This course is staffed by an experienced team that works in the publishing industry. During the course, you will be learning fundamentals that will prepare you to be a change agent in the industry.

People that should consider taking this course are aspiring professional writers that want to develop deeper skills and anyone that wants to understand how the publishing industry works from an insider’s perspective. This course will give you the skills necessary to prepare for careers in the publishing world, like book festivals, literary agents, indie publishers, Big Five, literary scouts, bookstores, and conferences.

This course will be taught on Zoom, the team leading this course is:

• Kate Gale, Phd.
• Monica Fernandez, MA.
• Mark E. Cull, MA.
• Tobi Harper, MA.

Every member of the instruction team has extensive experience in different areas of the publishing industry, and they are excited to share that knowledge.

Highlights

This course will run across two consecutive weekends, covering the following topics:

Week 1:

• The History of Publishing
• Steps of the Editing Process
• Designing engaging cover art.
• Raising Funds to finance a book project.
• Getting an agent and finding a publisher.

Week 2:

• Marketing in the publishing industry.
• Media and Social Media.
• Networking in the literary world.
• The life cycle of a book.
• Being a literary citizen.

Next Classes

August 19 & 20 and August 26 & 27

 

Instruction Team

• Kate Gale, PHD.
  • Dr. Kate Gale is co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review.  She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.She is the author of the forthcoming The Loneliest Girl from the University of New Mexico Press and of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone from the University of New Mexico Press in 2014, and Echo Light from Red Mountain in 2014 and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.She speaks on independent publishing around the US at schools like USC and Columbia and she speaks at Oxford University.  Her opera in process is https://www.thewebopera.com/ and an opera on Che Guevara is in process with Cuban composer Armando Bayolo.
• Monica Fernandez, MA.
  • Monica Fernandez graduated from the University of California, Irvine cum laude with a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing, and from City University London with a MA in Creative Writing and Publishing. She has had several short fiction and creative nonfiction pieces published in The Chaffey Review, Rind Literary Magazine, Scribendi, The Left Coast Review, Creepy Gnome, and Pure Slush Magazine’s Envy anthology. She is Filipino-American, a proud Hufflepuff, and a film and theatre enthusiast.Monica manages the media and publicity of all Red Hen’s books. She pioneers the Red Hen Reading Series in Pasadena, CA, arranges our participation in literary events across the country, promotes book news, reviews, and press publicity across our social media networks and contacts, connects authors with media and interview opportunities, and liaises with Foreign Rights and Film Rights agents for prospective sale of language and film rights.
• Mark E. Cull, MA.
• Tobi Harper, MA.
  • Tobi Harper is Deputy Director of Red Hen Press, Founder and Editor of Quill, Publisher of The Los Angeles Review, and Instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program for Publishing and Editing. Tobi specialized in queer theory and literature of the environment throughout their academic studies, culminating in their master’s thesis: “‘What is it?’: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century Genderqueer Novels.” As a genderqueer and neurodivergent speaker, event curator, literary warrior, tech wiz, and jello wrestler, Tobi enjoys the diversity of experiences that life has to offer.