HippoCamp Minis: Publishing, Promotion & the Writing Life – 5 CNF Topics in a Flash (2026)

It’s true that it’s more difficult than ever to publish personal essays in mainstream venues. And yet, editors still want to publish them. In this talk, I will share tips on how to get the attention of editors with your personal essay pitches and drafts. This session will:

• Offer tips on pitching the right essay at the right time to maximize its chance of publication
• Share strategies for forging long-term relationships with editors who want to go to bat for you again and again
• Cover how to find the right publication and vertical for your personal essay and what elements this essay should have to increase your chances of publication
• Explore how pitching personal essays is a long game and somewhat like dating
• Discuss pros and cons of writing pitches vs. full drafts
• Share the secret of how being rejected by my favorite column for years, which I eventually landed, inadvertently helped me publish in many other top venues

About the Speaker:  Lauren is a Philly-raised, New Mexico-based freelance writer who has been publishing essays since she started writing for the Bucks County Courier Times’ teenage-run page when she was 14. In her 20s and early 30s, she was head writer for a communications firm that partnered with mission-based organizations. Now she freelances all over the place, and has published essays in The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, BBC Travel, and elsewhere. Lauren coaches essay writing, writes music, and sings. She is at work on a memoir about her decades of funeral singing, which she’s writing with the editorial guidance of her agent.

Being part of a live literary event is a hugely gratifying way to up your literary citizenship and community. And it’s fun! Whether or not you’re the type to emcee an event or perform,

there’s a role for you to get involved in your local events, or even better expand the artistic community with new ones!

• We’ll go over the basics of getting a show running from the idea in your brain to a show—with actual people!
• Weird is good! How to find “I’d pay to see that!” and then make it happen!
• Curating your readers, or tellers, or bellydancers, or dulcimer players.
• Venues and tickets and marketing, oh my!
• Avoiding burnout so you can keep on doing this (because like all art, it’s fun but it is WORK)

About the Speaker: Amy Eaton co-hosts MissSpoken, Chicago’s best Lady Live Lit show. She is a veteran Write Club Chicago combatant with six victories. Amy has read for Chirp Radio’s First Time as well as Voicebox, Tuesday Funk, Louder Than a Mom, and You’re Being Ridiculous at Steppenwolf Theater. A trained actor and dancer and self-taught musician, she can be found unleashing her inner performance artist at 20×2 Chicago.

Amy has taught workshops on Live Lit, Creative Writing, Theater and ASL. She has produced, directed, and performed in fringe theater and solo performances both short and long. Amy co-founded Nature of the Beast, an experimental theater company with Deaf and hearing actors as well as founding and serving as artistic director for Mudlark Theater Company, now in their 21st year.

About the speaker: Liz Charlotte Grant’s Substack, the Empathy List, has been nominated twice for a Webby Award for best independent newsletter. Her debut CNF book, Knock at the Sky, was Foreword Indies finalist, and she writes a monthly online column for the progressive Christian magazine, The Christian Century.

In this session, focused on igniting (or re-igniting) your creative spark, writer Renee Reese will guide creatives in tools to heal from burnout and inspire new art. One simple way to nurture creativity is by going on an Artist Date, an intentional solo experience designed to connect with your inner creative. Popularized by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, an Artist Date  is described as “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist. In its most primary form, the Artist Date is an excursion, a play date…” This session will:

• Help you find nontraditional ways to get your creative spark back
• Give you ideas for simple, accessible Artist Dates you can try (including free and low-cost options)
• Share tips for overcoming burnout, writer’s block, and creative frustration
• Help you create a sustainable creative practice

Whether you consider yourself a creative or someone who just wants to feel inspired again, this session will be a playful invitation to exploring your inner artist.

About the Speaker: Renée Reese is a lawyer, creative nonfiction writer, and New York native. She is an alum of the Kenyon Review Residential Writers Workshop, and her work has appeared in Huffpost. She runs The Creative Year publication on Substack, which chronicles her journey as an artist. When she’s not reading or writing, you can find her dancing, painting, or in a New York City coffee shop, daydreaming about her next project.

Maybe you have a killer idea for a sure-to-be-successful nonfiction book. Perhaps you’ve even got a couple of chapters drafted. You might even after a polished, edited manuscript and are wondering about next steps. You’re in the right place! After this 10-minute round-up, you will be able to:

• Articulate the purpose and importance of each section of a successful nonfiction book proposal and compellingly answer the questions: why you, why this book, and why now.
• Explain precisely who your primary, secondary, and tertiary audience is (hint: it’s not everyone in the world!) and demonstrate how you will reach them.
• Define your author platform. (Let me prove to you that you already have one and that it’s bigger than you think you think it is!)
• Write a dynamic, winning query letter that gets your proposal requested by agents and editors.

So, pull on your best pair of boots and get ready to kick down some doors!

About the Speaker: Carolyn Roy-Bornstein is the Writer-in-Residence at the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency program in Lawrence, Massachusetts where she teaches narrative medicine. She is the author of two memoirs and an essay collection. Her fourth book, A Prescription for Burnout: Restorative Writing for Healthcare Professionals was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in April. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Poets & Writers, The Writer and many other venues. She has led writing workshops for the American Medical Women’s Association, the Women in Medicine Summit, and the Well-Med conference on physician well-being in Kastoria Greece.