(Sold Out) Deep Dive: Scenes That Work: Choosing What Stays in Your Memoir & What Goes (Ronit Plank)
2026-08-15 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Note: This Deep Dive is sold out. If you would like to join the waiting list, please email conference@hippocampusmagazine.com. Or peruse our other amazing Deep Dive options!
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 25 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]
Gaar Adams
Gaar Adams is the author of Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction in 2026. The book was also longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize as well as runner-up for a Forward INDIES Book of the Year and the Norbert Blei/August Derleth Nonfiction Book Award.
His reporting from the Middle East and South Asia has been featured in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera and elsewhere. He received his Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Glasgow, teaches creative writing at Falmouth University, and lives in London, UK.

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.)

MODERATOR: Brendan O’Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
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.

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.

How to Find Your Readers On Substack (Liz Charlotte Grant)

Everybody has a Substack now, but how many of us know how to leverage our email newsletter to find and retain readers? Liz Charlotte Grant is a CNF author whose Substack, The Empathy List, has has also grown from 300 subscribers to nearly 2,000 — all without a hint of AI or marketing cash!

In this session, you’ll learn the value of:

collaboration with other substackers,
the Substack “recommendations” feature,
commenting on others’ posts and writing “notes,”
and predictability of content, brand, and publishing schedule.

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

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.

OPEN THE DOOR! Demystifying the Nonfiction Book Proposal and Query Letter (Carolyn Roy-Bornstein)
Maybe you have a killer idea for a sure-to-be-successful nonfiction book. Perhaps you’ve even got a couple of chapters drafted. You might even after a polished, edited manuscript and are wondering about next steps. You’re in the right place! After this 10-minute round-up, you will be able to:

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

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

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

(Sold Out!) Deep Dive: Making a Newsletter Work for You (Allison K Williams)
2026-08-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Note: This Deep Dive is sold out. If you would like to join the waiting list, please email conference@hippocampusmagazine.com. Or peruse our other amazing Deep Dive options!
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.

(Sold Out!) 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/
Note: This Deep Dive is sold out. If you would like to join the waiting list, please email conference@hippocampusmagazine.com. Or peruse our other amazing Deep Dive options!
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.

Book Champions: Meet the Agents and Publicists -- 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 literary 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
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.

Eric Smith
Eric Smith is an award-winning Young Adult author and literary agent living in Philadelphia. He’s worked with New York Times and USA Today bestselling and critically acclaimed authors across genres and categories, and is the founder of Neighborhood Literary.

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

Language Arts: Creative Nonfiction 101/Memoirs & Moments - (Donna Talarico for Paper Kite Press)
2026-09-19 10:00 - 14:00
This is a non-Hippo event, but somewhere you can engage with a member of our editorial team. This is in person, so it’s ideal for those living near Lancaster, PA.
Language Arts, from Paper Kite Press, is designed as a day-long exploration of writing, reading, and creative community.
The featured writer for the month of September is Donna Talarico, who is bringing us a workshop in creative nonfiction. The workshop is followed by an evening reading (6-7:30 p.m.) that features Donna and the writers from her workshop. We will have a very limited open mic for community members who would like to share their work.
Location: Tenfold, 308 E King St #1, Lancaster, PA 17602, USA
Learn more about the event and register on the Language Arts event page.

HOW-TO TUESDAY: Unlock Your Creative Energy for 2027 with Janna Maron
2027-01-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Online (Zoom Webinar)
Write in alignment with your energy, not against it.
You don’t need more discipline. You don’t need another productivity system. You don’t need to force yourself to write like someone else.
You need a writing practice that fits your energetic design.
Hosted by Janna Maron, book coach & editor, Unlock Your Creative Energy is a workshop designed to help you understand how you are meant to create, focus, and move words onto the page. This is not about fixing yourself. It’s about remembering how you work—and letting your writing flow from there.
In this session you will:

Identify your Human Design energy type and understand how it influences your writing process.
Recognize why common productivity and writing advice may not work for you—and what to do instead.
Leave with practical strategies for creating a more sustainable, aligned vision & writing practice for the new year.

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
Janna Marlies Maron is a book coach and editor with 20+ years of experience helping writers to complete their projects and produce the best work possible. Her experience includes time as a magazine editor, college professor, agency editorial director, and content director for a leading online business brand. She has worked on a number of book projects from self-published Amazon bestsellers to traditionally published New York Times bestsellers. Since starting her business, More to the Story, in 2020, nine of her clients have books published or forthcoming. She’s also the founding editor and publisher of Under the Gum Tree, a literary arts magazine publishing creative nonfiction and visual art.
