cornelia Becker Seigneur, M.A., has been a freelance writer since 1996, having had over 200 articles, columns and essays published in The Oregonian, Portland Magazine, Portland Parent Magazine, The West Linn Tidings, The Lake Oswego Review, and Family Circle. She specializes in writing the stories of others as well as parenting issues, and in her column she writes her own family story. Her background is in English and German literature, journalism and teaching.

Linda Zuckerman

Taught by an editor with over 30 years of experience in the book publishing business, this practical, inspiring introduction to children's book publishing covers manuscript submission guidelines, pitfalls to avoid, market opportunities, agents, simultaneous submissions, contracts, manuscript to bound book, and more. Upon completing the workshop, writers will be able to take a knowledgeable, professional stance in their dealings with publishers, thereby enhancing their chances for success.

Objectives include:

Helping beginning writers and illustrators understand the expectations of publishers and therefore be better prepared to create successful proposals.
Explaining how to submit a manuscript, to whom—and why so many manuscripts get rejected.
Helping authors learn to objectively evaluate their own writing before they show it to an editor.
Demystifying the book production process.
Developing realistic expectations for success.

Linda Zuckerman has over 30 years of children's book publishing experience, most recently at Harcourt Brace, where she was Editorial Director of Browndeer Press, her own imprint. She has also held executive editorial positions at HarperCollins, Intervisual Communications, and Viking. Books that she has edited have received the Caldecott Medal, the Newbery Honor Citation, the Coretta Scott King Award, and the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award, among many others.

Molly Gloss

The best fiction transports the reader wholly into the world of the story,creating in John Gardner's words a “vivid continuous fictional dream.” Through readings, discussion and exercises this class aims at artistic mastery of the dream, and looks at the slips of technique that can jolt the reader from it.

Molly Gloss is a fourth-generation Oregonian who lives in Portland. She is the author of Outside The Gates, a fantasy novel for young adults, and more than two dozen short stories, essays and book reviews which have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her novel, The Jump-Off Creek, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and the H. L. Davis Oregon Book Award. In 1996, she was recipient of a Whiting Writers Award. The Dazzle of Day, a novel of the near future, was named a 1997 New York Times Notable Book, and was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize. Her novel Wild Life, set in 1905 in the mountains and woods of Washington State, was released by Simon and Schuster in 2000.

Joseph Fisher

Are you sick of trying to figure out how to market your play? Can you not bear to write that 16th draft of the script that you never liked in the first place? Can you not bear to buy one more book about how to write a play? Have you always wanted to write a play but have no idea how? Do you have enough rejection letters to choke a wood-chipper?

You're not alone.

Walk in with a notebook, and walk out with a short play. That's the plan. Through a series of exercises, we'll all get back to, or discover for the first time, the reason why we started writing: Because it feels good.

Joseph Fisher is a native of Texas who now lives in Portland. He is a graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas where he received his BFA in Playwriting.

Joseph just finished his fourth and final year as playwright-in-residence at Stark Raving Theatre where they produced world premieres of his plays “Prometheus Bound”, “Tundra”, “Cupid & Psyche”, and “Faust. Us.”. In February of 2004, Joseph’s play “In the Canopy of the Forest” appeared at the Australian National Playwright’s Conference in Adelaide, Australia and in May, he received a production of his plays “The New House” at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland and “Thunderbird” at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. His plays have also appeared at Kitchen Dog Theater, Portland Center Stage, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Joseph is a recipient of the Playwrights First Award, the Charlotte Woolard Award, a 2002 grant recipient from the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays and has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2002.

Polly Campbell

What does it take to survive this writer's life? What are the myths and realities of freelancing fulltime? What is a typical day for someone who works as a full-time freelancer? In this workshop, participants will hear about the habits serious writers use to produce and sell quality work on a daily basis. Learn dozens of tips, including how to set up your office, overcome writer's block, juggle corporate and editorial assignments and talk to editors.

If you're thinking about a career in freelance writing or already embarking on one, this workshop will provide a dose of reality and a strong supply of inspiration and encouragement.

Polly Campbell has written about half-ton pumpkins, environmentally-conscious entrepreneurs and jail-bound embezzlers during eight years a full-time freelancer. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Oregonian, Family Circle, The Writer, VIA, Arthritis Today, Pages, and other consumer and trade publications. In her workshops she shares tips on how other writers can thrive as full-time freelancers.

Cathy Bao Bean

PURPOSE: To perceive our selves and stories as at least bi-cultural.

METHOD: One way to do this is to find and tell stories with a multicultural point. In the process, you can shape lives, including your own, and thrive in a world where people don't have to love you.

There are many cultures (and homes!) where neither Freud nor Dewey is a watchword. This is especially true of Asians (Jews? Italians? et al?) whose parents tend to “tell stories” rather than “inform” or “discuss,” let alone psychoanalyze or debate. Thus, to combine “story-telling” with “critical thinking” promotes a kind of “multicultural” teaching and learning that is reflective of both the self and the other.

One of the virtues of this approach is that the source material is already within us—all that needs to be done is to tap the resource and put it in a form that people, including ourselves, can understand. In other words, just because we are “hyphenated Americans” doesn't mean we grasp either culture, let alone how the two can happily co-exist.

Cathy Bao Bean is a daughter, business manager, aerobics instructor, mother, friend, writer, sister, educational consultant, wife, and activist for the NJ Council for the Humanities and Society for Values in Higher Education. In a previous incarnation, she was a Philosophy teacher, cook, student, carpool driver, as well as a founding member of the Ridge and Valley Conservancy. In the process, she has been learning how to make the “foreign” more familiar and the ordinary and extraordinary into each other. None of it has been painless. All of it has been fun—except the cooking.

Polly Campbell

If you want to sell your articles and essays, this workshop is for you. Learn the basics of the freelance business and how to hone your writing to captivate editors and readers.

This workshop provides time management techniques, market study guidelines, and tips on query creation, followed by a discussion on article development and the elements of good writing. Learn to establish pace, harness your voice, and depict details in your articles and you will improve your work and boost your bottom line.

Half-ton pumpkins, environmentally-conscious entrepreneurs and jail-bound embezzlers are a few of the subjects Polly Campbell has written about during her 12-year career as a freelancer. Her work has appeared in Family Circle, The Writer, VIA, American Profile, Pages, Arthritis Today and other consumer and trade publications. She is a frequent contributor to The Oregonian.

John Reed

Sell That Book, taught by John Reed, takes the writer on a step-by-step journey through the marketing maze, from manuscript mechanics to query letters to finding an agent. You’ll learn how prepare your manuscript, write and edit the perfect synopsis and query letter. In-class exercises take you through the process of choosing the right agent for you, the development of a submission strategy and the techniques of searching the market. The workshop includes a section on e-books and print-on-demand publishing.

John Reed is the author of two novels, Thirteen Mountain and The Kingfisher’s Call. He edited the 2001 MOTA short story anthology, Truth, (Triple Tree Press, September, 2002 ) and has published numerous poems and shorter non-fiction works. He has recently completed an espionage thriller, Forests of the Night, and edited Piece by Piece, a book-length collection of essays by Northwest women writers. He operates an editing and critique service for writers on the web at www.writerswelcome.com.

Reed has conducted writing workshops and seminars around the country for twenty years. His classes on the novel, short stories, essays and magazine writing, with his sensitive and insightful critiques, have been a stepping stone to publication for hundreds of students. He has been a presenter at the Willamette Writer’s Conference in Portland, the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference in Seattle, the Maui Writers Retreat and has conducted workshops for The Oregon Writer’s Colony, the Truckee Meadows Community College Writer’s Conference and the “Fiction-By-The-Sea” workshops on the Oregon coast.

Devon Schuyler

Medical writing can be a lucrative career, with skilled writers earning $50 an hour or more. Talented writers with medical expertise, or just a keen interest in all things health-related, are in a good position to break into this field.

This workshop will cover both the craft and business of medical writing. It is designed for people who are new to medical writing but have some background in either writing or medicine.

Topics to be covered include:

Heart attack or cardiac arrest? Commonly-confused medical terms.
What you need to know about medical statistics.
How to read a medical journal article.
Summarizing medical research for a general audience.
Introduction to Medline searches.
Researching topics.
Locating experts.
Interviewing sources.
Getting started: pitching articles and working with editors.
Where to find jobs.

Devon Schuyler has been a medical writer and editor for nearly 15 years. Her most recent position was Executive Editor of The Johns Hopkins White Papers, a series of health publications for laypeople. She has also edited a variety of publications for physicians, including General Surgery News, OB/GYN & Endoscopy News, Cardiology Special Edition, and Orthopedic Special Edition. She currently writes and edits for a variety of freelance clients. Her complete bio can be found at www.devonschuyler.com.

Amy Klauke Minato

Spend a day in the laps of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard and other nature writers. Breathe in their unique expressions of the natural world. Writing about the natural world covers a wide terrain. Writers look at details as well as the abstract through many lenses. Trying out new ways of expression can enrich our experience and strengthen our writing. Knowing the range of styles can help us to place our own writing in the spectrum. In this workshop we will discuss several examples of nature writing and practice a few of the techniques we observe.

Amy Klauke Minato was awarded a 2004 Oregon Literary Fellowship for her poetry. Her chapbook of nature poetry, The Wider Lens, will be published this fall by Ice River Press. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing and a Masters in Environmental Studies and has taught nature literature through the University of Oregon and poetry classes through Fishtrap in eastern Oregon. Amy's teaching style is friendly and helpful, and her class format varies from small group discussion, to writing exercises, to peer editing, to reading circles.

Lisa Nuss

Having a way with words is only half the battle; working as a freelance writer takes moxie, determination and the ability to laugh in the face of rejection. In this seminar we will cover:

Crafting query letters to balance the high art of your ideas against the need to be paid.
How to pester editors, in a good way.
Figuring out how much you're worth and negotiating for it.
How to decipher the contract they send you.
Why protecting your copyright is so important.

Freelance writers of all levels are welcome – even if you've never been published. Each participant will have the opportunity to workshop one article query.

Lisa Nuss is an attorney and freelance writer. Her freelance political opinion columns have been published in major daily newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and on the Women’s eNews website. She got her start with an “In my opinion” piece in the Oregonian and went on to write a periodic column for the East Oregonian. An opinion she wrote defending Martha Stewart will be featured in an upcoming McGraw Hill book, Reading and Writing Short Arguments. Her features have been published in the Tacoma News-Tribune and in regional magazines, and her work has been excerpted in the Utne Reader magazine.

Jodi Helmer

Every writer knows that a well-written query is essential to landing assignments with magazines and newspapers but few writers know how to make their queries stand out: Crafting the Query will change that.

This three-hour class will cover topics ranging from the purpose of a query and the best way to present it to an editor to tips to help writers sell their idea (and themselves). In addition to covering the basics of writing a query, the class will offer tips for taking a query from ho-hum to outstanding using real examples of query letters that have landed lucrative assignments. In-class writing exercises will help writers develop their ideas, sell themselves and make their queries sing.

As a freelance writer, Jodi Helmer has written hundreds of articles on topics including the AIDS pandemic in South Africa, the shortage of male teachers and easy ways to cut calories. Her work has appeared in publications like Entrepreneur, Woman's Day, Parents and the Christian Science Monitor. She is also a frequent contributor to the Portland Tribune. Additionally, she has worked as an editor and taught numerous writing classes both independently and through organizations such as Saturday Academy.

Jodi Helmer

Setting goals can help writers achieve almost anything from breaking into a local newspaper or selling their first novel to teaching writing classes and speaking at journalism conferences.

This three-hour class will help writers develop a plan for moving from where they are to where they want to be by introducing several popular goal-setting strategies. The class will examine the importance of setting goals, creating a support network, working toward the goal and addressing roadblocks.

In class exercises will help writers identify their goals, break them down into manageable pieces and develop an action plan for working toward those goals.

Setting goals has helped freelance writer Jodi Helmer launch a lucrative writing career and break into publications such as Woman's Day, Yoga Journal, Entrepreneur, Arthritis Today and the Christian Science Monitor. She has taught classes through the Center for Excellence in Writing and Saturday Academy. Visit her online at www.jodihelmer.com.

John A. Donnelly & Mark Saunders

Okay. So it's not a novel. It's not even a one-act play. But it is bigger than a breadbox. And the ten-minute play as its own creative event is filling theatres everywhere.

Now's your chance to learn how to write a ten-minute play — and find out what to do with it once it's done.

Taught by Portland playwrights, John A. Donnelly and Mark Saunders, this one-day workshop will teach you the basics of writing the 10-minute play, help you craft one, and show you where and how to find a home for the play when it's ready. John and Mark have had more than 100 performances of their 10-minute plays throughout the country, from New York City to Portland, Oregon.

Cornelia Seigneur

If you've always dreamed of writing for newspapers and magazines, but not known where to start, here's your chance to learn the nuts and bolts. This workshop teaches the ABC's of journalism in a day, plus offers tips on making your work shine.

Journalism 101 is an overview of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of newspaper writing. This hands-on workshop will cover the basics, such as interviewing and note-taking; writing the lede, nutgraff, transitions, and body of a story; researching an article, checking for facts and organizing a story; and weaving action verbs and descriptive language into articles. In-class exercises will hone these and other writing skills.

We will examine various types of newspaper stories, such as features, news and editorials, and how they are written and researched. In the workshop we will analyze real newspaper articles, both local and national, to see how stories are structured and how the writer made the information both understandable and interesting.

In addition, we will touch on the life of a freelance journalist, and how to approach editors with story ideas that will grab their attention to land assignments.

Freelance journalist and editor Cornelia Seigneur, M.A., pens Real Life Mom, a monthly family column for The Oregonian's Southwest Weekly section. Since 1996, she has written feature stories for the paper's Living, Metro, Religion, and community sections, and her work has appeared in other publications as well, including Portland Magazine, Twins and Parents. Cornelia is a member of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication and National Communication Association.