EVENT DETAILS

Women Who Pitch: Freelancing in the Digital Age

Join Erika Hayasaki, assistant professor in the UC Irvine Literary Journalism Program, for a roundtable discussion, “Women Who Pitch: Freelancing in the Digital Age,” with editors, freelance writers and students. The panel is inspired by the Los Angeles-based group "Women Who Submit,” which encourages women writers to gather together and submit their work to magazines, and to celebrate the often intimidating process of sending work out into the world. Panelists will discuss getting started as a freelance writer and the craft of nonfiction storytelling.

Event is free and open to the public.

Guest roundtable speakers will include:
Melissa Chadburn, author of this month’s Poets & Writers essay, “Submission Blitz: Finding Courage at a Writer's Conference.” Melissa has written for Guernica, Buzzfeed, Salon, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, American Public Media’s Marketplace, Al Jazeera America and dozens other places, her essay, "The Throwaways," received notable mention in Best American Essays and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her first novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. When she is not teaching, she can usually be found protesting somewhere. Follow her on twitter @melissachadburn.


Jia-Rui Chong Cook is the managing editor for Zocalo Public Square , a nonprofit ideas exchange that blends humanities journalism and live events. Zocalo publishes personal essays and news analyses that end up on the websites and op-ed pages of over 150 syndicate partners, including 30 newspapers in California,  as well as Time, The Washington Post, and USA Today. Prior to Zocalo Public Square, Jia-Rui was a reporter in the science and local news sections of the Los Angeles Times and a science writer and media relations specialist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. @jahree

Liana Aghajanian has reported from the South Caucasus, Kenya, Germany, the United Kingdom as well as across the West Coast in the U.S. Her work has been supported by a number of fellowships and grants, including the International Reporting Project U.S. Fellow in Global Religion Reporting, Metlife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellowship and the California Health Journalism Fellowship. Her long form reporting has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Magazine, Al Jazeera America, BBC, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, EurasiaNet, The Atlantic.com, Mental Floss, Flaunt, Roads & Kingdoms, Brownbook, The Magazine, Narratively, Mashallah News, Jadaliyya, Hi-Fructose,  New America Media, Bitch, Paste magazine, Global Voices, Edible Los Angeles, Inc. magazine and Spot.us, a non-profit project for the “Center for Media Change,” funded by the Knight Foundation. As an Armenian-American journalist, she also edits Ianyan Magazine, an independent online publication about Armenia and its international diaspora. Previously, she worked as an editor, collaborating with publications like Atlanta Journal-Constitution, USA Today and Hearst.

Marilyn Friedman is the founder of Writing Pad, a creative writing school for adults in Los Angeles and online. Her essays, stories, op-ed’s have been published on Narratively, The Frisky, Salon.com and the San Francisco Chronicle.  She has written articles on love and dating for Match.com and is currently working on a memoir about her experiences as a swing dancer and a collection of poems. Marilyn has taught writing for twelve years, including classes at Pixar, Walt Disney Studios, The Writing Salon, and the Southern California Writers Conference. She has a BA in English and Writing from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a Master’s Degree from Boston University.

Questions? Email Erika Hayasaki at ehayasak@uci.edu.