Hippocampus Magazine

STORIES ON SUNDAY: No Offense: A Memoir in Essays (Jackie Domenus)
2025-04-27 18:00 - 19:15 (America/New_York) | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Enjoy a reading, then hear the story behind the stories during Stories on Sunday with Jackie Domenus, author of No Offense: A Memoir in Essays.

From the Jacket Copy: When Jackie “came out” in 2014, right as the Trump era was revving up, she began paying closer attention to the inappropriate questions, uncomfortable reactions, and pointed assumptions about sexuality and gender she was witnessing and now experiencing firsthand.
No Offense: A Memoir in Essays takes a magnifying glass to subtle moments that many people don’t recognize as homophobic or transphobic, exploring the impact of microaggressions on LGBTQ+ folks. Blending personal essay and cultural critique, the collection confronts society’s reactions to queerness at poignant moments in Jackie’s life, from wedding planning to OBGYN appointments to the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, and beyond. Revealing the complex and tender moments that sculpted their identity from a tomboy adolescence to gender exploration as an adult, No Offense analyzes the loaded conversations queer and trans folks face every day on topics like labels, haircuts, Halloween costumes, and more.
We hope you will join us! Note: All registered attendees will get a link to the recording, so be sure to register even if you cannot make it life.
About the Series: Stories on Sundays are bi-monthly readings from a recent/forthcoming work of creative nonfiction followed by an author interview + audience Q&A. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
Meet the Speaker
Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer writer from New Jersey. Their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, was released by ELJ Editions in Feb. 2025. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin House Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in The Normal School, The Offing, Pidgeonholes, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere.
All Stories on Sundays speakers have a connection to Hippocampus Magazine and Books; Jackie was a past speaker at our in-person conference for creative nonfiction writers, HippoCamp.

HOW-TO TUESDAY: Exploring Forms in CNF: What's a Hermit Crab Doing in My Essay?
2025-05-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
In this How-To Tuesday, we’ll talk about one of the most fun experimental forms of creative nonfiction: the hermit crab essay!
These forms can also be an effective way to approach sensitive topics with levity and wit. Your essay could take the form of anything, from a recipe or personals ad to a corporate memo or a weather report! Think outside the box!
Together, in this session we will:

talk about what they are and how they work
look at great examples of hermit crab essays
start thinking about how to create our own

If you’ve always been curious about experimental forms creative nonfiction — or you just want a refresher! — this session will leave you inspired and ready to write.
About the series: How-To Tuesdays are monthly(ish) talks on the craft of creative nonfiction, publishing, marketing, and the writing life led by Hippocampus Magazine editors & contributors. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
About Our Speaker

Rae Pagliarulo is associate editor of Hippocampus Magazine. She works as a nonprofit fundraising consultant in her lifelong home of Philadelphia. Her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in Full Grown People, bedfellows, Hippocampus, The Manifest-Station, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, the Brevity Blog, and numerous others. Her work is anthologized in The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition.
Rae is the 2014 recipient of the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize, a 2019 Best of the Net nominee, and a graduate of Rosemont College’s MFA program.

STORIES ON SUNDAY: Mothers and Other Fictional Characters (Nicole Graev Lipson)
2025-06-01 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Enjoy a reading, then hear the story behind the stories during Stories on Sunday with Nicole Graev Lipson, author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays.
All Stories on Sundays guest readers have a connection to Hippocampus Magazine. Nicole’s essay “The New Pretty” was the runner-up in our 2020 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction and we also nominated it for a Pushcart Prize that year.
From the Jacket Copy: What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.
Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves—and the ones we’re still becoming.
We hope you will join us! Note: All registered attendees will get a link to the recording, so be sure to register even if you cannot make it life.
About the Series: Stories on Sundays are bi-monthly readings from a recent/forthcoming work of creative nonfiction followed by an author interview + audience Q&A. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
Meet the Speaker
All Stories on Sundays guest readers have a connection to Hippocampus Magazine. Nicole’s essay “The New Pretty” was the runner-up in our 2020 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction and we also nominated it for a Pushcart Prize that year.
Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters (Chronicle Books, March 2025). Her writing has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays anthology, and nominated for a National Magazine Award. In addition to Hippocampus, her essays have appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, Alaska Quarterly Review, Fourth Genre, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other places. Lipson holds an MFA from Emerson College and lives outside of Boston with her husband and children.

HippoCamp Online Weekend 2025: Multiple Events [Ticket Package Page]
2025-08-16 - 2025-08-17 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
If you are having trouble checking out, you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website].
Registered attendees will get access to event recordings for 30 days.
“HippoCamp Online Weekend” will include four separate webinar events, plus evening “chill and chats,” which will be informal Zoom meetings that allow registered attendees to connect and reflect. New this year are optional deep dives.
At a Glance: An Overview of the Weekend’s Events
A brief description and links to each individual event page for registering.

EVENT
DAY & TIME – all times are ET
DETAILS & REGISTRATION

HippoCamp Minis: Craft
Five 10-minute sessions on craft-based topics specific or relevant to creative nonfiction.
Saturday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
$25, register or see details here

A Night of Nonfiction: Debut CNF Author Readers & Discussion
Readings from five debut authors, plus a featured reader, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A.
Saturday, 6-8 p.m.
Donate what-you-can ($10 suggested), register or see details here

HippoCamp Minis: Publishing & Promotion
Five 10-minute sessions on getting your work out there.
Sunday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
$25, register or see details here

An Evening With the Editors: Lit Mag & Small Press Roundtable
A moderated discussion with five lit mag and small press editors, followed by an audience Q&A.
Sunday, 6-8 p.m.
$25, register or see details here

OPTIONAL ADD-ONS (Not part of weekend ticket package)
DAY & TIME – all times are ET
DETAILS & REGISTRATION

Deep Dives (purchase separately)
90-minute, interactive session in meeting format. Seating limited.
Saturday, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Sunday, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
$50, view details:
Sat. – Improv for Writers
Sun. option 1 – Where Grief Becomes Art
Sun. option 2 – Comics & Graphic Memoir

PURCHASE WEEKEND PACKAGE TICKETS
Purchase a ticket at our books website, here, if this form is giving you difficulty.
You may purchase a ticket for the entire weekend here. Note: First, select quantity using (+) sign and then add to cart.

HippoCamp Minis: CRAFT - 5 CNF Writing Topics in a Flash (2025)
2025-08-16 11:00 - 12:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved. Registration includes access to the recording for 30 days.
Some conferences call these fast-paced events lightning round talks. In honor of the short CNF subgenre, we call them flash sessions! These have always been a popular and fun part of our in-person HippoCamp conference and, this year, we’re once again bringing their magic online.
In our Saturday HippoCamp Minis sessions, you’ll hear from five speakers who will share bite-sized wisdom with practical takeaways on a topic they’re passionate about, all related to writing creative nonfiction.
This is ONE OF FOUR events we’re hosting the weekend of the 16-17th! Read about all of them here.
This webinar session will feature:
Don't Panic: How to Give Sensitive and Effective Written Feedback (Justin Ancheta)
Has this ever happened to you? You exchanged pieces in a writing group or workshop, only to discover that the feedback you’re giving isn’t landing very well with others in your group. Or maybe you’re finding the process of giving feedback really hard, and you don’t know what to say about a piece you’ve received?
From their experience as a volunteer essay reader with Hippocampus Magazine, Justin Ancheta shares an approach to giving feedback that makes the process more satisfying and ultimately more useful for everyone involved.
This session will:

share tips for how you can give more actionable feedback that other writers can use
covers how you can provide more feedback specificity for writers, to help others move forward
explore how you can give feedback that honours the lived experience of other writers

About the speaker: Justin Ancheta (He/They) lives in Treaty 13 territory and is a stuttering Filipino-Canadian passionate about the tarot, science, spirituality and queerness. Their hybrid CNF draws from their experience as a racialized bi+ ace person with a speech disorder. Their work has been published in AZE Journal, Queer Toronto, carte blanche, The Tahoma Literary Review, and The Ex-Puritan. He is working on a memoir-in-pieces as a collection of lyrical creative nonfiction, and an examination of the tarot from an asexual perspective. He is @rampancy on Instagram and @jancheta25 on Bluesky.

Not Just a Backdrop: Writing Place as a Lived Experience (Aurora Bonner)
Place is often thought of as scenery—there, but not integral. Yet place does more than set the scene: it evokes emotion, reveals identity, and anchors narrative in lived experience. When we treat place as a passive backdrop, we miss the chance to deepen meaning and bring our stories to life.
In this flash session, writer and teacher Aurora Bonner shares insights on writing place as personal, dynamic, and embodied. We’ll consider how our experiences shape the way we see and describe the landscapes we inhabit and explore how place can function as more than just setting—it can be emotional terrain.
This talk will:

unpack what it means to write place as a “lived experience” and why that matters in CNF
explore how identity, emotion, and perspective shape our perception of landscape
offer practical tools and revision tips for making place more specific, personal, and alive on the page

Attendees will leave with strategies to energize their work with richer, more intentional depictions of place—and prompts to help them return to familiar settings with fresh perspective.
About the speaker: Aurora Bonner is a place-based writer of creative nonfiction and fiction who explores the relationship between identity and environment. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Rivers, Ridges, and Valleys and DINE, as well as in HerStry, Impost, Under the Gum Tree, and other literary journals. She regularly reviews books for Colorado Review and Hippocampus Magazine. Aurora is a writing professor at McDaniel College in Maryland and leads workshops and retreats focused on nature, creativity, and personal narrative. She holds an MFA from Wilkes University.

First, Second, Third: Experimenting with POV in CNF (Jackie Domenus)
Oftentimes, CNF writers naturally gravitate toward the first person singular point of view in the past tense to tell our stories. But what literary magic can we unlock when we change the “I” to “you,” or when we refer to our child-selves in the third person, or when we speak directly to a loved one in our writing? How can we refresh our own craft and processes when we shift away from the “traditional”? In this craft mini-session, we will:

Consider the function and impact of different POVs in CNF when they are used with intentionality
Explore examples of experimental POV by acclaimed CNF writers
Consider ways to experiment with POV in our own writing

About the speaker: Jackie Domenus (they/she) is a queer, gender nonconforming writer from South Jersey. Their first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, was published with ELJ Editions in 2025. A former Sundress Academy for the Arts resident and Tin House Workshop graduate, Jackie’s work has appeared in HuffPost, The Normal School, Foglifter Journal, and elsewhere.

Um, Gimme a Sec Here: 6 Interview Tips for CNF Writers (Amy Fish)
Interviewing can be a challenge for memoirists and narrative nonfiction writers alike. Maybe you have too many questions and aren’t sure where to start. Maybe you are asking questions but aren’t getting the answers you are looking for. Join us for this session where we will discuss six interview techniques that you can put into action immediately, including:

How to develop a list of questions that will get you the answers you need
How to build rapport with interviewees you’ve never met
How to know when to stop the interview

About the speaker: Amy Fish is a born storyteller with a tendency to over research. Her latest book, “One in Six Million” went into a second printing after only 7 weeks. She is a staff book reviewer and interviewer here at Hippocampus Magazine.

Mind Your C’s: Contrast, Conflict and Change (Lillie Gardner)
Before you submit, don’t forget! Contrast, conflict and change are crucial for keeping our stories compelling for the reader. Contrast helps build memorable characters and surprising moments. Conflict includes clearer stakes and tension, which brings momentum to the reading experience. And change is what we’re reading for: what happens and why is everything different because of it? In this flash session, we’ll dive into these essential components of story and identify strategies to strengthen them. Participants will leave with a checklist of questions to use when preparing their work for submission.
About the speaker: Lillie Gardner is a writer of screenplays and prose in Minnesota. As a screenwriter, she’s been a Winner at Austin Film Festival and Catalyst Festival, featured in MovieMaker Magazine as a “Screenwriter to Watch,” and she’s currently a Fellow in the Hollywood Radio & TV Society Foundation Fellowship Program. Since minoring in creative writing at NYU alongside her music studies, Lillie’s been published in Quail Bell Magazine, the Delmarva Review, PANK Magazine and more. She teaches at The Loft Literary Center, writes screenplay and novel coverage, and serves as an essays reader for Hippocampus.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($25) or register for the entire weekend ($75); choose your option below. (If this form is giving you difficulty, you can alternatively purchase a ticket at our books website, here.)

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Deep Dive: Improvisation for Writers (Saturday, Option 1)
2025-08-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
New this year, we’re holding two intensive/generative 90-minute workshops each day; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration.
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved.

Do you want to take your writing to new places? Could you benefit from more freedom, confidence, courage, and joy in your writing practice? Would you like to loosen up and shake up your old patterns and habits so you can make new discoveries?
In this experiential, unique, fun, and instantly applicable workshop, you’ll learn principles and skills of improvisation that can help you supercharge your writing work. You’ll discover how thinking like an improviser can help you generate and develop ideas; create peace and acceptance with where you are in your process; expand into new territory; and reach writing goals more effectively and with greater ease.
Create new connections and develop your creative infrastructure in a safe, structured, zero-performance, introvert-friendly, no-experience-necessary environment. Elevate your craft as you break down inner blocks to your creativity. Put your new insights into practice during the workshop and see how the principles translate to the page in real time.
No matter your writing style or genre, whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, you’ll leave the session ready to use the concepts and skills you’ve learned to venture boldly forward in your writing.
You will learn how to:

Recognize and loosen unconscious patterns that shut down creativity, presence, and positive risk-taking.
Deal more effectively with your inner critic and reduce the perfectionism that keeps you stuck and sabotages your momentum.
Tap into beginner’s mind so that you can continue to stretch and expand, no matter where you are in your process or career.
Experience more joy, playfulness, and resourcefulness as you venture boldly into the unknown.

About the speaker:
Carrie Spaulding is a coach, speaker, facilitator, educator, artist, writer, nomad, improviser, and human. Specializing in creative and experiential approaches, Carrie facilitates real-time growth, empowering participants with improved skills and instantly applicable tools and strategies.
In Carrie’s innovative group programs The Lab and The Life Workshop and her private coaching as The Thirtysomething Coach®, Carrie helps people do what matters to them and create careers, relationships, and lives they love.
In 2018, Carrie began a nomadic adventure across the United States, deepening her ability to foster presence, adaptability, creativity, and connection in ever-changing environments.
Learn more about Carrie at carriespaulding.com.
Connect at @carriespaulding and https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriespaulding/.
Contact Carrie at carrie.spaulding@gmail.com.

TICKET INFO
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speaker and each other. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

A Night of Nonfiction 2025: Debut CNF Author Readings & Discussions
2025-08-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
If you are having trouble registering, you may now also purchase a ticket at our bookstore; there is a free option and a $10 donation option there. Registration includes access to the recording for 30 days.
This is the online version of our ever-popular in-person event, which was first held in the summer of 2015 at our inaugural HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction!
This event will feature readings from four debut CNF authors, followed by a special guest reading and then a panel discussion, led by someone from the Hippocampus Magazine interviews team. Learn more about (or purchase!) their books at our Bookshop affiliate site.
This is ONE OF FOUR main events we’re hosting the weekend of the 16-17th! Read about all of them here.

The 2025 Night of Nonfiction will feature:
Annamaria Formichella (Contest winner + opening reader)
Annamaria Formichella is the winner of our 2025 We Love Short Shorts Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction. Originally from New England, Annamariay teaches in the English department at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Her creative work has been published in several collections and magazines, including Gyroscope Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Litbreak Magazine, and Anacapa Review. Her dreams include returning to the ocean and writing stories that hit the reader with a quiet crash.

Tia Levings (A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy)
Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.

Theresa Okokon (Who I Always Was)
Theresa Okokon is an award-winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. A Wisconsinite living in New England, she is the co-host of Stories From The Stage who teaches storytelling and writing, coaches other tellers, hosts storytelling events, collaborates with nonprofits on narrative-driven special projects and events. An alum of both the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, Theresa’s memoir of essays about memory, family stories, and the death of her father — Who I Always Was — was published by Atria Books at Simon & Schuster in 2025.

Hyeseung Song (Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl)
Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American painter and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl. Docile has been called a “savagely beautiful memoir” by David Henry Hwang, a “revelation” by Chloé Cooper Jones and was named a “Best Book” by Apple and “Most Anticipated” by Electric Literature, BookRiot and more. Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy at Princeton and Harvard Universities, and painting at the Grand Central Atelier in New York City. Song lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York, and is at work on her first novel.

Casey Mulligan Walsh (The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared)
Casey Mulligan Walsh writes about living with grief beside joy, embracing uncertainty, and the nature of true belonging. Her memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, was published by Motina Books in February 2025. She has written for The New York Times, Next Avenue, Modern Loss, Hippocampus Magazine, Split Lip, and numerous other literary journals and is a founding editor of In a Flash literary magazine. Her essay, “Still,” was nominated for Best of the Net. Casey lives in Upstate New York with her husband, Kevin, a chatty orange tabby, and too many books to count.

Brendan O'Meara, special guest reader (The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine)
Brendan O’Meara is the host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast and the author of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine. Subscribe to Pitch Club, where writers audio annotate their pitches that led to publication and Rage Against the Algorithm, Brendan’s monthly, up-to-11 newsletter. You can follow him @creativenonfictionpodcast on Instagram and @brendanomeara.bsky.social on Bluesky. Learn more at brendanomeara.com.

Leslie Lindsay, Moderator
Leslie has interviewed hundreds of authors from poets to memoirists. Her rich and insightful interviews have been featured in The Millions, CRAFT Literary, The Rumpus, LitHib, Hippocampus Magazine, The Florida Review, The Cincinnati Review, among others. Her interdisciplinary work, including photography, focuses on ancestry, architecture, art, nature, science, and motherhood, and been featured in DIAGRAM, The Smart Set, and Brushfire Review. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories. Leslie resides in Greater Chicago.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may reserve a ticket for just this event by making a donation of any size (including a free ticket) OR you may purchase a package for the entire weekend ($75); choose your option below. Note: First, select quantity using (+) sign and then add to cart.

Tickets

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HippoCamp Minis: Publishing & Promotion - 5 CNF Topics in a Flash (2025)
2025-08-17 11:00 - 12:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved. Registered attendees will get access to event recordings for 30 days.
Some conferences call these fast-paced events lightning round talks. In honor of the short CNF subgenre, we call them flash sessions! These have always been a popular and fun part of our in-person HippoCamp conference and, this year, we’re once again bringing their magic online.
In our Sunday HippoCamp Minis sessions, you’ll hear from five speakers (including Hippocampus Magazine editors) who will share bite-sized wisdom with practical takeaways on a topic they’re passionate about, all related to promoting and publishing creative nonfiction.
This is ONE OF FOUR events we’re hosting the weekend of the 16-17th! Read about all of them here.
This webinar session will feature:
Inbox Hero: How to Write a Newsletter People Love (Steph Auteri)
In a world in which publications fold on the regular and social media platforms come and go (RIP Twitter), an email newsletter remains one of the best ways to reach readers. But do you REALLY need to bother with all that? And if you do, well… what should it even BE? What does one even put into a newsletter? How does one build a newsletter that serves their writing life on both a personal and a professional level?
In this flash session, you’ll learn:

why producing a newsletter is totally worth your time
what to write about in your newsletter
best practices for building a readership
…and whatever the heck else we can manage to fit into 10 minutes

About the speaker: Steph Auteri, our essays editor, has written for everyone from the Atlantic, Pacific Standard, and Rewire News Group to Poets & Writers, Creative Nonfiction, and Cutleaf Journal. But one of her favorite things to write is her email newsletter, Thunder Thighs, which has been going out to subscribers for god knows how long. She also launched a side newsletter, Guerrilla Sex Ed, and has written email campaigns for a number of clients. Learn more at stephauteri.com.

Getting the Word Out: How to Pitch Your Book to Local Journalists (Molly Bilinski)
Getting the word out about a new book can be daunting, but leveraging local news outlets can help. There are still many community-focused journalists hungry for stories, and sending the right pitch at the right time can benefit both the author and the journalist.
In this flash session, focused on pitching books to journalists, Hippocampus Magazine Articles Editor Molly Bilinski shares strategies and tips for authors seeking local news coverage.
During this session, participants will learn how to:

Identify the local news writers they can pitch their books to
Capture the attention of local journalists through timing and positioning
Draft a pitch email to local journalists

Attendees will leave the session with a better understanding of the local media landscape, as well as how to pitch their book to local journalists for coverage.
About the speaker: Molly Bilinski is an award-winning journalist and storyteller based in Monroe County, Pa. The environment and science reporter for LehighValleyNews.com, her bylines have also appeared in the Reading Eagle, The Press of Atlantic City and The Morning Call. She holds a masters of fine arts in creative nonfiction from Wilkes University’s Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. A member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and Kutztown University’s English Advisory Board, she also serves as Hippocampus Magazine’s articles editor.

Be a Literary Citizen: How to Create Community and Why it Matters (Jamie Beth Cohen)
Some writers are introverts, some are not. Introverts and extroverts alike may crave the community and support of other writers, but don’t always know how to find their people.
This session will highlight

the benefits of being part of a writing community
the different kinds of writing communities
how to find or create a writing community

About the speaker: Jamie Beth Cohen writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Her words have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Hippocampus Magazine, and many other outlets. Wasted Pretty, her debut novel, was published in 2019 and its sequel, Liminal Summer came out in 2021. Jamie enjoys coaching new writers and has been mentoring an award-winning incarcerated journalist for the past five years. In 2015, Jamie co-founded Write Now Lancaster, a monthly writing meet-up. She’s a proud extroverted writer who believes much of what she has accomplished with words is thanks to her community.

Be Your Book's Matchmaker: Writing the Proposal (Vicki Mayk)
Book proposals are a business plan for your book and a marketing tool to sell your manuscript to agents and publishers. A good proposal helps to attract the best agent, publisher, and readers. In this session writers will learn:

The basic components of a book proposal.
Ways that the content can help you find the right agent and/or publisher.
How it provides insights about readers and identifies markets.
Ways the proposal gives writers a head start on marketing and planning a book launch.

About the speaker: Vicki Mayk is a writer, editor, and teacher whose work has appeared in the Brevity Blog, Cleaver, Hippocampus, Literary Mama, The Manifest-Station, Bending Genres, the anthology Air and others. Her narrative nonfiction book, Growing Up on the Gridiron: Football, Friendship and the Tragic Life of Owen Thomas, was published by Beacon Press. Catch up with her at vickimayk.com.

Search Matters: SEO & Discovery Tips for CNF Writers (Donna Talarico)
Most people turn to search engines or a specific website’s search feature to find what they’re looking for — including books. Getting found — showing up in a Google or other search engine results/listings — is crucial in a day of information overload, short attention spans, evolving algorithms, and AI advancements.
In this flash session, Donna Talarico shares tips from her day job in content strategy about how SEO can help you build and sustain your platform. This session will:

give a primer on search engine optimization (SEO) and debunk some myths
cover how to research what users (aka potential readers) are actually searching for (hint: it’s probably not your name)
share how to use that data to inform content creation choices across mediums and platforms
explore how AI and voice assistants are affecting the ways people find things on the internet
look ahead to anticipated challenges and trends for SEO

About the speaker: Donna Talarico is founder/publisher of Hippocampus Magazine. By day, she’s a content strategist in higher education and B2B.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($25) or register for the entire weekend ($75); choose your option below. (If this form is giving you difficulty, you can alternatively purchase a ticket at our books website, here.)

Tickets

The numbers below include tickets for this event already in your cart. Clicking "Get Tickets" will allow you to edit any existing attendee information as well as change ticket quantities.

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Deep Dive: Can’t Draw? Let’s Make Comics! Exploring Graphic & Hybrid Memoir (Sunday, Option 1)
2025-08-17 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
New this year, we’re holding two intensive/generative 90-minute workshops each day; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration.
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved.

Are you a writer who needs to get unstuck?
Are you comics-curious?
Love graphic memoirs but no idea how to start?
In this workshop, no drawing skills are needed – come as you are. We’ll dive into how to start making comics, gently explore areas of resistance, and build our capacity for vulnerability. Together, we’ll discuss what graphic memoir is and practice making some work together. You’ll leave with:

a how-to toolbox about the language and construction of comics
prompts to help you tenderly approach moments of resistance in your creative practice
strategies for starting a regular comics practice

Come join me! Let’s draw together!
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with instructor and each other. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

About the speaker: Cara Gormally (they/them) is a cartoonist, researcher, and professor. Cara’s narrative nonfiction comics remix autobiographical stories with research to make science relatable. Their comics have appeared in the Washington Post, Mutha Magazine, and other places. Their debut graphic memoir, Everything is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder, is a story about an unexpected healing journey to come home to themself, was published in April from Street Noise Books. A D.C. metro area resident, Cara is an avid morning person, loves nerdy research deep dives, and has more questions than answers.

TICKET INFO

Deep Dive: Writing from the Heart: Where Grief Becomes Art (Sunday, Option 2)
2025-08-17 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
New this year, we’re holding two intensive/generative 90-minute workshops each day; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration.
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved.

Grief, though universal, makes us uncomfortable, especially when complicated by circumstances associated with shame or stigma. During this ninety-minute workshop, memoirists Melanie Brooks and Eileen Vorbach Collins, will discuss how giving words to hard stories — one about suicide loss, the other about HIV/AIDS — allowed them to remap their losses, process their experiences, and explore life in the new normal after loss.
Moderated by Lisa Cooper Ellison, a trauma-informed writing coach, the session will open with short readings by the authors. Together, they’ll discuss the personal and cultural challenges of telling grief stories, how they used writing to process their experiences, and the writing lessons they learned along the way. The workshop will include a short, guided writing exercise, time for participants to share, and a Q&A session.
About the speakers:
Melanie Brooks
Melanie Brooks is the author of A Hard Silence and Writing Hard Stories. She teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA programs at Bay Path University and Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine and a certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. Her essays and interviews have been published in The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee, The Washington Post, Ms., Psychology Today, The Globe and Mail, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire.

Eileen Vorbach Collins
Eileen Vorbach Collins writes true stories she wishes were fiction and fairy tales she wishes were true. Her essays have received the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction, The Gabriele Rico Challenge Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her essay collection, Love in the Archives, a Patchwork of True Stories About Suicide Loss, published in 2023, was a Foreword Indies Finalist and received a Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence and the Sarton Women’s Book Award for memoir.

Lisa Cooper Ellison
Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works at the intersection of storytelling and healing, blending personal experience with suicide loss and complex PTSD with clinical training to help writers transform difficult experiences into powerful art. Her essays and stories have appeared on Risk! and in The New York Times, HuffPost, Hippocampus Magazine, Kenyon Review Online, and other notable outlets.

This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speakers and each other. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

TICKET INFO

An Evening With the Editors 2025: A Lit Mag & Small Press Roundtable
2025-08-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
**If you are having trouble checking out** you may now also purchase a registration at our Books website — this is a temporary workaround until our magazine website issue is resolved. Registered attendees will get access to event recordings for 30 days.
Join us for an evening of all things CNF publishing. Hippocampus Magazine associate editor Rae Pagliarulo will moderate a discussion with five literary magazine/small press editors and other publishing professionals.

get a behind-the-scenes look at the submissions process
find out what they’re looking for their respective publications
learn a bit about the writer-editor relationship
….and so much more

There will be plenty of time for audience questions at the end.
This is ONE OF FOUR main events we’re hosting the weekend of the 16-17th! Read about all of them here.
This webinar session will feature:
Athena Dixon (Split/Lip Press and Fourth Genre)
Athena Dixon is an essayist and editor originally from Northeast Ohio. She is the author of the books The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files. She serves as the nonfiction/hybrid editor for Split/Lip Press and as a consulting editor for Fourth Genre magazine.

Wendy Fontaine (Hippocampus Magazine)
Wendy Fontaine’s work has appeared in American Scholar, Jet Fuel Review, Oyster River Pages, Sweet Lit, Sunlight Press and elsewhere. She has received nonfiction prizes from Identity Theory, Hunger Mountain and Tiferet Journal, along with nominations to the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies. She lives in southern California with her husband and her daughter (who is now in college) and serves as flash editor at Hippocampus Magazine. Find her online at www.wendyfontaine.com or on Bluesky @wendyfontaine.

Steph Liberatore (In Short)
Steph Liberatore (she/her) is a writer and professor at George Mason University and the founding editor of In Short: A Journal of Flash Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Short Reads, River Teeth, Inside Higher Ed, and elsewhere and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. When Steph isn’t writing or editing or chasing after her two young kids, she’s working on her first book, an investigative memoir. Find her online at www.stephliberatore.com.

Tom McAllister (Barrelhouse)
Tom McAllister is the author of four books, including the novel How to Be Safe and the new essay collection It All Felt Impossible. His short work has been published in many places, including The New York Times, The Sun, Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, and more. He is the nonfiction editor at Barrelhouse and teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden.

Alexis Paige (Vine Leaves Press)
Alexis Paige is the author of Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life; and Not a Place on Any Map — two memoirs by Vine Leaves Press, where she is the nonfiction editor. Her work appears in various journals, including Longform, Hippocampus, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, and Brevity, where Paige was an assistant editor. Winner of the New Millenium Writings Nonfiction Prize and twice a Best American Essays “Notable,” she has also received four Pushcart Prize nominations. Paige teaches in the Wilkes University Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing and is an associate Ppofessor of literature & writing at Vermont State University.

Rae Pagliarulo, moderator (Hippocampus Magazine)
Rae Pagliarulo, our associate editor, works as a nonprofit fundraising consultant in her lifelong home of Philadelphia. Her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in Full Grown People, bedfellows, Hippocampus, The Manifest-Station, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, the Brevity Blog, and numerous others. Her work is anthologized in The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition. She is the 2014 recipient of the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize, a 2019 Best of the Net nominee, and a graduate of Rosemont College’s MFA program.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($25) or register for the entire weekend ($75); choose your option below. (If this form is giving you difficulty, you can alternatively purchase a ticket at our books website, here.)

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HOW-TO TUESDAY: Thinking About Platform (for Writers): Leveraging Themes & Strengths to Build an Authentic Audience
2025-12-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Building a platform as a writer shouldn’t mean performing a version of yourself that feels foreign. Sustainable and impactful platforms grow organically from the themes that already live at the heart of your work — the questions, obsessions, and processes that drive your writing in the first place.
In this session, we’ll explore how to identify the recurring threads in your writing and use them as the foundation for authentic platform building. Rather than forcing yourself into uncomfortable marketing roles, you’ll learn to align your efforts with your natural strengths and interests, creating a body of work that builds recognition around your unique voice.
This session will ask each writer to consider the following questions:

What are the recurring themes and obsessions that run through your existing work?
How can you leverage your personality and natural strengths to support your platform’s growth?
How do you create coherence across your work without repetition or stagnation?
How can small, consistent efforts around your themes build toward larger publishing opportunities?
What does sustainable platform building look like for introverts vs. extroverts?

Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of their own thematic through-lines, a personalized strategy for platform development that feels authentic rather than performative, and practical tools for building a body of work that serves as a foundation for bigger projects.
About the series: How-To Tuesdays are monthly talks on the craft of creative nonfiction, publishing, marketing and the writing life led by Hippocampus Magazine editors & contributors. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
About the Speaker

Elizabeth Austin’s writing has appeared in Time, Harper’s Bazaar, McSweeney’s, Narratively and elsewhere. She is currently working on a memoir about being a bad cancer mom. She lives outside of Philly with her two children and their many pets. Find her at writingelizabeth.com and on Instagram: @writingelizabeth.

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HOW-TO TUESDAY: Minding Your C's -- Contrast, Conflict and Change with Lillie Gardner
2026-01-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
In creative nonfiction, truth is paramount — but crafting a good story is still essential.
Enter the 3 C’s: contrast, conflict and change are crucial for keeping our stories compelling for the reader.

Contrast leads to distinct characters and memorable moments.
Conflict comes with clear stakes and tension, which bring momentum to the reading experience.
Change is what we’re reading for: what happens, how does it escalate, and why is everything different because of it?

In this How-to session, we’ll dive into these essential components of story and identify strategies to strengthen them in our own writing. Participants will leave with a checklist of questions to use when preparing their work for submission.
About the series: How-To Tuesdays are monthly talks on the craft of creative nonfiction, publishing, marketing and the writing life led by Hippocampus Magazine editors & contributors. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
About the Speaker

Lillie Gardner is an award-winning writer from Minnesota who tells stories about women defying expectations. Most recently, she’s written episodes for Wondery’s narrative podcast ‘Whose Amazing Life?’ As a screenwriter, Lillie has been Winner at Austin Film Festival of the Women & Animation Fellowship Award, featured as a “Screenwriter to Watch” in MovieMaker Magazine, and selected to be a fellow in the Fred Rogers Productions Writers’ Neighborhood Program.
Lillie studied creative writing at New York University, and her writing has been published in Quail Bell Magazine, The Delmarva Review, PANK Magazine and more. In addition to serving on the essays reading panel for Hippocampus Magazine, Lillie offers notes and coaching services to help writers persist in making their most impactful work. Learn more at lilliegardner.com or follow @lilliegardner on Instagram

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AWP Conference and Bookfair 2026
2026-03-04 - 2026-03-07
Hippocampus Magazine & Books will have a presence at the 2026 AWP Conference & Bookfair.
Stop by Booth 315 to meet members of our volunteer team, browse our books, grab a pen, share your “why I write CNF” response, and just chat with us about what you’re up to!
Get full details about the conference itself at the AWP website.
Where You Can Find Members of the Hippo Team

Flashes of Truth: A Celebration & Examination of the Flash Essay Form – Friday 9-10 (feat. Rae Pagliarulo)
No Pants? No Problem: “Planners” Share Their Outline Process – Friday 9-10:15 (feat. reviewer Elizabeth Austin)
Our own off-site event and book launch! – Saturday 7-8:45

Hippocampus Magazine Anthology Launch & 15th Anniversary Party: Selected Memories Vol. 2
2026-03-07 19:00 - 21:00 | The Game Lounge (MAP Technologies), 322 W. Baltimore St., Baltimore, MD, 21201, United States
[Note: If using Google Maps, you may also find it under MAP Technologies, as The Game Lounge is a space within their building. The address 322 W. Baltimore.
Please double check the address if you’re using GPS to walk or drive. There happens to be a barcade in the Federal Hill area with a similar name that may show up if you just search by name.]
Join us for the launch party of Selected Memories Vol. 2, an anthology, celebrating 15 years of creative nonfiction at Hippocampus Magazine. Readings from contributors, light refreshments, camaraderie, and books!
You can also pre-order the book here!
Nitty Gritty Details
Doors open at 7 p.m.; program begins by 7:30 p.m.
Please RSVP using the form to help us gauge interest, even if you aren’t 100% sure you can make it.

This event is free, but donations are appreciated.
We have a 120 capacity limit for this space.
RSVPs will help us track this, as well as plan for food.
This is an event space (similar to a gallery); we suggest eating dinner before arriving.
We will have some snacks and assortment of beverages, such as bottled water, seltzer, beer, and wine.

Confirmed Line-Up
The following Selected Memories contributors will read from their work:

Holly Abbe
Sayuri Ayers
Margaret Luongo
Nicole Piasecki
Ronit Plank
SJ Sindu
Tori Walters

More to possibly be added.

The Write Stuff Conference 2026
2026-03-12 - 2026-03-14
Hippocampus Magazine and Books is thrilled to return to the annual The Write Stuff conference, hosted by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. This year, associate editor Rae Pagliarulo is leading two CNF-focused events.
Get full details at their event website.

Gotham Writers Nonfiction Conference
2026-03-21 - 2026-03-22
Gotham Writers hosts a variety of workshops and conferences each year, both in New York City and virtually.
Among them is the Gotham Writers Nonfiction Conference, slated for March 21-22, 2025. This online, two-day event will feature a variety of TBA sessions and panels. Donna Talarico, our founder and publisher, will be part of a nonfiction book marketing panel.
Get all the details at the Gotham Writers website.

Stories on Sunday: Bloom: Letters on Girlhood by Nicole Breit & Claire Sicherman
2026-04-26 19:00 - 20:15 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Note: If you are having any issues with checking out or don’t get a confirmation email, please email info@hippocampusmagazine.com. We had a report that there was an issue with PayPal yesterday; things appear clear on our end, but we wanted to put a note here just in case.
Enjoy a reading, then hear the story behind the stories during Stories on Sunday with Nicole Breit and Claire Sicherman, co-authors of Bloom: Letters on Girlhood — a timely memoir exploring how societal expectations shape identity, and how we can continue, at any age, to release the past. This event listing will be updated soon with full details.
All Stories on Sundays guest readers have a connection to Hippocampus Magazine; both authors are past contributors to the magazine. We were so excited to hear about this collaboration!
About the Book, from the jacket copy: A raw, searching and intimate memoir, Bloom: Letters on Girlhood is a conversation between two acclaimed writers about silence and shame and what it means to come of age as young women.
Over the course of two and a half years, authors Claire Sicherman (Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation) and Nicole Breit, an award-winning poet and essayist, exchanged letters chronicling their coming-of-age in the suburbs of late 1980s Vancouver.
Bloom: Letters on Girlhood is a candid memoir-in-letters in which Claire and Nicole explore the awkwardness and confusion of adolescence, delving into everything from periods, first bras and body hair to desire, sexuality and consent. As they reflect on their silent struggles as girls, women and mothers from the perspective of mid-life, the true impact of patriarchy and misogyny on their lives becomes increasingly apparent.
With unflinching honesty and insight, Bloom is a timely memoir exploring how societal expectations shape identity, and how we can continue, at any age, to release the past. Written by two feminist authors from underrepresented communities (Claire is a Jewish woman and the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors; Nicole is a queer, neurodivergent writer), this memoir-in-letters will resonate with anyone who has ever asked themselves: Who was I taught to be? And who do I want to become?
About the Series: Stories on Sundays are bi-monthly readings from a recent/forthcoming work of creative nonfiction followed by an author interview + audience Q&A. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.

About the Authors/Speakers:
Nicole Breit’s love affair with the arts began when she received special recognition for her Kindergarten crayon drawing of an orange chicken with both male and female human genitalia. Her girlhood pastimes included dressing Barbie in her pink satin night set with matching heels, applying make-up from her cousin’s Mary Kaye collection and lingering over the Sears Christmas Wish Book lingerie section. Many years passed before Nicole identified as femme and queer (or felt comfortable calling herself a writer and artist). She is based on Canada’s Sunshine Coast and teaches the art of storying – shaping our potent memories into transformative creative nonfiction.
Claire Sicherman grew up in a Vancouver suburb and is still recovering from her mom shaping her curls into a full mullet. Memorable coming-of-age moments include stumbling onto a nude beach at age 12, her first naked man sighting (not her last), and her grandmother proudly lifting her shirt in front of the entire family to admire Claire’s new training bra. A bookworm raised on Judy Blume and Sweet Valley High, Claire wrote bad poetry, then avoided the page until writing found her again. She now supports brave humans as a writing coach, helping them tell the stories they carry.

STORIES ON SUNDAY: No Contact: Writers on Estrangement with Jenny Bartoy, Danielle Jernigan and Nicole Graev Lipson
2026-06-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Enjoy readings and hear the story behind the stories during this next Stories on Sunday. Registration details to follow, after event + book info.
This edition of Stories on Sunday features an anthology: No Contact: Writers on Estrangement. We’ll be joined by editor Jenny Bartoy and two contributors: Danielle Jernigan and Nicole Graev Lipson. Our associate editor Rae Pagliarulo will lead the discussion.
All Stories on Sundays guest readers have a connection to Hippocampus Magazine; Jenny is one of our regular interviewers and Nicole Graev Lipson is a past contributor (and contest finalist!).
About the Series: Stories on Sundays are bi-monthly(ish) readings from a recent/forthcoming work of creative nonfiction followed by an author interview + audience Q&A. This is event is free or by donation; Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.

ABOUT THE BOOK (from BookShop): Estrangement presents an essential existential question: who are we without our family? What kind of person cuts the proverbial umbilical cord and why? And who do we become, once untethered from our kin?
Families fall apart and individuals cut ties for myriad reasons — abuse, politics, mental illness, and addiction, among others — and reunification often is not in the cards. Through thirty-two intimate, first-person accounts, No Contact: Writers on Estrangement counters the prevalent trope of reconciliation as a happy ending, focusing instead on the complex grief, healing, and authenticity found in the rupture from family.
This collection features work by Hannah Bae, Eben E. B. Bein, Soni Brown, Lorne Daniel, Lindsey Danis, Michelle Dowd, Nick Flynn, Stephanie Foo, Gabriela Denise Frank, Susan Ito, Danielle Jernigan, noam keim, Erika Krouse, Monique Laban, Cassandra Lewis, Kate Lewis, Nicole Graev Lipson, Tiffany Aldrich MacBain, Jamal Mahjoub, Onita Morgan-Edwards, Emi Nietfeld, Geneva Phillips, Deesha Philyaw, Anna Qu, Domenica Ruta, Oslyn Serratos, Alyson Shelton, Cheryl Strayed, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Raksha Vasudevan, Jane Wong, and Kristen Millares Young.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS:
Jenny BartoyDanielle Jernigan headshotNicoleGraevLipson–AuthorPhoto
Jenny Bartoy is a French American writer, developmental editor, and critic. She’s the editor of No Contact: Writers on Estrangement (Catapult, 2026). Her work appears in several anthologies and in publications such as Hippocampus Magazine, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Under the Gum Tree, Room, Chicago Review of Books, The Boston Globe, and The Seattle Times among others. She holds a master’s degree in sociocultural anthropology from Columbia University and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Danielle Jernigan is an essayist, editor, and book coach with a background in birth work, maternal mental health, and publishing. Her Tiny Victory microessay appeared in the New York Times, and she has been quoted in the Washington Post. Her work explores how childhood abuse and birth-related trauma shape matrescence and our capacity to love. Her current project is a literary magazine focused on the same themes. Danielle lives in the Midwest with her youngest child.
Nicole Graev Lipson is the USA Today bestselling author of the memoir in essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters. Her writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, River Teeth, Hippocampus Magazine, LA Review of Books, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays, and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Lipson received her MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and lives outside of Boston with her family.

How-To Tuesday: Writing Rage in Enraging Times with Amy Monticello
2026-07-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
As writers, we’re often told that rage can turn a reader off. And yet we live in an angry time. This session focuses on writing rage that enhances the insights of creative nonfiction rather than dilutes them.
Amy’s talk treats rage as a complex rather than simple emotion—one that has endless iterations. She will analyze works where rage enters the narrative voice, enhancing its urgency, transgression, reclamation, and humor.
Brief takeaways:

Rage has a bad rap but this is often weaponized against writers (largely women and BIPOC writers)
Rage is like any emotion — it can be used bluntly or with subtlety
Rage can be enormously satisfying and/or freeing to write
Rage provides a heat source that powers other emotions and insights

Attendees will leave this talk armed with rage as a craft tool of precision and candor.
About the series: How-To Tuesdays are monthly talks on the craft of creative nonfiction, publishing, marketing and the writing life led by Hippocampus Magazine editors & contributors. Your registration helps fund our contributor payments and other costs associated with running our journal.
About the Speaker
Amy Monticello is the author of Close Quarters, a chapbook memoir about unconventional divorce (Sweet Publications), and the essay collection How to Euthanize a Horse, which won the 2016 Arcadia Press Chapbook Prize in Nonfiction.
She is also co-author, along with husband Jason Tucker, of The Routledge Introduction to American Life Writing (2023). Her work has been published in the North American Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, under the gum tree, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Hotel Amerika, CALYX, The Rumpus, and Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She teaches at Suffolk University in Boston.

HippoCamp Online Weekend 2026: Multiple Events [Ticket Package Page]
2026-08-15 - 2026-08-16 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Registered attendees will get access to event recordings for 30 days, with the exception of Deep Dives.
HippoCamp Online Weekend, the virtual version of our conference founded in 2015, will include four separate webinar events, plus evening “chill and chats,” which will be informal Zoom meetings that allow registered attendees to connect and reflect. As an optional add-on, there will be two Deep Dive sessions to choose from each day.
At a Glance: An Overview of the Weekend’s Events
You may register for events separately or purchase a weekend package on this page. A brief description and links to each individual event page are listed in this table.

EVENT
DAY & TIME
all times are ET
DETAILS & REGISTRATION

HippoCamp Minis: Craft
Five 10-minute sessions on craft-based topics specific or relevant to creative nonfiction.
Saturday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
$30, register or see details here

A Night of Nonfiction: Debut CNF Author Readers & Discussion
Readings from debut authors, plus a featured reader, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A.
Saturday, 6-8 p.m.
Free/Donate what-you-can ($10 suggested), register or see details here

HippoCamp Minis: Publishing, Promotion & the Writing Life
Five 10-minute sessions on getting your work out there.
Sunday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
$30, register or see details here

An Evening with the Book Champions: A Publishing & Publicity Roundtable
A moderated discussion with publicists and agents, followed by an audience Q&A.
Sunday, 6-8 p.m.
$30, register or see details here

OPTIONAL ADD-ONS
(Not part of weekend ticket package)
DAY & TIME – all times are ET
DETAILS & REGISTRATION

Deep Dives (purchase separately)
90-minute, interactive session in meeting format. Seating limited. These are live only, not recorded.
Saturday & Sunday
2 to 3:30 p.m.
($50 each; not part of weekend package; sharing here as FYI)
Saturday, Option 1
Scenes that Work: Choosing What Stays in Your Memoir & What Goes w/ Ronit Plank
Saturday, Option 2
Postmarked: Modern Takes on the Ancient Art of Letters w/ Brenda Miller
Sunday, Option 1
Making a Newsletter Work for You w/ Allison K Williams
Sunday, Option 2
Mining Your Obsessions: Writing (Nearly) Endless Essays On One Subject w/ Elizabeth Austin

PURCHASE WEEKEND PACKAGE TICKETS
You may purchase a ticket for the entire weekend on this page. You will get individual Zoom invites by for EACH webinar closer to the event. Note: First, select quantity using (+) sign and then add to cart.
If you prefer to only attend one or two events, you may purchase tickets a la carte at the individual page for each event, linked above or see the full list at our main calendar page.

HippoCamp Minis: CRAFT - 5 CNF Writing Topics in a Flash (2026)
2026-08-15 11:00 - 12:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Registration includes access to the recording for 30 days.
Some conferences call these fast-paced events lightning round talks. In honor of the short CNF subgenre, we call them flash sessions! These have always been a popular and fun part of our in-person HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers and, this year, we’re once again bringing their magic online.
In our Saturday HippoCamp Minis sessions, you’ll hear from five speakers who will share bite-sized wisdom with practical takeaways on a topic they’re passionate about, all related to writing creative nonfiction.
This is ONE OF FOUR events we’re hosting the weekend of the 15-16th! Read about all of them here.

About the Sessions & Speakers
This webinar will feature the following five flash sessions:
Did You Get My (sub)Text? (Wendy Fontaine)
When we write creative nonfiction, there’s the story we want to tell and then there’s the story beneath the story. That’s where subtext comes in. Subtext is the underlying meaning that gives our writing depth and texture, the unspoken clues and suggestions that allow our readers to connect the dots. In this flash session, you will learn to:

create layers using word choice, detail, and blank space
strengthen themes, connotation, and nuance
find balance between clarity and subtlety

About the Speaker: Wendy Fontaine is the flash editor at Hippocampus Magazine. Her work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pithead Chapel, Hippocampus Magazine, Longridge Review, Creative Nonfiction’s Sunday Reads, Sweet Lit and Yemassee. She has received nonfiction prizes from Identity Theory, Hunger Mountain and Tiferet Journal, as well as nominations to the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies. A native New Englander, she currently resides in southern California with her daughter and husband.

Measure Twice, Cut Once: How to Edit Your Pieces Before Submission (Marissa Gallerani)
Editors are said to have a keen eye, but what happens when you want to use their skills before you submit your work?
In this talk focused on editing for writers, Hippocampus contributor Marissa Gallerani will share her tips and tricks to polishing your pieces before submission. The session will:

review the importance of editing and explore how editing can improve a piece
provide tangible tips that writers can implement with their own work
define different editing strategies for fiction and non-fiction pieces alike
share how to be your own best editor when no one else is around

Attendees will leave feeling more confident about their own editing skills, and with practical tips to use for their short and longform writing.
About the Speaker: Marissa Gallerani is a queer and disabled writer, living and working in Providence, RI. She holds a MFA from the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University, and has had featured publications in Hippocampus, Write or Die, and The Harvard Review Online, among others. She has taught at Salve Regina University, the New England Institute of Technology, Write or Die, and has courses forthcoming this year with Elegant Literature.
Marissa writes The Chaotic Reader newsletter on Substack, where she details the life of a working writer by interviewing authors, and analyzes literature through the lens of political science. A book club dropout who loves fantasy the most, she will read anything and knows that reading books and buying books are two separate hobbies.

Writers with ADHD: Throw Away the Rulebook (B.K. Jackson)
Writing poses numerous challenges for people with ADHD, and much of the problem stems from trying to follow advice that’s intended for neurotypical people. In this flash session you’ll learn to:

understand how conventional wisdom and writing advice can hinder rather than help neurodivergent writers
work with your ADHD brain instead of against it
recognize the roadblocks ADHD builds and overcome or work around them
harness those aspects of ADHD that boost creativity

About the Speaker: B.K. (Kate) Jackson is an author; a developmental editor and certified book coach; and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, SurvivorLit, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA.
Kate is the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship, and founder and editor of Severance (severancemag.com), a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She’s revising a memoir about maternal abandonment and family secrets. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. Find her at www.bkjacksonwriter.com and creativelyadhd.substack.com.

Props as Prompts: How to Pull Story from Found Objects, Artifacts, & Photos (Leslie Lindsay)
When writers hit the wall, or otherwise burn out, they may stare at the blinking cursor, give up, and walk away. What if you took yourself on a (focused) field trip, instead? This session is aimed at delving into the physical archives, items, and places of your story. Hippocampus Magazine interviewer Leslie Lindsay shares tips from her research in writing a blended memoir about her Kentucky-born great-grandmother, Cora Bell. These tips, insights, and ‘prompts using props,’ will help you get deeper into your character, your story, and allow your intuition to surface. This session will:

cover what to research in person using found objects, maps, photographs. (hint: you’ll get into story/character if you leave your desk and go out into the world)
offer tips on allowing the subconscious to ‘do its thing’
explore how certain ‘found objects’ can act as a touchpoint on your writing desk, and/or show up as a motif in your work

Attendees will leave with ideas to revise existing (or create new!) material or deepen current work, including historical fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poetry.
About the speaker: Leslie A. Lindsay is the author of Speaking of Apraxia: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech. She has contributed to the anthology, Becoming Real: Women Reclaim the Power of the Imagined Through Speculative Nonfiction. Leslie’s essays, reviews, poetry, photography, and interviews have appeared in The Millions, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, LitHub, and On the Seawall, among others. She holds a BSN from the University of Missouri-Columbia, is a former Mayo Clinic child/adolescent psychiatric RN,and an alumna of Kenyon Writer’s Workshop. Her work has been supported by Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center and nominated for Best American Short Fiction.

Narrative Medicine: Why the Chart Is Never the Whole Story (Renée K. Nicholson)
What if the skills that make you a better writer could also make medicine more compassionate? Narrative medicine trains healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers, educators, and others to read and respond to the stories that surround illness and healing, often using the very tools you already bring to creative nonfiction. In this session, Renée K. Nicholson explores where narrative medicine and creative nonfiction meet, and why that intersection matters. This session will:

introduce narrative medicine and examine how close reading and reflective writing function as tools for witness and understanding
explore how creative nonfiction writers are uniquely positioned to contribute to this growing field
consider how narrative medicine’s core questions can deepen and expand your own work on the page

About the Speaker: Renée K. Nicholson is a writer working across poetry, essays, fiction, and criticism. She holds a BA from Butler University, an MFA from West Virginia University, and a certificate in narrative medicine from Columbia University. The author of six books, including the poetry collection FEVERDREAM, the memoir-in-essays FIERCE AND DELICATE and a début novel under contract, her work has appeared in over 100 publications, among them The Gettysburg Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and River Teeth. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and a 2026 Artist-in-Residence at the Château d’Orquevaux in France, she left academia in 2024 to write full time and lives in Morgantown, West Virginia.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($30) below, or register for the entire weekend, here ($75).

Deep Dive: Postmarked: Modern Takes on the Ancient Art of Letters (Brenda Miller)
2026-08-15 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Deep Dives are intensive/generative 90-minute workshops, with two options to choose from each day during HippoCamp Weekend; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration. Registration is limited to 20 attendees; we suggest signing up early. This format is intentionally designed to be live; it will not be recorded.

About the Session
Remember the joy of finding a handwritten letter in your mailbox? Letters used to be our primary form of communication, but they’ve fallen out of favor in the technology age. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll:

explore the literary power of letter writing in our modern lives
examine how authors often used letters to elucidate not only their everyday lives but also to grapple with the complexities of their work
study contemporary authors, who employ the letter form as a structural device for their stories. We’ll even turn to oral storytelling in podcasts such as This American Life and Letters Live!
analyze how writers use the letter form to create intimacy, reveal historical context as well as personal details, and provide a container for difficult subjects

In a supportive, encouraging environment, participants will then engage in short, guided writing exercises designed to draft personal stories in letter form. These could be real letters one would send to a particular recipient, or they might be autobiographical essays using the letter form as a literary device.
About the speaker:
Brenda Miller’s most recent book is Love You, Bye: A Daughter’s Journey in Essays and Poems (Skinner House Books, 2026). She is the author of six essay collections, including A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form. She co-wrote, with Suzanne Paola, the popular textbook Tell it Slant, and her work has received seven Pushcart Prizes.

TICKET INFO
You may register for this event a la carte, independent of the full HippoCamp Online Weekend. (But if you would like to attend other sessions or the entire event, you can learn more here.)
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speaker and each other; we suggest signing up as early as possible to secure your seat. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

Deep Dive: Scenes That Work: Choosing What Stays in Your Memoir & What Goes (Ronit Plank)
2026-08-15 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Deep Dives are intensive/generative 90-minute workshops, with two options to choose from each day during HippoCamp Weekend; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration. Registration is limited to 20 attendees; we suggest signing up early. This format is intentionally designed to be live; it will not be recorded.

About the Session
The heartbeat of a memoir is a mind at work trying to make sense of what we’ve experienced and why it matters now. As memoirists our job isn’t merely to report the circumstances we endured but create gripping narratives that keep readers invested and turning the page. In this session we’ll work with tools and generative prompts to help you write scenes that amplify the stakes, tension, and resonance in your memoir.
This session will help memoirists:

craft a map of key events that belong in their memoir
deepen the emotional and psychological dynamics in their pages
write scenes that create propulsive narrative arcs
experiment with potential structures for their project

About the speaker:
Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, The New York Times, and elsewhere, earning Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Pushcart Prize nominations.
Her first book is the memoir When She Comes Back, her second the story collection Home is a Made-Up Place. She’s CNF editor at The Citron Review, teaches memoir widely, and hosts the podcast and Substack Let’s Talk Memoir featuring interviews with memoirists about their creative process and writing life. Find her across social media at: @RonitPlank.

TICKET INFO
You may register for this event a la carte, independent of the full HippoCamp Online Weekend. (But if you would like to attend other sessions or the entire event, you can learn more here.)
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speaker and each other; we suggest signing up as early as possible to secure your seat. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

A Night of Nonfiction 2026: Debut CNF Author Readings & Discussions
2026-08-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Registration includes access to the recording for 30 days.
This is the online version of our ever-popular in-person event, which was first held in the summer of 2015 at our inaugural HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction!
This event will feature readings from a group of debut CNF authors, followed by a special guest reading and then a panel discussion and audience Q&A. Learn more about (or purchase!) their books at our Bookshop affiliate site (coming soon).
This is ONE OF FOUR main events we’re hosting the weekend of the 15-16th! Read about all of them here.

The 2026 Night of Nonfiction will feature:
[Additional authors and moderator to be confirmed soon]
Courtney Kocak
Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who splits time between Austin and Los Angeles. She wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. She’s produced a slew of highly-ranked podcasts and currently hosts three of her own with over two million downloads to date. Her bylines include The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, Business Insider, and more. Her debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild, with Trio House Press, is out now! For more, check out her website at courtneykocak.com.

Amanda McCracken
Amanda McCracken is the author of When Longing Becomes Your Lover. She is an award-winning journalist passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness, travel, and relationships. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Vogue, National Geographic, Runner’s World, and many others.
Amanda published her first article about longing in 2013, which led to additional articles featuring personal anecdotes and deep research and interviews with the BBC, Katie Couric, and USA Today. Her 2023 TED Talk, “How Longing Keeps Us From Healthy Relationships,” and her podcast, The Longing Lab, highlight how longing can become self sabotaging and shares how to change our patterns of longing. To learn more, visit her website: www.amandajmccracken.com.

Shanda McManus
Shanda McManus, MD, is a physician and writer whose work lives at the intersection of medicine, memory, and the stories we carry in our bodies. A 2021 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and 2023 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow, her debut memoir, Brother Epistles: A Sister’s Memoir (Split/Lip Press; June 2026), is a series of letters to her late brother Monir. A book about grief, Black family love, and the structures that took him. Jacqueline Woodson writes that it will “grab your heart, hold it gently, then hand it lovingly back to you.”

FEATURED GUEST READER – Brenda Miller
Brenda Miller’s most recent book is Love You, Bye: A Daughter’s Journey in Essays and Poems (Skinner House Books, 2026). She is the author of six essay collections, including A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form. She co-wrote, with Suzanne Paola, the popular textbook Tell it Slant, and her work has received seven Pushcart Prizes.
(Brenda is also leading a Deep Dive session on Saturday afternoon called Postmarked: Modern Takes on the Ancient Art of Letters.)

TICKET OPTIONS
You may reserve a ticket for just this event by making a donation of any size (including a free ticket) OR you may register for the entire weekend, here ($75).

HippoCamp Minis: Publishing, Promotion & the Writing Life- 5 CNF Topics in a Flash (2026)
2026-08-16 11:00 - 12:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Registration includes access to the recording for 30 days.
Some conferences call these fast-paced events lightning round talks. In honor of the short CNF subgenre, we call them flash sessions! These have always been a popular and fun part of our in-person HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers and, this year, we’re once again bringing their magic online.
In our Sunday HippoCamp Minis sessions, you’ll hear from five speakers who will share bite-sized wisdom with practical takeaways on a topic they’re passionate about, all related to promoting and publishing creative nonfiction (and yourself!), as well as living your best writing life.
This is ONE OF FOUR events we’re hosting the weekend of the 15-16th! Read about all of them here.

About the Sessions & Speakers
This webinar will feature the following five flash sessions:
The Personal Essay Is Not Dead: How to Get Yours Noticed by Editors in a Relentless News Cycle (Lauren DePino)
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.

If You Build It, They Will Come: Creating and Producing Fabulous Live Literary Events You Want to See in the World! (Amy Eaton)
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.

Finding + Keeping Your Creative Spark: The Artist Date (Renée Reese)
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.

How to Build Your Audience Through Substack (Liz Charlotte Grant)
Full session and speaker details forthcoming.

TBA Session
Full session and speaker details forthcoming.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($30) below, or register for the entire weekend, here ($75).

Deep Dive: Making a Newsletter Work for You (Allison K Williams)
2026-08-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Deep Dives are intensive/generative 90-minute workshops, with two options to choose from each day during HippoCamp Weekend; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration. Registration is limited to 20 attendees; we suggest signing up early. This format is intentionally designed to be live; it will not be recorded.

About the Session
Writers need direct contact with their audience more than ever before. But how can a newsletter be part of your creative life instead of a drag on your time? Learn how writing a newsletter feeds your creative process, develops your craft, and creates literary community — no matter how many people are on your list.
(Note: We will not dive into specific newsletter platforms on a technical level, this is about mindset, writing, and big-picture best practices).
This session will cover:

How regularity feeds your writing as well as building audience
What to do when no-one is listening
Newsletters are flash essays—key craft techniques that make people open the email
Repurposing your stories across platforms
How to teach yourself that your newsletter isn’t pushy, selfish, or sales-y.

Allison will also look at samples of your newsletters (submitted in advance) and live-edit to make them both better newsletters and your best writing.
About the speaker:
Allison K Williams is the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro From Blank Page to Book. She has helped 30+ authors find their agents, and edited and coached writers to publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, Spencer Hill, and St. Martin’s Press as well as literary and university presses.
She’s guided essayists and humorists to publication in media including the New Yorker, Time, the Guardian, the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Refinery29, Hippocampus, the Belladonna and TED Talks.
As social media editor for Brevity, she inspires thousands of writers with weekly blogs on craft and the writing life. Her Substack, Adventures in Writing, and Newsletter, The A-List, total 17,000+ subscribers.

TICKET INFO
You may register for this event a la carte, independent of the full HippoCamp Online Weekend. (But if you would like to attend other sessions or the entire event, you can learn more here.)
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speaker and each other; we suggest signing up as early as possible to secure your seat. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

Deep Dive: Mining Your Obsessions: Writing (Nearly) Endless Essays On One Subject (Elizabeth Austin)
2026-08-16 14:00 - 15:30 | https://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/event/deep-dive-mining-your-obsessions-elizabeth-austin/
Deep Dives are intensive/generative 90-minute workshops, with two options to choose from each day during HippoCamp Weekend; these are NOT included in the main ticket package and require separate registration. Registration is limited to 20 attendees; we suggest signing up early. This format is intentionally designed to be live; it will not be recorded.

About the Session
We all have obsessions: the subjects, relationships, and questions we can’t stop writing toward, whether we mean to or not. In this generative workshop, we’ll treat these topics as a renewable resource. Through a structured exploration, you’ll dig into the patterns hiding in your existing work — recurring images, emotional landscapes — and turn them into a visual thematic map you can mine for years.
In this session, writers will:

excavate patterns, working to surface recurring images, tensions, and questions.
build personal thematic maps, placing a core focus at the center with 3–5 satellite themes radiating out, then spotting the intersections where unexpected new essays are born.
generate at least five fresh essay ideas using six concrete strategies, plus tactics for matching themes to submission calls
study how the pros do it, looking at writers who’ve mined the same territory for decades across forms and genres

Open to writers at all levels, whether you’re assembling an essay collection, hunting for the through line in a memoir, or simply tired of feeling like you write “the same things.” No pre-class reading required.
About the speaker:

Elizabeth Austin’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Literature, Narratively, McSweeney’s, and others. She has been awarded residencies including Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and Turning Points. She holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts, writes a newsletter on her writing and post-cancer family life, and lives outside of Philly with her two kids and many pets.

TICKET INFO
You may register for this event a la carte, independent of the full HippoCamp Online Weekend. (But if you would like to attend other sessions or the entire event, you can learn more here.)
This session is limited to 20 attendees for optimal engagement with speaker and each other; we suggest signing up as early as possible to secure your seat. Note: Deep Dives are using the Zoom meeting format where all attendees will be on screen.

An Evening with the Book Champions: A Publishing & Publicity Roundtable
2026-08-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Registered attendees will get access to event recordings for 30 days.
Join us for an evening of all things CNF publishing and publicity. This year, we’re putting a new spin on what we typically called An Evening with the Editors. We’re still focusing on book champions, but we’re centering the conversation on what agents are looking for — and how to get your book noticed with the help of an in-house or independent publicist.
Hippocampus Magazine associate editor Rae Pagliarulo will moderate a discussion with a group of publicists, literary agents, and other publishing professionals. You will:

get a behind-the-scenes look at the book submissions process
find out what they’re looking for their respective lists and agencies
diver into the writer-agent and writer-publicist relationship
explore a timeline for book publicity
learn the various moving parts of a book marketing/publicity campaign
….and so much more

There will be plenty of time for audience questions at the end.
This is ONE OF FOUR main events we’re hosting the weekend of the 15-16th! Read about all of them here.

Meet Our Panelists
[Additional authors and moderator to be confirmed soon]
Michelle Blankenship
Michelle Blankenship spent 16 years as an in-house publicist working at John Wiley & Sons, Picador USA, Harcourt Trade Publishers, and Bloomsbury Publishing specializing in literary fiction, poetry, and a variety of nonfiction topics. During her time as an in-house publicist, she served as director of publicity for Harcourt and as an associate director of publicity at Bloomsbury. She has worked with Jesmyn Ward, Eimear McBride, Barney Frank, Martha S. Jones, Senator Sherrod Brown, Ana Castillo, James Forman Jr., Drew Gilpin Faust, and Mitchell S. Jackson, among others. Blankenship has also been on the board of the Publishers Publicity Association (PPA) since 2007, and she currently serves as the PPA president.

Ashley Lopez
Ashley Lopez is a literary agent at Massie McQuilkin & Altman Literary Agents with over a decade of publishing experience. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and represents both adult fiction and nonfiction as well as select Young Adult and poetry titles.

Cassie Mannes Murray
Cassie Mannes Murray believes in cold emails and cold pizza. She is the founder and director of Pine State Publicity, a publicity firm for independent and small press books. You can always find what she’s up to in the Pine State newsletter. Her mom calls it “weirdly rambling.” Before launching Pine State she was a literary agent, earned her MFA in creative nonfiction, designed book interiors, edited for literary mags, taught high school, and once even worked as a laundromat drive-thru gal. When she isn’t talking books, she’s a mom to three kids, married to the guy she met on Myspace in high school, and living under some big oaks in North Carolina.

Isabella Nugent
Isabella Nugent (she/her) is a senior publicist at Page One Media, where she manages publicity campaigns for authors and experts across a wide range of subject areas, including history, philosophy, sociology, and more. Some of her recent campaigns include Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, McNamara at War by Philip Taubman and William Taubman, winner of the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History, and Making the Presidency by Lindsay Chervinsky.

TICKET OPTIONS
You may purchase a ticket for just this event ($30) below, or register for the entire weekend, here ($75).
