Websites, case studies, reports... governments at all levels need writers, editors and communication consultants to stay in touch with the public and with each other. And government work, once you land it, tends to be steady. Getting that first project is key. This workshop will break down an often-daunting process into achievable steps, drawing on the experience of professional advisors and writers who've successfully navigated this income stream.

Moderator: Joanne Y. Cleaver, ASJA / @jycleaver

Joanne, a freelance business writer for over 30 years, has won major contracts for content and communication on the basis of her editorial project management track record. The author of The Career Lattice (McGraw, 2012), she is widely published on the topics of career management, entrepreneurship, and women in business.

Clyde Martin

Clyde Martin is the Lead Business Development Opportunity Specialist with the New York office of the Small Business Administration. He helps small businesses figure out how to find the right potential contracts within the huge (and complex) world of Federal contracting and how to pull together a competitive proposal for Federal work. He also will address the unique advantages offered to woman-owned businesses through Federal contracting.

Margaret Marcucci

Margaret is President of Coronet Corp. Women business owners can capture strategic advantages when pursuing government work. Tech executive Margaret Marcucci has navigated this path and will outline key elements to translating advantages to business growth.

While independent newspapers and magazines reduce their page counts, pay rates, or disappear altogether, custom publishing is booming. Corporations are spending their advertising and marketing budgets to develop their own magazines, websites, case studies, customer references, and videos rather than buying ads in other publications. And they rely on freelancers to help them do it. This panel will explain custom publishing, how it works, why it's not that different from traditional publishing, and how writers can make money in this lucrative market. Consider attending a complementary session, The Inside Scoop on Finding Content Marketing Work, which will go into more detail on specific custom publishing markets.

Moderator: Howard Baldwin & Tam Harbert, ASJA / @tamharbert

Howard Baldwin has worked as a writer and editor since 1977. His work has appeared in Stanford, Computerworld, Seattle Times, San Jose Mercury-News, and several inflight magazines. His corporate clients include IBM, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Accenture. Tam Harbert writes about technology, business and public policy for various trade and business publications. She has won more than a dozen awards for her work, including the 2010 ASJA Award for Outstanding Trade Article.

Beth Tomkiw

Beth Tomkiw is executive vice president and chief creative officer at McMurry/TMG, one of the top content marketing companies in the U.S. McMurry/TMG produces custom magazines, videos, websites, apps and experiential media for many global corporations, including The Ritz-Carlton Hotels, UPS, IBM, CBS, Walmart and Disney. Beth has more than 25 years of publishing and content marketing experience. She worked as an associate editor of Playboy for 13 years and has contributed to a variety of consumer magazines, including FamilyFun, Self, Maxim and Men's Fitness. She is also the author of several books, including Total Sex: Men's Fitness Magazine's Complete Guide to Everything Men Need to Know and Want to Know About Sex and A Year in the Life of My Daughter.

Andrew Seibert / @ContentCouncil

Andrew Seibert is chairman of the Custom Content Council (CCC), the leading professional organization representing custom media professionals in North America. The CCC membership includes marketing and media experts across print, digital, mobile, social and in-person channels. In addition to being the current chairman of the CCC, he is managing partner of Imprint, A Sullivan Content Lab. He has recently been president of Dow Jones Content Lab and president of SmartMoney (magazine, website, mobile), a joint venture between Dow Jones and Hearst Magazines. Seibert has also been general manager of Money magazine's Education Services, a division of Time Inc., and served as vice president of marketing at GE Capital and in various marketing roles at American Express.

Larry Marion

Larry Marion is the editorial director of Triangle Publishing Services Co., a full service custom content provider for Microsoft, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Hewlett Packard, SAP and other IT companies. He has almost 20 years of experience providing magazines, newsletters, web sites, surveys, research reports, case studies, audiocasts and other forms of content for these and other organizations. Previously he was an award winning writer and editor for Businessweek, Forbes, Datamation, Institutional Investor and other business and technology publications.

John Kerr

John Kerr is principal and founder of Ergo Editorial Services, Inc., a provider of editorial products and services for professional-services firms. Offerings include white papers, bylined articles, proofing, fact-checking, training programs, and audits. Kerr has more than 30 years of experience in business and technical publishing in the U.S. and Britain, and 12 years of providing premium thought-leadership services for management consulting firms. Previously, Kerr was deputy editor at consultancy Bain & Co., where he drove bylined articles for five practice areas, writing and placing stories in the Financial Times, The Daily Deal, European Business Forum, and many others. Before that, Kerr was content director at IT consultancy Cambridge Technology Partners, where he published thought leadership materials worldwide and served as the firm's director of corporate communications. Kerr has been chief editor at several business and technology publications as well as a senior editor at Inc. Magazine.

Social media is now required to hear the latest media news, stay connected to your editors, and to get the best job opportunities. We've invited the experts of LinkedIn and Twitter to show you how to get the most out of these exciting, necessary platforms.

Moderator: Damon Brown, board member, ASJA / @browndamon

ASJA board member Damon Brown is co-founder of the iPhone narrative app Quote Unquote and is author of several titles, most recently the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We are Obsessed with Documenting Our Lives Online.

Mark S. Luckie / @marksluckie

Mark S. Luckie is the Manager of Journalism and News at Twitter. A multi-platform journalist and editor, Luckie is founder of the digital journalism blog 10,000 Words and author of The Digital Journalist's Handbook, a guide to the tools necessary to thrive in the digital newsroom.

Yumi Wilson / @yumiwilson

Yumi Wilson is Community Manager for LinkedIn For Journalists. A former broadcast and newspaper reporter and editor, Wilson is currently Associate Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University. In Spring 2012, she served as SFSU Acting Chair of Journalism.

This panel features ASJA authors of New York Times bestselling books. These members will reveal all aspects of their bestsellers: how they came together, how they proposed them, how they publicized them and how they dealt with their popularity. This "how-to" session will be packed with valuable tips and advice.

Moderator: Terry Whalin, ASJA / @terrywhalin

Terry understands both sides of the editorial desk. A former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 books for traditional publishers including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams.

Amy Hill Hearth, ASJA

Amy is the author or co-author of seven nonfiction books including Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, a New York Times bestseller for 113 weeks which was adapted to the Broadway stage and for an award-winning film. Amy was portrayed in the film by Golden Globe-winning actress Amy Madigan, with Ruby Dee playing the role of Bessie Delany and Diahann Carroll as Sadie Delany. In 2012, Amy took the leap from nonfiction to fiction with the publication of her first novel, Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society, a book club pick for Simon & Schuster, a Reader's Digest Select Edition, and a main selection of the Pulpwood Queens, an international book club with 550 chapters.

Susy Flory, ASJA / @susyflory

Susy is a New York Times bestselling author who grew up on the back of a quarter horse in Northern California. She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood typewriter. She taught high school English and journalism, then quit in 2004 to write full time for publications such as Focus on the Family, Guideposts Books, and Today.

Sherry Suib Cohen, ASJA

Sherry Suib Cohen is a freelance writer with 24 books published by major publishing houses. She is the former Contributing Editor of New Woman, McCall's, Lifetime, and Rosie magazines. She regularly writes articles for many other national publications including Parade, Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle, Woman's Day, Parents, Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Boating, Seventeen, Working Woman, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, and others. She's also written for the New York Times, the Gannett chain and other newspapers. Sherry often appears on television shows like Good Day New York, the Today Show, CNN News, GMA -- even Oprah, twice -- and many others to discuss her work. She does frequent celebrity interviews and routinely interviews medical, psychological and political experts. Cohen maintains an international lecture schedule. She's an award-winning former Board member of ASJA and a member of the Authors Guild.

Personal Pitch is a lottery-based event. ASJA members can register in advance to participate in brief face-to-face meetings with literary agents and book editors/publishers to pitch ideas.

Decent pay, lots of opportunities, and the chance to interview to some really bright people: these are some pay-offs of writing for alumni magazines and other university publications and websites. We'll hear from university editors and communicators as well as writers who write for university markets. Learn what kind of work is available, how to break in, and how to keep profiting.

Moderator: Lindsey O'Connor, ASJA / @LindseyOConnor

Lindsey O'Connor is the author of five books, a freelance journalist, and speaker. Her memoir, The Long Awakening, releases in hardcover later this year. She has contributed to public radio's Weekend America, WashingtonPost.com, The Rocky Mountain News, Christianity Today, Writer's Digest, Guideposts and others. She's a former broadcaster, was a finalist for an Audie award, and loves reporting internationally. True story is her thing.

Greg Breining, ASJA

Greg Breining writes about science, nature, and travel for the New York Times, Audubon, and magazines and websites at several universities and colleges around the country. He as written several nonfiction books and is also a founding partner of Breeze Communication Arts.

Dale Keiger / @dkeiger1

Dale Keiger has been scribbling for pay for 40 years, the last 20 of them at Johns Hopkins Magazine, where he is associate editor. He has written for alumni magazines at Penn State, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Arizona State, and Ohio University, as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and Travel & Leisure.

Erin Peterson

Erin Peterson has been writing for college and university alumni magazines since 1998. In addition to her current freelance work for more than 20 schools, she has worked as a staff writer and editor for Carleton College, Macalester College, and Grinnell College.

Rebecca Shapiro

Rebecca Shapiro is managing editor of Columbia Magazine, published by Columbia University's Office of Alumni and Development. She joined the staff in 2011, after spending five years as an editor in the Random House Publishing Group. She has also worked as a high school writing instructor and college counselor, and has published over 300 articles and book reviews.

Experts tout the financial benefits of specialization. Editors want people with a track record writing on a subject, so your pitches will have better hit rates. Writers familiar with a subject have ready sources they can tap, making them more efficient. Generalists are versatile and can write about a variety of topics for a host of clients, keeping themselves busy and challenged. Generalists keep their minds open to story ideas, knowing a piece on one beat can lead to a story on another. In this panel, we'll hear from both camps: two writers -- one who specializes and one who covers several beats -- and two editors -- one who prefers assigning to experts and one willing to hire someone who straddles multiple beats, so long as she has solid clips and credentials. We'll ask each of the panelists why he or she prefers specialists or generalists and have each share the pitfalls of each choice.

Moderator: Theresa Sullivan-Barger, ASJA / @TheresaSB

Theresa covers business, environment and health and has written for Yankee, the Saturday Evening Post, Yale Public Health, Realtor Magazine, AARP Bulletin, AAA, business trades and others.

Gina M. Shaw, ASJA / @writergina

Gina has written about health, medicine and science for the past 15 years. She writes for both professional and consumer audiences and her credits have appeared in Redbook, Woman's Day, Health, Diabetic Living, WebMD the Magazine, and a variety of trade publications. She also authors custom publications, and is presently completing two commissioned books. In addition, she writes for major academic medical centers such as Columbia University Medical Center and NYU Langone.

Leonard Felson, ASJA / @leonardfelson

Leonard writes about the extraordinariness of everyday life. His stories have appeared in Reader's Digest, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Jerusalem Report, Connecticut Magazine and elsewhere. His career began as a newspaper reporter in California, where he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He moved to the East Coast and became a staff writer for the Hartford Courant. He's always on the lookout for great stories, including ones about cities, the Jewish world, and dramatic moments of transformation.

Fran Silverman / @fransilverman

Fran is the editor of truthinadvertising.org (TINA), a new nonprofit national consumer news site. As editor of TINA, Fran oversees content, originates story ideas, edits articles, and writes investigative and daily pieces for the site. Fran was previously the metro editor for the Connecticut Post, a contributing writer for the New York Times and the consumer affairs reporter for the Hartford Courant. She holds a master's degree in journalism from The Ohio State University, where she was the Martha Brian Fellow in Public Affairs Reporting.

Scott Olster / @ScottOlster

Scott is an editor at Fortune.com, where he oversees the leadership, management, and careers coverage. His stories have been published by Fortune.com, Fortune, Men's Health, Huffington Post, Dallas Morning News and several other publications. He holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Although many colleges need experienced reporters and editors to teach basic courses, they also want to offer unique classes in photography, infographics and social media skills. Come hear from professors who used to be full-time reporters/editors -- they who now hire adjunct professors -- and two freelancers who teach on the side. We'll answer questions about applications, a c.v. versus a resume, payment rates and why teaching isn't for everyone.

Moderator: Dawn Fallik, ASJA / @dfallik

Dawn Fallik writes medical stories for The Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and Neurology Today. She also covers food and culture trends as well as incredibly bad television for the WSJ's blog SpeakEasy, so she can discuss the role of calcium in strokes as well as Vampire Diaries. After 20 years as a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the AP, Fallik moved to full-time academia. She is now Director of Journalism at the University of Delaware, teaching medical writing, critical reporting and digital storytelling.

Rosemary Armao

Rosemary Armao went from 40 years of reporting and editing into an assistant professorship at the State University of New York At Albany, her hometown, five years ago. She is a former executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors, former president of the Journalism and Womens Symposium and a member of the Dart Society which promotes better coverage of trauma journalism. She continues to work as an editor and consultant in media development projects in eastern Europe and Africa.

Susan McGregor

Susan McGregor is an Assistant Professor at Columbia School of Journalism with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Prior to joining the school she was the Senior Programmer for Online News Graphics at the Wall Street Journal, where she was named as a winner in the Gerald Loeb Awards' "Online Enterprise" category for her work on the Journal's "What They Know" series. In June 2012, she and her team received a grant from the Brown Institute for Media innovation to develop Dispatch, a mobile app for conflict reporting. She regularly presents on data journalism and visualization, as well as digital privacy and security.

Laura Muha

Laura Muha is Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a former Newsday reporter.

Aparna Mukherjee / @aparnamuk

A digital journalist, Aparna has developed new audiences across platforms for some of the world's most influential media outlets. As social media editor for a top three consulting firm, she focuses on content strategy and enterprise social media adoption. Aparna has reported for The Associated Press, Business Week, and Bloomberg Markets, and contributes to the Wall Street Journal, where she also worked as a manager in strategy and corporate planning. A Bryn Mawr and Knight-Bagehot Fellowship alumna, she holds a dual MA and MBA from Columbia University and leads master classes for executive MBAs.

Expand your income -- and your own creativity -- by setting up business as a creative coach to other writers and artists. In this panel for experienced writers, writers and certified creative coaches will discuss how to construct, market and package writing &/or creativity retreats, classes and individualized coaching services.

Moderator: Jennifer L.W. Fink, ASJA / @jlwf

Jennifer L.W. Fink is a freelance writer with a creative soul. She teaches creativity and writing classes through the Department of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and would love to offer creativity/writing retreats in the future.

Theo Pauline Nestor

Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed: A Memoir of Starting Over, a Kirkus Review Top Pick for Reading Groups in 2008 and a Target Breakout book. Her next book, The Sky Is Blue: A Writer's Story of Finding Your Own Voice and a Guide to Finding Your Own, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Besides her work as a freelance writer and instructor for the University of Washington, Nestor earns her living as a writing coach, coaching individuals by phone and in person and teaching independently taught writing classes around the Seattle area. She is also the owner of the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat, hosting aspiring writers and published memoirists from around the country.

Jodi Helmer, ASJA

After a decade of freelancing, journalist and author Jodi Helmer earned her MFA and started coaching writers who dreamed of seeing their bylines in national magazines. Helmer works with clients one-on-one and leads weekend retreats for writers. Her coaching philosophy includes a mix of nut-and-bolts advice and creative approaches, including vision boards, visualization exercises and writing prompts that have helped her clients land assignments with Natural Health, EatingWell, Modern Dog, Urban Farm and Experience Life.

Nancy Monson, ASJA / @nancypmonson

Nancy Monson recently completed "Creativity Coaching 101" with renowned coach Eric Maisel, PhD, to enhance her ability to lead creative workshops related to her book Craft to Heal: Soothing Your Soul with Sewing, Painting, and Other Pastimes. She's run workshops for Miraval Resorts in Arizona, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and Camp Unleashed, among others. She also became a certified health coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition over the past year, launched a coaching business called Creative Wellness, and written the ebook of the same name.

Personal Pitch is a lottery-based event. ASJA members can register in advance to participate in brief face-to-face meetings with literary agents and book editors/publishers to pitch ideas.

Health stories aren't just for women's and science magazines anymore. They can be investigative, political, or business-oriented and appear in enthusiast publications about food, skiing or travel. This session will shed light on how writers with interest or expertise in health can break into varied outlets.

Moderator: Melinda Wenner Moyer, ASJA / @lindy2350

Melinda is a freelance science writer and Slate's parenting columnist. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Her piece "Going Clean," published in Eating Well magazine, was a finalist for a 2012 James Beard Award. She also writes for Scientific American, Discover, Nature Medicine, Bon Appetit, Better Homes & Gardens, Redbook, Glamour, Men's Health, Self and Cosmopolitan.

Laura Helmuth / @laurahelmuth

Laura Helmuth is the science and health editor for Slate magazine. She was the science editor for Smithsonian for eight years, and before that she was a writer and editor for Science magazine's news department. She is on the board of the National Association of Science Writers and The Open Notebook. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley and attended the U.C. Santa Cruz science communication program.

Meryl Rothstein

Meryl Rothstein is a senior associate editor at Bon Appétit, where she edits the health column and regularly attends chocolate cake tastings.

Do you have a subject you care passionately about but continue to talk yourself out of writing that book proposal for various reasons? Not sure if it's saleable or who will read it? Our panel will discuss how to develop and publish books about the toughest human rights and social justice issues, from racism and AIDS to poverty, hunger and environmental protection. Learn how to write to inform readers, while challenging community or international injustices. We'll also cover the necessity for meticulous reporting and writing of these often controversial books.

Moderator: Christopher Johnston, ASJA

Christopher Johnston has worked as a freelance journalist since 1987. He has published more than 3,000 articles in numerous publications, including American Theatre, Balanced Living, Cleveland Magazine, Continental, Crain's Cleveland Business, The Plain Dealer, Progressive Architecture, Proto Magazine, Scientific American (online), Time.com, and Urban Design. Johnston ghostwrote The Way I Saw It, the memoirs of the late Marc Wyse, co-founder of Wyse Advertising, and is currently writing a book about reversing heart disease. He is also a playwright and director, and his plays have been produced at several theaters in Cleveland and one in New York. His most recent play, Ghosts of War, premiered in Cleveland in January, and is based on five years of interviews with a Marine Corps officer and other veterans who served in Vietnam.

Tara Grove

Tara Grove is an editor at The New Press, a public interest trade book publisher. She is responsible for building on and curating the press's strong backlist of progressive education titles and also focuses on books about race, justice, and inequality among other areas. Before transitioning to publishing, Tara worked in Philadelphia's homeless shelter system as a case manager and trauma recovery facilitator. She has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Vanessa Mobley

Vanessa Mobley is an executive editor at Crown, a division of Random House. She has a particular interest in investigative journalism and new ideas. Her Crown authors include Chris Hayes, Jonathan Kozol, Brendan Koerner, Rebecca Mead, Sheri Fink, Caren Zucker, John Donvan, and Yochi Dreazen.

Karen A. Wolny

Karen Wolny is currently the editorial director for Palgrave Macmillan's trade and professional books program, publishing leading nonfiction titles in business, politics, history, and popular science. Palgrave Macmillan has a distinguished track record in international trade and academic publishing with considerable strengths in the humanities, social sciences, and business. In the past Karen has worked as the publishing director of social sciences at Routledge-NY and as the editorial director of LearningExpress, a leading online educational publisher. She holds a Masters in English from NYU.

Helaine Olen, ASJA

Helaine is a New York-based journalist and author of the book Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry. She currently maintains a blog on the Forbes platform called Where Life Meets Money. Her work on personal finance, parenting, families, books, feminism, politics, and career strategy has been published in numerous print and on-line publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate.com, Salon.com, BusinessWeek, AlterNet.org, Babble.com and The Los Angeles Times, where she wrote and edited the popular "Money Makeover" feature.

In the two years since the birth of the e-singles market, writers have rushed to embrace this hybrid form of long-form narrative -- shorter than a book, longer than a magazine feature -- and readers have shown they're willing to plunk down their two bucks in big enough numbers to keep things interesting. Now comes the hard part: developing a mature, multiplatform marketplace that gives writers a clearer shot at turning e-singles into a full-time occupation. Insiders share predictions and discuss their experiences as e-singles evolve rapidly with experiments in pricing and distribution.

Moderator: Mark Obbie, ASJA / @markobbie

Mark is a criminal justice journalist and former executive editor of The American Lawyer magazine in New York who recently left his teaching position in Syracuse University's Newhouse School magazine department to freelance full time. Amazon published his first e-book, the true-crime narrative God's Nobodies as a Kindle Single in December 2012.

Evan Ratliff / @theatavist

Evan is cofounder and CEO of Atavist, the Brooklyn-based pioneer in publishing original narrative stories for the e-singles market. Ratliff's work has appeared in the New Yorker, Outside, National Geographic, and Wired, where he is a contributing editor.

Deborah Blum / @deborahblum

Deborah is a Pulitzer-winning science writer and author of five books whose recent e-single for The Atavist, "Angel Killer," topped the Kindle Singles best sellers list for nonfiction. She is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has written for Scientific American, Slate, Tin House, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times among others. She is currently working on a book about the history of poisonous food.

Matt Dellinger / @TheByliner

Matt is content director of Byliner Inc., the publisher of original e-singles and curator of long-form journalism. He is author of Interstate 69, spent 10 years on staff at The New Yorker, and has also written for The Atlantic, Oxford American, and Smithsonian.

This workshop will be highly interactive with a small group format. No power point. No talking head. Learning to be comfortable and entertaining as a public speaker takes time and practice. This is an opportunity for creating courage, a quick start, follow-up resources, and perhaps finding a speaking practice partner. It's time to add a new public speaking plank to your platform.

Moderator: Judith C. Tingley, ASJA / @drtingley

Workshop presenter Judith Tingley is a Bainbridge Island, WA author of nonfiction, a freelance writer, blogger, and psychologist. Her current book project is Handbook #1 for Intelligent Women: Break the Negative Self-Talk Habit with New Brain Science. Judy has also worked as a professional speaker and corporate trainer. She has been a Toastmaster for almost 30 years and has written articles about the writer as speaker for the ASJA Monthly and the Toastmaster.

Facilitator, Nancy Monson, ASJA and Toastmasters

Facilitator, Sandra Gordon, ASJA and Toastmasters

Always wanted a minute to pitch a top magazine editor? ASJA members will get a chance here to prepare a 60-second pitch for editors at publications like Vanity Fair, New Yorker, New York, and The New York Times Magazine, and present it before a forgiving audience of fellow writers.

Moderator: Katherine Reynolds Lewis, ASJA / @KatherineLewis

Katherine is a Harvard-educated journalist with nearly 20 years' experience writing for magazines, newspapers and online, in addition to radio and television appearances. A regular contributor to About.com and Fortune magazine online, her expertise is finance, work and family. Her freelance articles have appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Money, New York Times, Parade, MSN Money, Slate, USA Today's magazines and Washington Post Magazine. She's based in the Washington D.C. are and is active in the Asian American Journalists Association.

Katherine Stirling

Katherine Stirling joined Vanity Fair as articles editor in 2010, and has edited and written for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Mike Nizza

Mike has spent his entire career on the frontiers of digital media as an editor. He's helped storied print publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic and Esquire move into the digital age, and built new digital news publications from the ground up at News Corporation's The Daily and AOL Media.

James Burnett / @vanaskie

James Burnett is a story editor in the New York office of The New Republic. He joined the magazine after working as news editor of New York, where he ran the Intelligencer section and edited features and packages. His prior experience includes three years as editor-in-chief of Boston magazine and a really, really short stint at Rolling Stone.

Sustainability and environmental reporting opportunities seem to be expanding, but breaking into the beat can be challenging. There are so many ways to approach environmental writing -- energy, sustainability, health, eco-living, organic food or green business -- are just some of the angles. Four editors discuss what they're looking for in environmental journalists, what stories they're seeking, and how writers can distinguish themselves from the pack.

Moderator: Theresa Sullivan-Barger, ASJA / @TheresaSB

Theresa, a Society of Environmental Journalists member, writes about green living, green business and the impact of environmental factors on public health.

Scott Dodd / @scottdodd

Scott Dodd is the editor of OnEarth.org, the award-winning website of OnEarth magazine. A journalist with nearly two decades of experience who specializes in telling stories about science and the environment, Scott has contributed to Scientific American, Slate, The New York Times, Business Insider, Oceanus, and other publications. He spent 12 years as a newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, then earned a masters degree in science journalism from Columbia University, where he now teaches as an adjunct professor. He joined the staff of OnEarth in 2009 and has spearheaded an aggressive expansion of digital content through blogs, essays, and longform enterprise stories, including what Columbia Journalism Review has described as "bang-up investigative journalism." The resulting honors for OnEarth.org include back-to-back Eddie Awards for best magazine website in its category and the listing of three web exclusives as "notables" in the most recent edition of Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Alisa Opar / @alisaopar

After dabbling in research on bats, fish, newts, watersheds, prairie dogs and rangeland grasses, Alisa Opar decided to redirect her passion for science and all things wild into journalism. Now the articles editor at Audubon, she particularly enjoys editing and writing stories about wildlife, conservation, climate, and energy. Though she's come to appreciate the resourceful flora and fauna (people included) that thrive in New York City, whenever possible she likes to travel to far-flung destinations-especially those that are mountainous.

Tom Idle / @TomIdle

Tom Idle is a writer, journalist, editor and commentator in the field of corporate sustainability, climate change policy, environmental protection, clean energy and corporate social responsibility. Editor-in-chief at 2degrees network, the world's biggest community for sustainable business professionals, Tom has spent the last 10 years tracking trends in corporate sustainability and writing on a diverse range of subjects - from supply-chain engagement and freight management, to corporate communications and global climate change policy - both in-house and as a freelancer. He has been a panelist and chair for events organized by the likes of The Guardian, Green Space and the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI).

David Biello / @dbiello

David Biello is an award-winning journalist writing primarily about the environment and energy. A Scientific American editor, he is working on a book about whether the planet has entered a new geologic age as a result of human impacts and, if so, what we should do about this Anthropocene. He has been writing for Scientific American since 2005 and has written on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology for both the website and magazine. He has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999-long enough to be cynical but not long enough to be depressed. He hosts the 60-Second Earth podcast, contributes to the Instant Egghead video series and wrote a children's book on bullet trains. He also writes for publications ranging from the L.A. Review of Books to Yale e360, speaks on radio shows such as WNYC's The Takeaway, NHPR's Word of Mouth, and PRI's The World and hosts the duPont-Columbia award-winning documentary "Beyond the Light Switch" for PBS. He also happens to think Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is a surprisingly good read.

This panel is expressly for nonfiction writers who are struggling to find opportunities to write long-form articles and want to improve their long-form skills. We will cover the key components to writing sustainable long-form articles, including obtaining and maximizing the tough interviews you need for an in-depth article or possibly a book, since these articles often lead to book projects. Our panel will also discuss the current and still shifting state of publishing long-form works, including e-books.

Moderator: Christopher Johnston, ASJA

Christopher Johnston has worked as a freelance journalist since 1987. He has published more than 3,000 articles in numerous publications, including American Theatre, Balanced Living, Cleveland Magazine, Continental, Crain's Cleveland Business, The Plain Dealer, Progressive Architecture, Proto Magazine, Scientific American (online), Time.com, and Urban Design. Johnston ghostwrote The Way I Saw It, the memoirs of the late Marc Wyse, co-founder of Wyse Advertising, and is currently writing a book about reversing heart disease. He's also a playwright and director, and his plays have been produced at several theaters in Cleveland and one in New York. His most recent play, Ghosts of War, premiered in Cleveland in January, and is based on five years of interviews with a Marine Corps officer and other veterans who served in Vietnam.

Nicholas Thompson

Nicholas Thompson is the editor of Newyorker.com. He is also a contributing editor at Bloomberg Television, a technology contributor at CNN International, and a co-founder of The Atavist, a software company and digital magazine. His book, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, was published in 2009 and hailed as "brilliant" by The Washington Post and "brimming with fascinating revelations" by the New York Times. The Washington Times said it "may be the most important political biography in recent memory."

Evan Ratliff / @theatavist

Evan Ratliff is cofounder, CEO, and editor of The Atavist. Evan is an award-winning journalist for The New Yorker, Outside, National Geographic, and Wired, where he has been a contributing editor for a decade. His 2009 Wired story "Vanish," about his attempt to disappear, and the public's effort to find him, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for feature writing. (He has been a finalist three times, as both writer and editor.) His writing has appeared in numerous Best American anthologies, and he is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award. Evan also serves as the story editor for Pop-Up Magazine, the world's first live magazine, and cohosts the Longform podcast.

Greg Veis

Greg Veis is the executive editor of The New Republic. He has also been an editor for The New York Times Magazine and GQ.

Scott Stossel / @sstossel

Scott has been with The Atlantic on and off since 1992, serving as senior editor, managing editor, deputy editor, and now editor of the magazine. In 1995, as editorial director for new media, he helped launch TheAtlantic.com. In between stints at The Atlantic, he served as culture editor and executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of the book Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Daily Beast, among other publications.

Smart authors promote their own books, online or via travel in addition to their publisher's efforts. Book PR experts reveal how to organize your own virtual book tour or in person tour, who to contact, content options to offer bloggers and how to best utilize your time for peak exposure.

Moderator: Erin Flynn Jay, ASJA / @ErinFJay

Erin is a writer, publicity expert and author of Mastering the Mommy Track: Juggling Career and Kids In Uncertain Times. Since 2001, Erin has been promoting authors of new books and small businesses in all industries. Erin's articles have appeared in publications including careerbuilder.com, MSN Careers, Brandweek, Costco Connection, New York Enterprise Report and Wealth Manager.

Penny C. Sansevieri / @bookgal

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Red Hot Internet Publicity, which has been called the "leading guide to everything Internet." AME is the first book marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically harnesses social networking sites, Twitter, blogs, book videos, and relevant sites in order to push an author's message into the online community at sites related to the book's topic and thereby position the author in his or her market. AME has had eleven recent books top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.

Leah Ingram, ASJA / @suddenlyfrugal

Leah Ingram, an ASJA member, is a freelance writer, lifestyle and frugal-living expert, and experienced speaker and spokesperson, based in the Philadelphia area. She founded the Suddenly Frugal blog in 2007 and is the author of Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Less, which compiles her unique money-saving advice, including how a family can save $25,000 a year, and Toss, Keep, Sell!: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Cleaning Out the Clutter and Cashing In. Ingram has brought the Suddenly Frugal message to life via media interviews and paid speaking appearances at colleges, libraries, business associations, and other organizations, and she's been a spokesperson for many national brands, including Bank of America, T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Valpak.

Debbie Koenig, ASJA / @debbieharry

Debbie Koenig is the author of Parents Need to Eat Too: Nap-Friendly Recipes, One-Handed Meals & Time-Saving Kitchen Tricks for New Parents. Her work has appeared in more than two dozen publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Parents, Fit Pregnancy, and Weight Watchers.

Brian Feinblum / @theprexpert

Brian Feinblum is the chief marketing officer and a senior vice president of NYC-based Media Connect, formerly Planned Television Arts, a division of Finn Partners, the largest book promoters nationwide. He previously worked for several independent book publishers, SPI Books and Lifetime Books. His two decades of publishing experience has allowed him to see the book industry from the unique vantage point of a book editor, acquisitions eidtor, publicist, marketer and published author. For the last two years his very resourceful and insightful blog, BookmarketingBuzz has served as a leading source of information and stimulating conversation on book marketing and publicity.

So here you are at a writers' conference, and you want to make contacts. Maybe you're really good at this; maybe you want to hide in a corner. Either way, you're going to enjoy ASJA Connect. This is a special opportunity to meet other writers, as well as editors, publishers, sponsors, and exhibitors. We will help. You will make contacts, you will have fun, and you will leave happy.

Moderator: Michele Wojciechowski, ASJA

Companies are becoming publishers, creating news websites and other online content as part of their marketing strategies -- and hiring freelancers to do the work. Hear from three agencies that work with some of the biggest brands in business on what they're looking for in freelance editors and writers, what types of assignments they offer, and what they pay.

Moderator: Michelle Rafter, ASJA / @MichelleRafter

Michelle is a freelance editor running content marketing websites and projects for digital media companies such as Federated Media and BlogHer. She also works as a reporter, covering careers, business, boomers and technology for such publications as NBCNews.com, the Wall Street Journal and Crain's Workforce Management.

Mary Ellen Slayter

Mary Ellen is founder of Reputation Capital Media, a content marketing agency that works with small, mid-sized and large companies, including American Express and Monster Worldwide. Before starting her own agency, she was director of content development and a senior general business and finance editor at SmartBrief, the e-mail newsletter publisher. Prior to that, she spent eight years at the Washington Post, writing the "Career Track" column and working as a business news editor.

Sam Slaughter / @samslaughter215

Sam is the managing editor and chief operating officer at Contently, an online marketplace that connects freelance reporters to brands embarking into journalism. He's a veteran of several news organizations, including Comcast.net, NY1 News and the Providence Journal. He has been a freelance writer and editor for many years, and is the author of the (as yet unpublished) travel memoir American Wetback. He enjoys long walks on the beach and nachos, and is the owner of two dumb dogs.

Leslie C. Reiser

Leslie Reiser leads IBM's digital marketing and influencer strategy targeting midsize businesses and IBM Business Partners across mobile, social media and other channels for 62 global markets. Leslie has developed award-winning social marketing communities, including MidsizeInsider.com, an IT news site peppered with expert writers that addresses challenges facing business and technical professionals. MidsizeInsider.com recently won the 2013 Digiday Publishing Award for Best Content Marketing Program, and the Beagle Research WizKid award. Leslie is on the executive board of SMAC.org, a nonprofit social media educational and networking association, is a contributing author of "Voice-of-the-Customer Marketing," and is a featured speaker at industry events.

What does it take to win an ASJA writing award? What's the difference between a good piece of work and a great one? Four of ASJA's 2013 award recipients (to be announced in late March) will take you through their process, explaining where they found that initial idea, what they did to shape into a viable form, and how they survived the bumps along the way.

Moderator: Beverly Gray, ASJA board member / @bev_movieland

Beverly, who once developed low-budget features for B-movie maven Roger Corman, is the author of Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking. The paperback edition, now updated and available as an ebook, was tastefully retitled Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers. Beverly has also published Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond.

Victoria Costello, ASJA / @VCostelloBlogs

Victoria is an Emmy Award-winning science journalist currently managing blogs and social media at the open access publisher, Public Library of Science (PLOS), where she oversees 16 science and medical blogs. Previously, she spent two decades working as a freelance writer, author or coauthor of six books, and a TV producer specializing in psychology and parenting. In 2012 Prometheus Books published her science memoir, A Lethal Inheritance, A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness, -- after she met and pitched Prometheus editor Linda Regan at the 2010 ASJA conference.

Katherine Eban, ASJA

KATHERINE EBAN is an award-winning investigative reporter, and a contributor at Fortune magazine. She also writes for Self, Vanity Fair and other national magazines. She has worked at Conde Nast Portfolio, the New York Times, New York, the New York Observer, and ABC News. Her work has been featured on national news programs including 60 Minutes, 20/20, Nightline and NPR. She was a 2006 Alicia Patterson fellow. Dangerous Doses, her first book, was excerpted in Vanity Fair, was a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection, and was named one of the Best Books of 2005 by Kirkus Reviews.

Echo Garrett, ASJA / @echogarrett

Echo is the co-founder/Board Chair of the Orange Duffel Bag Initiative, a 501c3 nonprofit that does life plan coaching with at-risk youth (ages 12-24) based on the book she co-authored called My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change, winner of eight national and international awards. She has written or contributed to 12 other books, including Why Don't They Just Get a Job?: One Couple's Mission to End Poverty in Their Community, and has been published in more than 75 national outlets including Parade, Delta Sky, Business Week and more. She has been interviewed on Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, NY-1 and served as editor-in-chief of Atlanta Woman magazine.

Aline Alexander Newman, ASJA / @alinenewman

Aline is an award-winning freelance writer and certified teacher whose stories and articles have appeared in many national magazines, including Guideposts, Highlights for Children, and National Geographic Kids. She writes a history column for the Boonville Herald and is the author of two children's chapter books: Ape Escapes! And More True Stories of Animals Behaving Badly and Animal Superstars And More True Stories of Amazing Animal Talents. Her next book, co-authored with Gary Weitzman, DVM, and titled How to Speak Dog, is due out from National Geographic, in September.

Social media has become a must-use for journalists, especially as Facebook crosses a billion users and newcomers, like Pinterest, dominate how our readers get their information. Here you'll get a great overview of what's out there in social media and, more importantly, understand how to use it wisely and effectively.

Moderator: Sree Sreenivasan, ASJA / @sree

Sree Sreenivasan, this session's sole presenter, is Chief Digital Officer at Columbia University and works directly with the provost to further online learning and digital understanding. A regular ASJA conference speaker, Sreenivasan consistently creates digital media discussions that vibrate throughout the event. He has been recognized by Poynter, AdAge, Newsweek, and GQ India.

Q: "Can I be sued for what I write on my blog?" A: "You betcha!" Q: "Can I be sued for stuff I write for free?" A: "Yep." Online defamation, privacy issues, trade secrets, intellectual property, SLAPP suits, blogging anonymously; subpoenas; cease and desist letters; bloggers as journalists ... and more. Come with your questions and we will try to provide general answers.

Moderator: Joan M. Burda, ASJA / @joanmburda

Joan M. Burda is a lawyer and award-winning author of Estate Planning for Same-Sex Couples, Second Edition. She has also written Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Clients: A Lawyer's Guide and An Overview of Federal Consumer Law. In addition, she writes and speaks regularly on LGBT legal issues.

Mark A. Fowler, Attorney

Mark A. Fowler is a partner of Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP. He represents newspapers, book publishers, magazines, broadcasters, cablecasters, digital media clients, and advertising agencies in defamation, intellectual property, antitrust, and reporters' rights matters. In addition to his litigation practice, Mr. Fowler counsels media clients on a variety of issues and assists them with intellectual property transactions. He performs pre-publication and pre-broadcast review of newscasts, news stories and books. He frequently lectures on issues regarding copyright law, the First Amendment, and new legal issues affecting the digital media. Formerly a professional editor and writer, he has appeared on approximately 70 TV and radio talk shows in connection with his published nonfiction books for general audiences. More recently, he authored the article The Satisfactory Manuscript Clause in Book Publishing Contracts (Journal of Law & the Arts). Mr. Fowler earned his undergraduate degree magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa (B.A.) from Brandeis University and his law degree (J.D.) from Columbia University, where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review, a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and a Kent Scholar.

Mark Lerner

Mark Lerner is a partner at Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke LLP, where he specializes in trademark and copyright law. Mr. Lerner is a litigator with experience in intellectual property disputes and commercial litigation. He has successfully defended clients in trademark, trade dress and false advertising cases. Mr. Lerner has experience in pre-publication and pre-broadcast review and sweepstakes administration. He also regularly assists clients in transactions involving intellectual property and licensing. Mr. Lerner earned his undergraduate degree (B.A.) from Haverford College and his law degree cum laude (J.D.) from New York University, where he was an editor of the competitions division of the Moot Court Board. Mr. Lerner has a background in public relations and the performing arts.

Travel blog writing pays! Whether you publish your own blog, or write for another's site, there are opportunities to generate additional revenue; gain exposure for your platform; subsidize your travel budget; and build your overall business. Our panelists will share their experiences with paid assignments, ads, sponsorships, brand ambassadorships, social media consulting, and more.

Moderator: Traci Suppa, ASJA / @WordScapes

Traci is an award-winning writer, copywriter, and blogger, specializing in travel and tourism, retail, design, sustainability, parenting, and other lifestyle topics. She publishes the "Go BIG or Go Home" family travel blog, and is a regular contributing blogger for FamilyVacationCritic.com. Her freelance career was preceded by 15 years in tourism marketing.

Maria and Anthony Russo / @TheCultureist

Maria and Anthony Russo are co-founders of "The Culture-ist," an online magazine which covers travel, food, innovative small businesses, women's issues, philanthropy and green initiatives. Maria, the editor, has professional experience in radio, television, print media and public relations. She is a women's rights activist and a lover of books. Anthony, the site's director of advertising, marketing and partnerships, has spent the past six years focused on strategic growth in the international debt capital markets, and is pursuing an MBA in Marketing and Global Business Strategy at Rutgers University. http://www.thecultureist.com/

Patricia Serrano / @FreshTraveler

Patricia Serrano has combined her passions for traveling, writing and filmmaking on her blog FreshTraveler.com. A professional screenwriter and film maker, she specializes in video blogging and documentary production. This expertise lead to her participation in the Travel Channel's "Best of the Road" travelogue program with Rand McNally. She is currently working on a full-length screenplay, and recently wrote, produced, and sold a web series to FishBowl Media.

Charu Suri / @Butterflydiary

Charu Suri is the creator of the online travel magazine, Butterflydiary.com, which focuses on transformational travel experiences. She is Social Media Manager for the United States Tour Operators Association and other companies. She has been tapped as Brand Ambassador by several wellness brands because of her interest in sustainable tourism and green living. Charu is currently working on a "Travel Gives Back" initiative, and was recently featured on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation site for her post on how social media can change the world.

Everyone's been calling for the death knell in publishing, but there is one major market that's booming. Interested in writing fiction for young adults and children? Learn all about this major market from those in the know. In this interactive panel, an agent, an editor and an author each share insights on getting started in the YA fiction and kid lit genres. This session will explore how journalists-turned-novelists are turning out award-winning novels for the teen set; how writers should approach the market; making the transition from nonfiction to fiction; finding a teen voice; building on your existing platform.

Moderator: Sona Charaipotra, ASJA / @sona_c

An NYC-based freelance writer, Sona has contributed to the New York Times, American Way, the Daily Beast, MSN, iVillage, Cosmopolitan, ABC News and other major media. She recently completed her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the New School, and is currently working on her first novel.

Zareen Jaffery / @zareenjaffery

Zareen Jaffery joined Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers as Executive Editor in February 2011, continuing her focus on commercial and literary young adult and middle grade fiction, as well as teen non-fiction. Zareen works with a number of New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed authors including Jenny Han, Siobhan Vivian, Kresley Cole, Claire Legrand, Hilary Duff, and Becca Fitzpatrick. Her upcoming projects include a debut middle grade series by Academy Award winning actress Octavia Spencer and a memoir by Shyima Hall, a former child slave. Zareen began her children's publishing career at HarperCollins Children's Books editing bestselling novelists Lauren Conrad, Jodi Lynn Anderson, LJ Smith, and Claudia Gray. Prior to working in children's publishing, she was an editor of fiction and non-fiction at Hyperion, the book publishing arm of The Walt Disney Company, where she worked with notable authors Amy Goodman, Marshall Goldsmith, and Paulina Porizkova. Zareen is a graduate of New York University.

Melissa Walker / @melissacwalker

Melissa Walker is a magazine editor and writer and the co-founder of iheartdaily.com. Her six YA novels are: Violet on the Runway, Violet by Design and Violet in Private (Penguin), about a small-town girl who's scouted to become a model and finds herself in the crazy fashion world; Lovestruck Summer (HarperTeen), a beach read full of indie rock and cowboys; Small Town Sinners (Bloomsbury), the story of a girl who wants to star in her Evangelical community's Hell House production; Unbreak My Heart (Bloomsbury), about the year that broke Clementine's heart, and the summer that healed it... on a boat!

Molly Jaffa / @molly_jaffa

Molly Jaffa has been at Folio since 2008 and is an Associate Member of the Association of Authors' Representatives (AAR). She focuses exclusively on Middle Grade and YA fiction. She is also Folio's Co-Director of International Rights and attends all major international book fairs for the agency. Her clients include Lana Krumwiede (Freakling, Candlewick Press, October 2012, and Archon, October 2013), Julie Murphy (Side Effects May Vary, HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 2014) and Kristen Lippert-Martin (Tabula Rasa, Egmont 2014).

Writers generally believe that the art of good storytelling begins when one begins to type or, at the earliest, during the reporting stage when digging for the right details leads to wonderful prose. But the truth is, a great story will be determined, first and foremost, by choosing the right subject, securing unfettered access to them, and getting them to let you inside their world. In this session, attendees will learn how to do that, as the speaker reveals one of the closest-kept secrets in the business: The best subjects for any story, of any length, are either losers, dreamers, or people on a quest.

Moderator: Keith O'Brien, ASJA / @KeithOB

Keith O'Brien is a former staff writer for the Boston Globe and the author of Outside Shot, a new book from St. Martin's Press that the New York Times calls "a reporting tour de force and an utterly gripping account" of the power and meaning of basketball in rural Kentucky. His work appears regularly in the New York Times Magazine and on National Public Radio shows, such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, and Marketplace.

Brendan Borrell, ASJA / @bborrell

Brendan Borrell is a journalist whose writing has appeared in Scientific American, Smithsonian, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek and The New York Times. He is a 2013 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow and has reported from around the world on science, business, crime, health, and natural resources.

Amanda Aronczyk / @aronczyk

Amanda Aronczyk has been a public radio reporter and new media producer for over 15 years, and has worked at Radiolab, Marketplace, Weekend America and The Next Big Thing. As a freelancer, she has produced podcasts for the The New Yorker and Slate, as well as reported and produced for a variety of programs, including the BBC World Service, Freakonomics and Studio 360. She's also an adjunct faculty member at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a Soros Justice Media Fellow, and is currently working on The Cost of Crime, a multimedia investigation, into the financial repercussions of imprisonment.

Knowing your way around a video camera has become increasingly valuable to journalists and, in some cases, could be the difference between getting and not getting an assignment. In this session, you'll learn the ins-and-outs of video journalism from capturing quality footage on your camera, to editing your work so it's publish-ready.

Court Passant

Court Passant, this session's sole presenter, is executive director, interactive of CBS News and a former long-time executive producer for CBS News.

Freelancers, in addition to working solo, often are on their own when it comes to planning for retirement, obtaining health coverage, and protecting themselves from professional liability. Join a panel of financial and legal professionals for an enlightening session on how to strengthen and protect yourself financially. Find out about the solo 401(k) and other retirement plans for the self-employed, and come prepared with your questions on what type of business structure can best protect your personal assets.

Moderator: Dinah Wisenberg Brin, ASJA / @dinahwbrin

Dinah is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia covering business, personal finance, entrepreneurs, franchises, healthcare and HR issues for various national publications. Her work appears on CNBC.com, Entrepreneur.com, YoungEntrepreneur.com, the LDI Health Economist and SHRM Online, among other publications. She previously worked as a staff reporter for The Associated Press, Dow Jones Newswires, Congressional Quarterly, and contributed to the Wall Street Journal.

Imke Ratschko / @NYBizAttorney

Imke is a business attorney focusing her practice on advising small businesses, emerging companies and start-ups in transactions and business disputes. She has over ten years' experience in a wide variety of corporate and finance transactions, mergers and acquisitions, asset-based finance and other commercial matters for domestic and international clients. She graduated from the Free University of Berlin and the New York University School of Law.

Greg Plechner

Greg is a Certified Financial Planner, fee-only wealth manager and principal at Modera Wealth Management in New Jersey. He's written personal finance columns for thestreet.com, touching on Solo 401(k) plans for the self-employed, retirement plans for small businesses and tapping into a 401(k) early.

J. Sadler Hayes, II, CLU / @sadlerhayes

Sadler Hayes works with individuals, families and small businesses in planning for their financial security through the purchase of health, life, disability, critical illness and long-term care insurance. He was featured in a 2010 article in The New York Times about self-employed people turning to brokers to help find health coverage.

Karen Baldwin

Karen Baldwin, vice president of business development for AXIS Insurance, which offers media liability insurance to ASJA members. She oversees new product development for AXIS professional lines and the insurer's association-program business. She previously served as media-liability product manager for other insurers, and earned a BA in Economics from Gettysburg College.

Writing about animals takes a big heart and competitive spirit. You also need skills to write with emotional impact and create compelling animal characters. An animal editor will discuss the market, and three successful animal authors will tell you how they found their way in this popular genre and developed, sold, and promoted their work.

Moderator: Kristin von Kreisler, ASJA

Kristin, a bestselling author, has written about animals for more than 15 years. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Woman's Day, Family Circle, and the Reader's Digest, where she was a staff writer. Her first nonfiction book, The Compassion of Animals, pioneered the topic of animal emotions when many experts told her that animals felt no emotions and could not think. Her memoir, For Bea, describes rescuing a beagle who had escaped from a research lab. Kensington recently bought her novel, Grace, about a golden retriever.

Gwen Cooper / @homerblindcat

Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, and the novels Love Saves the Day and Diary of a South Beach Party Girl. She is active with numerous animal welfare organizations and donates 10% of her royalties from Homer's Odyssey to organizations that serve abused, abandoned, and disabled pets. Gwen lives in Manhattan with her husband, Laurence, and her three perfect cats -- Homer, Clayton, and Fanny.

Jim Gorant, ASJA

Jim Gorant's career in magazine publishing began in 1990 with a job at Good Housekeeping and led him to Sports Illustrated, where he is currently a senior editor. He has held staff positions at GQ, Men's Journal, and Popular Mechanics, and his freelance work has appeared in national magazines ranging from Men's Health and Outside to the Robb Report and Philadelphia Inquirer. His original Sports Illustrated cover story on the dogs of Bad Newz kennels won the Humane Society's Genesis Award for magazine writing and led to publication of The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption, which became a New York Times bestseller. His latest book is Wallace: The Underdog Who Saved a Family, Conquered a Sport, and Championed Pit Bulls.

Susy Flory, ASJA / @susyflory

Susy is a New York Times bestselling author who grew up on the back of a quarter horse in Northern California. She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood typewriter. She taught high school English and journalism, then quit in 2004 to write full time for publications such as Focus on the Family, Guideposts Books, and Today.

Leslie Meredith / @atriabooks

Leslie Meredith is a vice president and senior editor at Simon & Schuster's Atria Books, where she edits a broad range of nonfiction, including science, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. Previous to Atria, she worked for 11 years at Free Press, was editorial director at Harmony/Crown, and also worked at Ballantine and Bantam. Bestsellers she has edited in science and nature include Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien, Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff and Tony Angell, The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell, The Dog Who Loved Too Much by Nicholas Dodman, How Dogs Think by Stan Coren, and Rocks of Ages and other books by Stephen Jay Gould. She lives in Connecticut and competes in agility trials with her Welsh Corgi, Cooper.

Millions of people love a mystery or thriller. How can you get a piece of the action? A panel of experts from the world of detective and fiction -- including agents, a publisher and an author -- will teach you how to make a killing. Which genres are selling big and which aren't? How do you break in? What about short stories, self-publishing and e-books? And is it possible to write mysteries/thrillers/suspense on the side while another endeavor pays most of the bills?

Moderator: Randy Dotinga, ASJA board member / @rdotinga

Randy is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He writes book reviews and reports on the publishing world for The Christian Science Monitor, writes a daily newsletter about local politics for Voice of San Diego (in addition to news and feature articles), and regularly reports on health and medicine for several news outlets. His clients include MSNBC.com, Newsday (Long Island), Kaiser Health News, HealthDay News Service, Health Behavior News Service, kidshealth.org and more.

Megan Abbott / @meganeabbott

Megan is the Edgar award-winning author of six novels, including The End of Everything, Queenpin, and Bury Me Deep. Her latest novel, Dare Me, has just been optioned for film. She will be the 2013-2014 John Grisham Writer-in Residence at Ole Miss. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, Los Angeles Times Magazine and The New Statesman. She is the author of an academic book on hardboiled fiction and film noir, and editor of A Hell of a Woman, a female crime fiction anthology.

Stacia Decker / @StaciaDecker

Stacia joined the Donald Maass Literary Agency in 2009. A former editor at Harcourt and Otto Penzler Books, she began her career at Farrar, Straus & Giroux after earning an MFA in nonfiction writing at Columbia University. She represents crime and mystery fiction, literary fiction, thrillers, and cross-genre fiction with speculative elements. Among her clients are Frank Bill, Joelle Charbonneau, Adam Christopher, Cassandra Rose Clarke, Seth Harwood, John Hornor Jacobs, Owen Laukkanen, Fiona Maazel, and Chuck Wendig.

Neil Nyren

Neil Nyren is senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam's Sons. Among the authors of crime and suspense he edits: Clive Cussler, Ken Follett, Robert Crais, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Frederick Forsyth, Randy Wayne White, Alex Berenson, C.J. Box, Ace Atkin and Tom Young.

Josh Getzler / @jgetzler

Josh represents fiction and nonfiction (mostly fiction, much of which is crime-related (mystery, thriller, creepy), adult and YA/middle-grade books (though not picture books). He is particularly into foreign and historical thrillers and mysteries, so send your ruthless doges and impious cardinals and your farmhouse cozies.

Statistics show that 50 percent of the population relates to narrative storytelling, while the other 50 percent needs numbers to illustrate complicated ideas. Why leave out half of your readership? Let's face it, even as writers, we need numbers -- percents, totals, statistics -- to help tell our most compelling stories or spice up the really boring ones. And that's not always a comfortable place to be. But where do reliable statistics come from? What's the best way to read a study? How do you know if numbers are misleading? And what are the best ways to weave cold, hard data into a well-worded tale? This session will help even the most math-phobic feel confident.

Moderator: Laura Laing, ASJA / @mathforgrownups

Laura Laing, this session's sole presenter, has a B.S. in Math and an M.A. in Humanities, making her one of those odd folks who loves both words and numbers. And as a former high school math teacher and author of Math for Grownups, and the upcoming e-book, Math for Writers, she has parlayed her unusual mix of skills and interests into a career as a math evangelist -- capable of convincing the most ardent math-deniers that even English majors need (and can benefit from) math. She is not here to proclaim that math is fun! and interesting! and magical! But she can demonstrate how a few basic math skills and concepts are important tools, especially for those with a deep-seated fear or hatred of the Queen of the Sciences. (No slide rule, protractor or graphing calculator required.)

Interested in self-publishing? Aren't we all? This session will cover: How to get your book into print and ebook format without spending a fortune; the difference between self- (or "indie") publishing and vanity publishing; which types of self-published books are most likely to succeed; how to effectively use advertising, social media and other techniques to promote your book; and how to avoid the most common pitfalls that those new to the idea can easily fall into.

Moderator: Erica Manfred, ASJA / @ericamanfred

Erica is a freelance journalist, humorous essayist, and author. Most recently she self-published the novel Interview with a Jewish Vampire (Kindle and paperback); and Get Off My Case, (Kindle only). She's also authored two nonfiction self-help books: He's History You're Not; Surviving Divorce After Forty and The Doctor's Guide to Weight Loss Surgery. Her articles and essays have appeared in Cosmopolitan, The New York Times Magazine, Ms., New Age Journal, Village Voice, Woman's Day, SELF, Ladies' Home Journal, and many other publications.

Angela Schiavone / @smashwords

Angela Schiavone serves on the marketing team at Smashwords where she helps develop educational outreach programs for the Smashwords community. Smashwords is the world's leading distributor of ebooks from self-published authors and small independent presses. Since 2008, more than 185,000 titles have been published on the Smashwords platform by over 55,000 authors, publishers and literary agents. Smashwords distributes the ebooks to leading retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo, as well as to libraries throughout the Unites States. Angela was a Smashwords author before she became a Smashwords employee. She has self-published several titles including Metanoia, Who Killed Abigail Watson, Forever Hold Your Peace, and The Lost Suitcase.

Darcie Chan / @darciechan

Darcie is the author of The Mill River Recluse, a self-published debut novel that has become a word-of-mouth e-book sensation. With nearly 700,000 copies sold, it's appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists for more than 28 weeks and became a heartwarming favorite of readers across the country.

Miral Sattar, ASJA / @mirasattar

Miral is founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch, an award-winning literary services marketplace that matches authors and publishers with quality, award-winning professionals to get new books and apps to market. The platform brokers the interaction between a community of rated and reviewed publishers, authors, designers, editors, proofreaders, conversion specialists, marketers and enhanced eBook experts to help create exceptional digital books. She has worked in the media industry for 11 years, most recently at Time where she launched several digital initiatives including an iPad and mobile site, mobile apps, a video and podcast channel, blogs, and SEO.

Rick Tannenbaum / @ehenhouse

Rick is the publisher of Hen House Press, LLC, a New York-based small press that publishes eBooks, trade paperbacks and audiobooks. He has been teaching eBook production and marketing to small groups since 2010.

The rapidly changing publishing landscape creates opportunities, but also new hazards for writers: self-publishing pitfalls, underperforming agents, copyright hassles, and even outright scams. Recognize and avoid these problems. Our panel features writers operating on the front lines to protect writers' rights and financial interests.

Moderator: Greg Breining, ASJA

Greg Breining has been writing about science, nature and travel for The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and many other national and regional publications for more than 40 years. He has written more than a dozen nonfiction books, and is a founding partner of Breeze Communication Arts.

Victoria Strauss / @victoriastrauss

Victoria Strauss is the author of eight novels for adults and young adults. She's also co-founder, with Ann Crispin, of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group that tracks and warns about literary fraud (www.writerbeware.com). She was a 2012 winner of an Independent Book Blogger Award for her work with Writer Beware, and was honored with the SFWA Service Award in 2009.

Penny C. Sansevieri / @bookgal

Penny C. Sansevieri is founder and CEO of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., and an adjunct professor teaching self-publishing for NYU. Her company has developed innovative social media/internet book-marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Red Hot Internet Publicity.

Richard C. White / @nightwolfwriter

Richard C. White is a member of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and serves on the Writer Beware committee for SFWA. His latest work, The Black School, will be released by Musa Publishing on 26 April 2013, as the fifth of a ten-short-story series.

Jan F. Constantine

Jan F. Constantine is general counsel for The Authors Guild, a nonprofit organization representing a membership of over 8,500 published authors and freelancers. She has over thirty years of legal experience in the practice of general corporate law, with specific expertise in intellectual property law. Previously, she was executive vice president of News Corporation, and deputy general counsel for Macmillan, Inc.

The great storytelling and communications skills you have as a journalist are transferable beyond mere pitching of articles. As journalism changes, explore how you can expand your possibilities for work by delving into PR, marketing, corporate communications and other related fields, using the tried-and-true talents you've honed as a journalist. This panel will include publicists, editors who used to be publicists and others in the industry who have made seamless transitions without blurring the lines of ethics and integrity. You can do it all!

Moderator: Lynne Meredith Golodner, MFA, ASJA / @YourPeople

After 15 years as a journalist for national media, Lynne created Your People LLC in 2007 to work with small and medium-sized businesses and non-profits on marketing, public relations and social media. This year, Your People produced a book titled Stand Out from the Crowd: The Your People guide to beside-the-box, funky, from-the-heart DIY Marketing, PR & Social Media, written by Lynne. Lynne continues to write, both articles and books, and her first novel will be published in 2013 as well as a book about food and faith. She speaks and teaches worldwide, and serves as a consultant guiding entrepreneurs in their communication skills and strategies. Her business can be found at www.yourppl.com.

Jennifer Marsik Friess / @JenMarsikFriess

Now in her second year as a public relations consultant, Jen has more than 15 years' experience primarily in media relations, but also as a writer, event planner, content manager and researcher. The "relations" part is vital: She knows that is the key to getting results. Jen knows this because she's seen the communications process from multiple angles. She started on the writing side. A reporter for five years, she then moved over to public relations, landing at one of the largest agencies in the industry. Her trajectory from media to nonprofit, corporate, agency and finally solo practitioner (her clients range from an international glass manufacturer, a chemist who makes fertilizer additives and a nonprofit children's event) has given her a great deal of insight about how the system works, how PR is perceived and how relationships cultivate success.

Lisa Brody

Lisa Brody is a longtime journalist, editor and former PR person in the metro Detroit area. She is currently the editor for Downtown Publications, a group of newsmagazines which target local markets within the Detroit area, featuring hyperlocal news, long in-depth feature articles, business, profiles, restaurant and wine columns and society columns. For 20 years, she worked as a freelance writer, focusing on business, lifestyle, homes, fashion-you name it, and wrote a restaurant column for 12 years for a regional magazine.

Kathleen Schmidt / @KMSPR

Kathleen Schmidt has over 15 years of experience in book publishing, throughout which she has worked with a variety of New York Times-bestselling authors and celebrities. In 2006, she was part of the team that launched The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and in 2009, she had the privilege of working on The Time of My Life by the late Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi. Since founding KMSPR in 2010, Kathleen has worked with authors and publishers on traditional and digital media campaigns, social media platforms, and overall branding and marketing. Her clients have included New York Times Bestselling authors J. Courtney Sullivan and Buzz Bissinger. Kathleen is also a member of Women's Media Group, a New York-based nonprofit association of women who have achieved prominence in the many fields of media. She is a sought-after speaker for BookExpo, and frequently teaches webinars for authors who need social media coaching. She has written for BabyStyle Magazine, The Wall Street Journal's "Speakeasy" column, The New York Times blog "Motherlode," and Post Partum Progress. She currently contributes to Medium, the writing platform created by Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone, and is writing a monthly column about the publishing business for Virginia Quarterly Review.

Peter Zuckerman, ASJA

Peter Zuckerman is a journalist, author and communications professional. He has received some of the most prestigious recognitions in American journalism. In 2005, he was one of the youngest people to ever win a Livingston Award, the largest, all-media, general reporting prize in America. Among the dozens of other awards his reporting has received is the National Journalism Award, given by the Scriprs Howard Foundation for the best newspaper writing in the United States; and the Blethan Award, given for the best journalism in the northwest. PBS profiled Zuckerman in an hour-long documentary, "In a Small Town"; Harvard University's Niemann Foundation for Excellence in Journalism profiled Zuckerman as part of a series about courageous reporting. His book, Buried in the Sky, won the National Outdoor Book Award, the George Orwell Prize and the Banff Mountain Book Award. Outside magazine described it as "easily the most riveting and important mountaineering book of the past decade." Zuckerman also works as the media manager for Basic Rights Oregon, which strives to ensure equality for all gay and trans Oregonians.

If you've got the right combination of imagination and savvy, your science-fiction or fantasy book could become a bestseller and bring movie studios rushing to your door. But how do you turn into a Lord of the (Publishing) Rings? Our panel of sci-fi/fantasy experts -- including two veteran authors -- will offer inside tips about breaking in, selling your story and making a profit.

Moderator: Jack El-Hai, ASJA past president / @Jack_ElHai

Jack is a writer of books and articles who covers medicine, science, and history. His books include The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (forthcoming in 2013, optioned for screen and stage by Mythology Entertainment), Nonstop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines (forthcoming in 2013), The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (2005, in production as a TV series for HBO), and many volumes of regional and business history. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

Victoria Strauss / @victoriastrauss

Victoria Strauss is the author of eight fantasy novels for adults and young adults. She's also co-founder, with Ann Crispin, of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group that tracks and warns about literary fraud (www.writerbeware.com). She was a 2012 winner of an Independent Book Blogger Award for her work with Writer Beware, and was honored with the SFWA Service Award in 2009.

Richard C. White / @nightwolfwriter

Richard C. White is a member of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and serves on the Writer Beware committee for SFWA. His latest work, The Black School, will be released by Musa Publishing on 26 April 2013, as the fifth of a ten-short-story series.

Sheila Williams

Sheila Williams is the multiple Hugo-award winning editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. She is also the editor or co-editor of twenty-six anthologies. The most recent of these are Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine: 30th Anniversary Anthology (Tachyon Publications) and Enter A Future: Fantastic Tales from Asimov's Science Fiction (Dell Magazines). Sheila is the co-founder of the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, which is given out each year in Orlando, Florida, by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.

Shawna McCarthy

Shawna Lee McCarthy is a science fiction and fantasy editor and literary agent. McCarthy edited Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine from 1983 until 1985, worked as an editor for Bantam from 1985 until 1988 and is now an independent literary agent. She represents Robert Charles Wilson, Daniel Abraham, Eric Flint, Liz Williams, Sarah Zettel and many other well-known fantasy and science fiction writers. She resides in coastal New Jersey.

This session will focus on how to help readers both wrap their head around difficult subjects, and also understand why they should care. In the end, sound bites and lay language only take you so far; then you still have to humanize the story by using elements of humor, drama and even adventure, so as to turn a difficult concept into a great story.

Moderator: Barry Burd & Patchen Barss, ASJA / @burdbarry

Dr. Barry Burd has an M.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois. As a teaching assistant in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, he was elected five times to the university-wide List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students. Since 1980, Dr. Burd has been a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. When he's not lecturing at Drew University, Dr. Burd leads training courses for professional programmers in business and industry. He has lectured at conferences in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia. He is the author of several articles and books, including Java For Dummies and Android Application Development All-in-One For Dummies, both published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. Dr. Burd lives in Madison, New Jersey with his wife and two kids (both in their twenties, and mostly on their own). As an avid indoor enthusiast, Dr. Burd enjoys sleeping, talking, and eating.

Patchen Barss / @patchenbarss

Patchen is a Toronto-based journalist and author who specializes in university research, science and technology. He is the author of The Erotic Engine: How Pornography Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google. He writes about quantum physics, social identity, artificial intelligence, epigenetics and other difficult-but-fascinating subjects.

Tech can radically affect your productivity whether you're a gadget wizard or a luddite. We'll tell you all about the latest proven technology to make your office stronger, your writing sharper, and your business smoother. The panel is a must-attend to know how smart tech can improve your career.

Moderator: Damon Brown, ASJA board member / @browndamon

Damon, ASJA board member, is co-creator of the iPhone narrative app Quote Unquote and is author of several titles, most recently the TED Book Our Virtual Shadow: Why We are Obsessed with Documenting Our Lives Online.

Samuel Greengard, past president, ASJA / @samthewriter

Sam, an ASJA past president, covers tech business for several publications and is author of the best-selling AARP Crash Course in Finding the Work You Love.

Whether you're working on your first or fifth book, you may not have an agent to negotiate your publishing contract for you. We'll discuss why some writers don't have an agent, as well what you need to avoid and what you need to have in a contract to protect your rights.

Moderator: Deborah Niemann, ASJA / @deborahwrites

Deborah is a homesteader, writer, and self-sufficiency expert. In 2002, she relocated her family from the suburbs of Chicago to a 32 acre parcel on a creek "in the middle of nowhere". Together, they built their own home and began growing the majority of their own food. Deborah presents extensively on topics including soap making, bread baking, cheese making, composting, and homeschooling. She is the author of Homegrown and Handmade: A Practical Guide for More Self-Reliant Living and Ecothrifty: Cheaper, Greener Choices for a Happier, Healthier Life.

Jan F. Constantine

Jan has served as General Counsel for The Authors Guild, a nonprofit organization representing a membership of over 8,500 published authors and freelancers, since 2005. In addition to her other responsibilities, she has been overseeing The Authors Guild, et al v. Google, Inc., a class action lawsuit, filed in September 2005. She has over thirty years of legal experience in the practice of general corporate law and litigation, with specific expertise in intellectual property, trade regulation, and employment law. She is currently an adjunct professor at NYU.

Regina Ryan

Regina Ryan founded her independent literary agency company 36 years ago. Prior to that she was editor-in-chief of Macmillan Adult Books, the first woman ever to hold that position in a major hardcover publishing house. Before that she was an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. She represents mainly adult nonfiction. Some of her recent titles include The Thinker's Thesaurus by Peter Meltzer, The Peterson's Guide to Bird Sounds by Nathan Pieplow, Parenting Through Divorce by Lisa Rene Richards, and Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London by Andrea Warren.

Learn how to turn content you've already created, or ideas you've been contemplating, into special reports, ebooks, audio products and more that you can sell online directly to consumers and businesses.

Moderator: Marcia Layton Turner, ASJA / @marciaturner

Marcia is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and information entrepreneur. She is the founder and executive director the Association of Ghostwriters. Her information products include a special report on ghostwriting markets, an ebook on extreme couponing, and a trade magazine directory. She is also the author, co-author, or ghost of more than 25 books. Her work has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Entrepreneur, Woman's Day, and many others.

Sandra Beckwith, board member, ASJA / @sandrabeckwith

Sandra generates about one-third of her income from information products she creates for authors. They range from the free "Build Book Buzz" newsletter to an e-book on how to write a book announcement press release, a workbook of book publicity media relations templates and samples, the popular "Book Publicity 101: How to Build Book Buzz" e-course, and audio programs on specific book promotion topics. Beckwith is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Publicity for Nonprofits: Generating Media Exposure That Leads to Awareness, Growth, and Contributions; a ghostwriter; and a frequent contributor to custom, sponsored, and corporate publications and websites. She is on the ASJA board of directors.

Fred Gleeck / @fredgleeck

Fred Gleeck is an information marketing expert, consultant and author with close to 30 years of experience. In addition to creating and selling his own information products on the web, he works with other subject matter experts to create and market their knowledge and info products.

Many of us were initially drawn to writing as a way to make a difference: the belief that by exposing truth, challenging power, and highlighting injustice our work could contribute to positive change. But amid market pressures and the responsibilities we all juggle, we may drift away from this, under the impression that pursuing idealistic projects would put us behind professionally or financially. However, there are plenty of opportunities to publish ground-breaking journalism that pays as much as more commercial work. And as newspapers fold and many established venues devote less space to important topics, the need for skilled freelancers to tell these stories is stronger than ever. Learn how to crack these markets with the stories you feel driven to write.

Moderator: Judith D. Schwartz, ASJA / @judithdschwartz

Judith D. Schwartz is a long-time freelance writer--ASJA member since 1986--whose work has appeared in venues from Glamour and Redbook to The Christian Science Monitor and The New York Times. Her latest book, Cows Save the Planet and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth sprung from articles written to make a difference. She has an MA in counseling psychology and an MSJ from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She lives with her family in Southern Vermont.

Eric Bates

Eric Bates has worked as an investigative reporter and editor for more than 25 years. He currently serves as executive editor of Rolling Stone, where he oversees the magazine¹s feature stories and political reporting. Previously he was the investigative editor of Mother Jones and the editor in chief of Southern Exposure. His work has earned seven National Magazine Awards, and has been a finalist for the honor 14 times. Bates has taught journalism at Duke University and served on the board of trustees of Antioch University.

Kate Sheppard / @kate_sheppard

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Ted Conover

Ted Conover is the author of four books of nonfiction, including Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001 and was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College in anthropology, Conover spent two years at Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar. In 2001, he received an honorary doctorate from Amherst and in 2003, a Guggenheim Fellowship. In recent years he has taught at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the University of Oregon. He contributes to publications including The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.

You can write. Maybe you've even been a staff writer. Now you want to freelance -- but how do you get started? This panel will cover the basics every freelance beginner needs: how to find publications that will buy your work and how to approach them. Contract do's and don'ts. Ways to become an editor's go-to writer, plus a plethora of "don't ever do this" hints that will keep you from looking like a newbie. Time will be reserved for questions.

Moderator: Salley Shannon, ASJA / @writr

ASJA former president Salley has successfully freelanced for national publications for more than 20 years. Her work has appeared on corporate websites and in Parents, Parenting, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, Fitness, Reader's Digest, the Washingtonian and many other magazines. She is currently ghostwriting a book.

Samuel Greengard, past president, ASJA / @samthewriter

Sam, an ASJA past president, covers tech business for several publications and is author of the best-selling AARP Crash Course in Finding the Work You Love.

Christine Larson, ASJA / @LarsonWrites

Christine is an award-winning freelance writer who covers business, technology and the workplace. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, and many other publications. She is the co-author of four books, including INFLUENCE: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Change Our World for the Better. A former Knight fellow, she teaches journalism at Stanford, where she is completing her PhD in Communication.

Lisa Zamosky / @lisazamosky

Lisa has been an independent health care journalist for 10 years, specializing in health insurance, medical costs, and the implementation of the health reform law. Her new book is Healthcare, Insurance, and You: The Savvy Consumer's Guide. Lisa is a consumer health care columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and writes WebMD's expert Health Insurance Navigator blog. She's also a correspondent for California Healthline and iHealthBeat, both news services of the California Healthcare Foundation, and her work has appeared on MSNBC, Health.com, NBC.com and in many other publications.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, ASJA

Katherine is a Harvard-educated journalist with nearly 20 years' experience writing for magazines, newspapers and online, in addition to radio and television appearances. A regular contributor to About.com and Fortune magazine online, her expertise is finance, work and family. Her freelance articles have appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Money, New York Times, Parade, MSN Money, Slate, USA Today's magazines and Washington Post Magazine. She's based in the Washington D.C. are and is active in the Asian American Journalists Association.

Authors and popular bloggers can leverage their topic expertise to earn significantly more income from their writing by accepting freelance assignments as media spokespersons for product publicity campaigns. If you can link your book or blog to consumer products, you can generate lucrative project work representing consumer brands in media interviews, presentations, and personal appearances. In this interactive session, learn about typical spokesperson assignments, how to capture the attention of the PR firms and brand marketers who retain topic experts as campaign spokespeople, and how to position yourself to capitalize on these profitable opportunities.

Moderator: Sandra Beckwith, ASJA board member / @SandraBeckwith

Sandra Beckwith, ASJA, leveraged her humor book about men to land third-party spokesperson assignments with RCA and the Soap and Detergent Association. An author, freelance writer, ghostwriter, and book marketing coach, the former publicist teaches the popular "Book Publicity 101: How to Build Book Buzz" e-course. She has authored or ghostwritten several books and writes for corporate, custom, and sponsored publications. Beckwith is on the ASJA board of directors.

Deb Durham / @SpokespersonBiz

Deb Durham, a 30+ year veteran and pioneer in the spokesperson business, has worked both in front of the camera as a third party spokesperson herself as well as behind the camera brokering deals between hundreds of expert and celebrity spokespeople and major consumer brands. In her brokerage business SPOKESPERSONS PLUS NETWORK®, Durham has landed well-paid assignments for spokespeople with companies ranging from InSinkErator to Intel, Microsoft to Nestle, S. C. Johnson's Scrubbing Bubbles to Shell Oil and American Express. In her new service "So You Want To Be A Spokesperson," she'll be advising authors, bloggers and experts on how to leverage their expertise into lucrative spokesperson jobs.

Leah Ingram / @suddenlyfrugal

Leah Ingram, ASJA, is a freelance writer, lifestyle and frugal-living expert, and experienced speaker and spokesperson, based in the Philadelphia area. She founded the Suddenly Frugal blog in 2007 and is the author of Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Less, which compiles her unique money-saving advice, including how a family can save $25,000 a year, and Toss, Keep, Sell!: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Cleaning Out the Clutter and Cashing In. Ingram has brought the Suddenly Frugal message to life via media interviews and paid speaking appearances at colleges, libraries, business associations, and other organizations, and she's been a spokesperson for many national brands, including Bank of America, T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Valpak.

Bradley Matthews / @bradlito

Bradley Matthews is an account director within the Consumer Marketing Practice at Ogilvy Public Relations New York. His clients include iconic brands like Guinness, Perrier, San Pellegrino, American Express, Ford Motor Company and LG. He regularly counsels his clients on PR strategy and leads teams in executing PR plans that regularly feature spokespeople to act as the face of a brand in front of media.

Explore the various ways writers use sound to perform and distribute their work, including audiobooks, spoken-word venues, and NPR-type shows.

Moderator: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, ASJA / @BDeMarcoBarrett

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, ASJA, is author of Pen on Fire (Harcourt); producer/host of Writers on Writing, KUCI-FM in Orange County, CA and online at kuci.org; founder of the Pen on Fire Speakers Series (Corona del Mar, CA); editor of The ASJA Monthly; and president of the Southern California Chapter of ASJA.

Jason Ojalvo

Jason Ojalvo is Vice President of Content Creation at Audible, Inc. (an Amazon.com subsidiary), where he built and oversees the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX.com), an innovative new business that launched in 2011 to connect rights holders with audio producers. He also runs Audible's audiobook production department, which received 37 Audie Award nominations in 2012 and just won its first Grammy Award. He has built several innovative businesses, and has 20 years of experience in business development, new media, and digital entertainment.

Justin Hudnall / @mr.justinhudnall

Justin Hudnall holds a BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, by way of the Department of Dramatic Writing. His graduating year coincided with September 11th, a fact which heavily influenced both his writing and his adopting a career in humanitarian aide work, serving with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as an emergency operations officer in New York and Southern Sudan. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of So Say We All, a San Diego based nonprofit arts collective which provides opportunities for expression and arts education to populations without access. In 2012 he was selected as a San Diego Foundation Creative Catalyst Fellow and recipient of the Rising Arts Leader Award. His plays have been performed off-Broadway at The Atlantic Theater and Director's Club as well as several national regional theaters. His prose has been published by The Quotable, Citybeat, Voice of San Diego, Pinchback Press, Naughty American, The Huffington Post, Vermin on the Mount, Heinemann Press, and other alternative journalism and literary titles. He is the recipient of the San Diego Foundation's Creative Catalyst Fellowship and Rising Arts Leader award, is a twice finalist for the International Story Contest of Cork, Ireland, and co-author and co-editor of "Last Night Night On Earth," a collectivist novel chronicling the day leading up to the end of the world through the perspectives of 20 writers all over the world. He produced and co-edited "The Far East: Everything Just As It Is," a people's history of San Diego's East County.

Sarah Montague

Sarah Montague is a veteran public radio producer and director of documentary, spoken word, and drama programs, including WNYC's and Symphony Space's popular short story series Selected Shorts, the award-winning revival of Archibald Macleish's classic The Fall of the City and the documentaries Adrienne Rich; They Made America; Titanic: Unsinkable Myth; and "T" is For Tom (Stoppard). Montague is also an arts and culture feature producer whose work has been heard on Morning Edition, On the Media; Only a Game; and Studio 360, and at wnyc.org where she writes on animals, theatre, and literature and curated the lecture series "Talk to Me." She is a published critic and essayist, and adjunct professor at Eugene Lang College/The New School, where she co-founded the Internet radio station newschoolradio.org. She is currently at work on a documentary series about literature and war.

Julia Barton / @bartona104

Julia Barton edits the legal affairs podcast "The Life of the Law" and is a contributing producer at "Studio 360" from PRI and WNYC. Her work has appeared on PRI's "The World," "99 Percent Invisible," APM's "Marketplace," and NPR News, among other public media outlets. She edited the APM newsmagazine "Weekend America" from 2007-2009, working with contributors from around the country. Barton writes a column on audio storytelling for Nieman Storyboard and has done extensive media training in the former Soviet Union, visiting radio stations from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan as a Knight International Press Fellow.

Have you ever dreamed of following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Bishop or Ernest Hemingway? What would it be like to pack a bag and head off to make a new life, and a living, in another country? Get practical tips on setting forth, getting established, and building a vibrant freelance business from people who have ventured forth and survived to tell about it.

Moderator: Bill Hinchberger, ASJA / @hinchberger

Bill is a Paris-based freelance writer, communications consultant, trainer and university professor. He studied at Berkeley and teaches at the Sorbonne. In between, he became known as "the Brazil guy" as a reporter from South America for the FT, ARTnews and others - and as founder of the online travel guide BrazilMax.com. He served four years as president of the São Paulo Foreign Press Club. As he departed, a local publication called him "the most Brazilian of the foreign correspondents" - a supreme compliment in a place that revolves around personal relationships. Nevertheless, Bill's scope is international and assignments have taken him to about 30 countries.

Jabeen Bhatti

Jabeen has worked as a print journalist in the US and abroad for more than a decade writing for newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Washington Times before founding Associated Reporters Abroad, an international journalism organization, in 2008. Originally from the Washington, DC area, Jabeen has lived in Poland, Denmark and South Korea - she is currently based in Berlin. Jabeen holds a masters from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a Fulbright scholar in 2006.

Michael Balter

Michael Balter is a Contributing Correspondent for Science, Adjunct Professor of Journalism at New York University, and the author of The Goddess and the Bull: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. His home base is Paris, but he spends several months each year in the U.S.

Tom Vogel

Tom Vogel has covered Latin America for more than 20 years as a journalist and strategic communications executive. He lived 11 years in Peru, Venezuela and Brazil, respectively, and has reported from nearly every country in the region. Vogel opened The Wall Street Journal's bureau in Caracas and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with a group of Journal reporters for coverage of the 1995 Mexican currency crisis. Vogel was also Bloomberg's first Latin America columnist, based in Brazil, and founded the Latam Journalist group on LinkedIn (300+ members). Vogel has been Practice Leader of Capital Markets and Latin America for crisis communications firm Sitrick And Company and Director of Communications for Barclays Capital (investment bank) and Financial Security Assurance (bond insurance), respectively. Vogel is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He runs Rachlan Strategic Communications in Manhattan.

Kenneth Rapoza

Kenneth Rapoza is a former ASJA member. His 15 year journalism career started in Boston at The Boston Globe, then moved to freelance for The Washington Times and then staff at The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent based in São Paulo, Brazil. He covered the country for nearly 10 years, five of which were for the Journal. He now writes daily for Forbes after returning to the U.S. in 2010. His freelance work has appeared in places like Salon and The Nation. He is originally from Massachusetts.

Three editors who regularly assign international stories will tell you what they expect from the world - and from the freelancers who are out there in it.

Moderator: Bill Hinchberger, ASJA / @hinchberger

Bill is a Paris-based freelance writer, communications consultant, trainer and university professor. In between, he became known as "the Brazil guy" as a reporter for the FT, ARTnews and others - and as founder of the online travel guide BrazilMax.com. He served four years as president of the São Paulo Foreign Press Club. As he departed, a local publication called him "the most Brazilian of the foreign correspondents" - a supreme compliment in a place that revolves around personal relationships. Nevertheless, Bill's scope is international and assignments have taken him to about 30 countries.

Ben Arnoldy

Ben Arnoldy is a former foreign correspondent who is now the deputy international editor for The Christian Science Monitor in Boston. Ben served as the magazine's New Delhi bureau chief for three years, covering India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan during the volatile 2009-2011 period. Ben started out at the Monitor in 1999 as a news producer for the organization's website, csmonitor.com. He became the first online reporter to be embedded with the US military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ben has also worked as the Monitor's Asia editor and Northern California bureau chief.

Anna Szterenfeld

As Latin America Editor for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Anna Szterenfeld is a senior analyst charged with evaluating and forecasting trends in the political, economic and business environment in the region. In addition to writing her own articles and analysis, she has worked with external correspondents in 20 countries on several products, including the Country Report series; Viewswire, a daily online briefing service; and Business Latin America, a weekly newsletter. Ms Szterenfeld has also edited and managed production of specialised management reports and customised client research, also working with commissioned authors and researchers.

Kingsley Ighobor TBC

Kingsley Ighobor is an editor at Africa Renewal, a magazine published by the United Nations.

Jabeen Bhatti

Jabeen has worked as a print journalist in the US and abroad for more than a decade writing for newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Washington Times before founding Associated Reporters Abroad, an international journalism organization, in 2008. Originally from the Washington, DC area, Jabeen has lived in Poland, Denmark and South Korea -- she is currently based in Berlin. Jabeen holds a masters from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was a Fulbright scholar in 2006.

In the digital world where tweets and texts are de rigueur, learn how experienced writers pitch editors to get lucrative writing assignments. We'll discuss the dos and don'ts of successful query writing and how to keep an editor's attention once you begin the conversation.

Moderator: Sherry Beck Paprocki, ASJA / @sherrypaprocki

Award-winning writer and editor, Sherry has had bylines appear in numerous national, statewide and regional publications including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Preservation magazine, Hemispheres magazine (United Airlines) and hundreds more. She has written nearly a dozen juvenile biographies for Chelsea House, including those about Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres and Katie Couric. After co-authoring The Complete Idiot's Guide to Branding Yourself, she speaks frequently on the topics of personal branding and the digital tsunami. She currently serves as the interim publisher at San Antonio Magazine.

Josie Rubio / @josierubio

Josie Rubio is a senior editor at VIVmag, a digital lifestyle magazine for women, and is based in Brooklyn, NY. In her nearly 15 years as a magazine writer and editor, she's covered a wide range of topics, including nutrition, health, fitness, fashion, culture, travel, dining, music and home décor. She started her career at Columbus Monthly magazine and Mid Ohio Golfer in Columbus, Ohio. She's also worked as features and entertainment editor for The Red Hook Star-Revue, a local Brooklyn newspaper. In 2008, she helped launch music webzine The Agit Reader, to which she frequently contributes. Her byline also has appeared in Brooklyn Based, Shape and the Local, a New York Times blog.

Nancy Shepherdson, ASJA

Chicago-based writer Nancy Shepherdson has written for Chief Executive, L.A. Times Magazine, American Heritage, Boys' Life, Woman's Day, Continental, Consumer's Digest, Consumer Reports, Modern Maturity, First for Women, Discover, Sierra, Monster.com, CreditCards.com and many more. Her books include Built on Values: Creating an Enviable Culture that Outperforms the Competition; La Vida Rica: The Latina's Guide to Success in Business; Ancestor Hunt: Finding Your Family Online. She has taught classes on querying for the UCLA and the University of Chicago.

Matthew Shaer

Matthew Shaer is a regular contributor to New York Magazine and the author, most recently, of The Sinking of the Bounty: The True Story of a Tragic Shipwreck and its Aftermath. His reporting and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, Popular Science, Fortune, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications. He is a former staff reporter at The Christian Science Monitor, and a former online editor at The Boston Globe.

Speechwriting is a lucrative writing specialty. Freelance corporate speechwriters can earn $5,000-$15,000+ per speech. Geography is no barrier to success: freelance speechwriters can work from anywhere, serving clients all over the world. Bring your questions to this interactive session and get the information you need. Learn how to find good clients, avoid problem clients, determine fees, charge for rush assignments, leverage referrals, network for success, and run speechwriting like a real business.

Moderator: Joan Detz, ASJA

Joan Detz, this session's sole presenter, is the author of How to Write & Give a Speech and It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It.

What's the future of books? It's a mega-million dollar question in this age of e-books, singles and POD that has changed format, distribution and sales models. What's happening, what's coming, and how do we as authors adapt to thrive in the next wave of publishing? This session explores these questions and concrete ideas to ease the transition for authors.

Moderator: John Rosengren, ASJA / @johnrosengren

John is the author of Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes and president of ASJA's Upper Midwest Regional Chapter, based in Minneapolis.

Jon P. Fine

Jon is director of Author and Publisher Relations for Amazon.com, coordinating outreach to the author and publishing communities. He joined the company as Associate General Counsel for media and copyright in January 2006. Prior to joining Amazon.com, he served as VP and Associate General Counsel for Random House, Inc., where he directed legal affairs for the Alfred A. Knopf division as well as for Random House of Canada. He previously served as Senior Media Counsel at NBC, handling content and associated issues for NBC News, Saturday Night Live, MSNBC, CNBC and other divisions. He is a graduate of Cornell University and of the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a native New Yorker, who now lives in Seattle.

Amy Grace Loyd

Amy is an executive editor at Byliner, Inc. The former fiction and literary editor at Playboy, Loyd has also worked in the fiction department at The New Yorker and was Associate Editor on The New York Review of Books Classics series. A recipient of MacDowell and Yaddo fellowships, she is the author of a forthcoming novel The Affairs of Others (Picador) and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Jofie Ferrari-Adler

Jofie Ferrari-Adler joined Simon & Schuster as a Senior Editor in 2010. Previously an editor at Grove/Atlantic, Viking Penguin, and the independent house Four Walls Eight Windows, he has been a book editor for more than ten years. At S&S, Jofie acquires both fiction and narrative nonfiction, with an emphasis on politics, current affairs, modern history, military history, sports, and a range of narrative journalism. His authors include Michael Bamberger, Larry McMurtry, Susan Orlean, Peter Sagal, Alan Shipnuck, and William Yardley.

Lukas Ortiz

Lukas joined the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency in 2000 and is its managing director. He is an associate member of the Association of Authors Representatives, and the Mystery Writers of America. He is also an active supporter of PEN American Center, which defends writer's rights and promotes literacy around the world. Lukas shares his birthday with Mark Twain. Although they weren't born the same year, they do share many similar views on life and death.

Forget those dusty old textbooks filled with history so dry it leaves your mouth parched. History overflows with colorful stories that entertain, amaze, and guide us to the future by revisiting the past. History buffs with a writing flair can do more than just indulge their passions, they can build a career writing about history in books, newspapers, magazines, web sites, and blogs. This session will share tips on identifying market opportunities, researching topics, and writing historical narratives that come alive.

Moderator: Christopher Klein, ASJA / @historyauthor

Christopher is an author and writer specializing in history and travel. He is a regular contributor to History.com, and has written history pieces for The Boston Globe, the Daily, Harvard Magazine, Smithsonian.com, and AmericanHeritage.com. He is the author of Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands and The Die-Hard Sports Fan's Guide to Boston, and he is currently writing Strong Boy, the story of the brash Irish-American boxer John L. Sullivan. He also writes for the travel section of the Boston Globe, the New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, and others.

Richard Zacks

Richard Zacks, a former journalist, is the author of five subversive nonfiction books, from History Laid Bare and An Underground Education to his most recent, Island of Vice about Teddy Roosevelt's embattled stint as NYC police commissioner, which Amazon selected as one of the best books of 2012. His works topped half a billion copies in sales worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Finnish. The New York Times once commented that Zacks "specializes in the raunchy and perverse," and he took that as high praise indeed.

Kenneth C. Davis / @kennethcdavis

Kenneth C. Davis is the author of Don't Know Much About® History, which spent 35 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and gave rise to the Don't Know Much About® series, which has a combined in-print total of some 4.7 million copies. Davis, whose web site is www.dontknowmuch.com, aims to become a subject expert in all of the areas he writes about - the Bible, Mythology, the Universe, the Civil War, for example. His latest book is Don't Know Much About® the American Presidents.

Keith Wallman / @KeithWallman

Keith Wallman is an Editor at Lyons Press, where he acquires nonfiction in the categories of American history, current events, biography, politics, crime, and sports. Keith's recently published acquisitions include Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation and The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in History. Learn more about his work at www.facebook.com/WallmanAtLyonsPress.

Pamela D. Toler, ASJA / @pdtoler

Pamela is an academic renegade who took her PhD and jumped overboard. She is the author of Mankind: The Story of All of Us and The Everything Guide to Understanding Socialism. She's a regular contributor to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and Calliope, a world history magazine for children, and has also published history pieces in a wide range of magazines, from Hobby Farm to The History Channel Club Magazine. She is particularly interested in the times and places where two cultures touch and change each other.

True adventure stories are great reads and extremely popular, and almost every good story has an element of adventure to it. What are the best ways to pitch, report, write, and sell these kinds of stories? Where is this genre going?

Moderator: Colin Weatherby

Colin Weatherby is a Brooklyn-based writer, videographer, and outdoor enthusiast. He attended the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and New York University, where he studied urban policy. His work has appeared in many publications including the New York Daily News, Fast Company, and The New York Times.

Patrick Symmes

Patrick is a contributing editor at Harper's and Outside magazines. He is the author of "Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey through the Guevara Legend," an account of a 12,000-mile ride across South America, retracing the journeys and guerrilla campaigns of Che Guevara. He also writes frequently for GQ and Conde Nast Traveler.

Peter Zuckerman, ASJA

Peter Zuckerman has received some of the most prestigious recognitions in American journalism including the Livingston Award, the National Journalism Award, and the Blethan Award. Buried in the Sky, the book he co-authored with his cousin Amanda Padoan, won the National Outdoor Book Award for history, the Banff Mountain Book Award for history and the NCTE George Orwell Prize. He is currently an adjunct fellow at the Attic Institute writing workshop and a resident at the Falcon Art Community.

Stephen Barr

Stephen is a senior literary agent at Writers House.

Dan Drollette Jr., ASJA

Dan is a science writer/editor who has freelanced as a foreign correspondent for Science, International Wildlife, Discovery Channel, MIT and the BBC. For the last three years, he lived outside Geneva, Switzerland, and edited CERN's on-line magazine. His first book, Goldrush in the Jungle - about Indochina's most endangered species - was published by Crown last week.

Before you can write that bestseller or critically acclaimed book, you have to write a winning proposal that sells your idea and your manuscript. With a leading literary agent, a top-shelf editor and two successful book authors, this panel will tell you how to grab the attention of the powers-that-be.

Moderator: Emily Paulsen, ASJA / @eapwriter

Emily Paulsen writes about health and healthcare for a variety of publications and organizations. She is co-chair of ASJA's DC-area chapter.

Matt Martz

Matt Martz joined the editorial staff of St. Martin's Press in 2006. While publishing a wide variety of crime fiction for Minotaur Books from traditional mysteries to high-concept thrillers, he is also a nonfiction editor for St. Martin's Press with a special focus on narrative nonfiction in the categories of current affairs, American and military history, business, and science.

Jack El-Hai, past president, ASJA

Jack is the author of ten books, including The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Wiley, 2005; adapted for a PBS American Experience TV documentary, 2008; optioned for film/TV by Mythology Entertainment, 2010) and The Nazi and the Psychiatrist (PublicAffairs, forthcoming in October 2013; optioned for stage/film by Mythology Entertainment, 2012). He writes about history, science, and medicine and is on the faculty of the MFA program in creative writing at Augsburg College. He put together his first book proposal in 1985 and has been learning ever since.

Joan Quigley / @joan_quigley

Joan Quigley is the author of Dixie on the Potomac (forthcoming) and The Day The Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy (Random House 2007). She won the 2005 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award for her efforts on her first book. She is a former Miami Herald business reporter and a graduate of Princeton and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Daily Beast and nationalgeographic.com.

Rachel Vogel

Rachel Vogel joined The Waxman Leavell Agency as an agent in 2013. She's previously held positions at Mary Evans Inc., Lippincott Massie McQuilkin and at the literary scouting agency, Maria Campbell Associates, where she scouted the American book market for foreign publishers and for Warner Brothers. She is interested in fiction that pays equal attention to both the voice and the story, and is particularly drawn to literary fiction that pops off the page, upmarket thrillers and mysteries, "book club" books, and novels with a fantastic/paranormal element that reach beyond genre. In non-fiction, she is on the lookout for subject-driven narratives, memoirs and biography and journalism. Some of the books she's represented include Rebecca Dana's memoir *Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blond* (Amy Einhorn/Putnam), the forthcoming debut novel *Race Across the Sky* by Derek Sherman (Plume), and a narrative nonfiction work about the Japanese tsunami and earthquake disaster* Strong in the Rain* by Lucy Birmingham and David O'Neill (Palgrave)

If you want to realize the dream of having a bestseller, or dramatically increase your freelance options, collaborating with an expert might be your best strategy. Besides premium content; experts bring cache, credibility, notoriety, and a marketing platform to the table, factors that any agent will tell you are crucial to making a significant deal. Writing a book with the right expert can propel your career to a higher level, both financially and professionally. This interactive workshop will give you valuable strategies, tips, insights, and practice that will develop your skills for collaborating with an expert, even if they are narcissistic. Bring your ideas! You will be given the opportunity to pitch your idea for a book or an article to experts and one of the industry's most successful and respected agents.

Moderator: Hendrie Weisinger, ASJA

Dr. Hendrie Weisinger is a celebrated psychologist, consultant to dozens of Fortune 500 companies, and author of 8 books, including the New York Times bestseller, Nobdy's Perfect with ASJA founding member, Norman Lobsenz. He has made over 500 media appearances, including Oprah, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. His new book, Nerves of Steel, will be published by Random House and received a six-figure advance.

Alice Fried Martell

Alice Fried Martell of The Martell Agency practiced law before founding one of the most successful and respected literary agencies. She represents authors from all genres and many of the books she has represented, such as Defending Jacob and The Power of Full Engagement have been huge New York Times bestsellers.

Dr. Ron Podell

Dr. Ronald Podell is an "A"-list psychiatrist in the Hollywood community and a nationally recognized an expert in the treatment of depression, anxiety, sexual dysfunctions and cognitive impairment in the elderly. He is co-author, with writer Porter Shimer, of Contagious Emotions-Staying Well When Your Loved One is Depressed, a Pocket Books hardcover and trade paperback. Dr. Podell has extensive media experience having appeared multiple times on Los Angeles Network News and on national magazine-formatted shows and is frequently cited in leading periodicals and major newspapers, Celebrity patients have publically discussed their recoveries from depression, substance abuse, and relationship disruptions after utilizing Podell's integrated treatment methods despite previous failures under the care of other health professionals.

Lori R. Sackler

Lori has over 20 years experience working with high-net-worth individuals, business owners and their families. She is also the creator and host of "The M Word: Money, Family and Communication," airing on WOR 710 AM in New York, a radio show on which she and her distinguished guests discuss money issues and communicating about them in times of transition. Her first book, written with Toddi Gutner, THE M WORD: The Money Talk Every Family Needs to Have About Wealth and Their Financial Future will be published in March, 2013 by McGraw Hill.

Dr. Judith Hochstadt

Dr. Judith Hochstadt ("Dr. Judy") has been a practicing pediatrician and endocrinologist in Fairfield County Connecticut since 1982. She completed her internship, residency and fellowship in Pediatric Endocrinology at Yale New Haven Medical Center. Her research at Yale involved working with children and adolescents on the prototype insulin pump. Dr. Hochstadt ran a Yale satellite diabetes and endocrinology clinic for 18 years at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. There, she witnessed firsthand the emergence of the obesity and type II diabetes mellitus epidemic.

The field of biography attracts writers who are drawn to the mysteries of human behavior. When choosing a subject -- whether it be the life-story of a political leader, a literary high-achiever, a hot celebrity, or an ordinary citizen who's survived extraordinary times -- biographers know that it always pays to keep the market in mind. This session will consider both the philosophical and the practical, focusing on how to research, write, and sell a biography.

Moderator: Beverly Gray, ASJA board member / @bev_movieland

Beverly, who once developed low-budget features for B-movie maven Roger Corman, is the author of Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking. The paperback edition, now updated and available as an ebook, was tastefully retitled Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers. Beverly has also published Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond. Her blog, "Beverly in Movieland," covers movies, moviemaking, and growing up Hollywood-adjacent.

Barton Gellman / @bartongellman

Barton is a journalist, author and lecturer. He is contributing editor at large at Time magazine, and also holds appointments as Lecturer and Author in Residence at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His bestselling book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, was named to the New York Times Best Books of 2008, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and is in development as an HBO feature film. His professional honors include two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk Award, a Henry Luce Award and Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

David Margolick

David Margolick is a long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Prior to joining the magazine he was a legal affairs reporter and law columnist at The New York Times. His books include Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock; Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink; and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns, will appear next month, and he is completing a book on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows for Nextbook's Jewish Encounters Series. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review and is an adjunct professor in New York University's Department of Journalism. He lives in New York City.

D. T. Max / @D_T_Max

D.T. Max is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker and has worked as a journalist and editor at publications ranging from The New York Observer to Elle. He is the author of The Family That Couldn't Sleep: Medical Mystery. Max's long essay on David Foster Wallace, "The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace's struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest," was published in the March 9, 2009 issue of The New Yorker to wide acclaim. The article evolved into his 2012 biography, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace.

Dona Munker / @donamunker

Dona co-wrote the first-person "biography," Daughter of Persia, a history of modern Iran as seen through the eyes of her subject, Sattareh Farman Farmaian. Her current project is Sara and Erskine, An American Romance, about the 20th-century suffragist and "free-lover" Sara Bard Field. Dona's blog, "Stalking the Elephant," grapples with the research and writing challenges faced by biographers. Dona is a former trade book editor, has a PhD in English, and has taught at universities in New York and abroad.

If you'd like to blog for The Huffington Post, you'd be wise to think very carefully. There are real pros and cons of writing for Arianna Huffington's blog empire. On the plus side: You'll join the blogging ranks of celebrities, authors, politicians and academics, and you just might attract a gazillion readers. On the minus side: freelance bloggers generally get no financial compensation and only a tiny fraction of the popular website's readership. To help you make a thoughtful decision, this stellar panel--a literary agent, a popular blogger, a former HuffPo editor and a National Writers Union representative--will weigh in on the pros and cons as well as discuss the ins and outs of blogging for the Huffington Post.

Moderator: Jean Fain, ASJA

Jean is a Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychotherapist and a veteran journalist. Since the publication of her book, The Self-Compassion Diet,, she's been blogging for The Huffington Post. Her articles have appeared in newspapers (The Boston Globe, The LA Times) and magazines(Oprah, Conde Nast Traveler, Shape). The Los Angeles Times Syndicate distributed her fitness column through the '80s.

Joan Price, ASJA / @JoanPrice

Joan is the author of Better Than I Ever Expected and Naked at Our Age,, winner of Best Book 2012 from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. Recently, she edited the sex anthology, Ageless Erotica, and became Huff/Post 50's senior sex expert. Joan also writes an award-winning blog of her own about sex and aging.

Lindsay Edgecombe

Lindsay is a literary agent at the Levine Greenberg Agency, representing a wide range of titles from narrative nonfiction to literary and commercial fiction. Her clients include journalists and novelists, to New Yorker cartoonists and Zen abbots. She loves to uncover new talent and work with writers to develop great proposals from the spark of an idea.

David Hill / @davehill77

David is a contributor to the ESPN sports and popular culture website Grantland, as well as a sketch writer for the Upright Citizen Brigade theater. He has written for a number of publications and websites including McSweeneys, the Awl and The New York Times. As a member of the National Writers Union, he's worked on the Pay the Writer campaign.

David Duran / @theemuki

David writes news, business, travel and entertainment stories for Out Magazine, The Advocate, Bay Area Reporter, SF Weekly, among other publications. He also writes a syndicated monthly business column profiling LGBT entrepreneurs. He credits the Huffington Post for taking him from an unknown writer to an in-demand journalist.

Interested in learning what it takes to make it as a ghostwriter? Hear about finding work, negotiating contracts, capturing the client's voice, and making a good living behind the scenes.

Moderator: Marcia Layton Turner, ASJA / @marciaturner

Marcia Layton Turner is a freelance writer, ghostwriter, and information entrepreneur. She is the founder and executive director of the Association of Ghostwriters. She is also the author, co-author, or ghost of more than 25 books. Her work has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Entrepreneur, Woman's Day, and many others.

Leah Nicholson

Leah Nicholson is the production manager at Jenkins Group, a custom book packaging firm in Michigan. With over half of their titles needing some form of ghostwriting, book doctoring, or content editing, Leah pairs professional ghostwriters and editors with the authors who need their particular talents.

Gwen Moran, ASJA

Gwen is a freelance writer, author and ghostwriter with specialties in business, finance, and humor. Her work has appeared in/on Entrepreneur, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Kiplinger.com, AARP.com, Newsweek.com, and many others. She has ghosted and collaborated on more than a dozen books and ebooks. She lives and works near the Jersey shore--the beautiful coast, not the horrid television show.

Rodney J. Moore, ASJA

Rodney J. Moore is an author, ghostwriter, journalist and medical writer. Rod is currently ghostwriting a book project for a healthcare operations consulting firm. He is close to signing a deal to ghostwrite a book for John Wiley Inc. He does business as Rod Writes and he maintains a blog at www.thehealthcarewriter.com.

A panel of leading literary agents and authors will teach you how to find the ideal agent and develop a productive and rewarding author-agent relationship. How do you know if an agent is right for you? What makes for a good relationship? How do you check their background? What do agents look for in potential clients? What does it mean to have a platform? How can you build a platform if you don't have one? What about the universe of e-books and literary agencies that are dipping their toe into the publishing business? What does that mean for authors? How has this changed the literary marketplace?

Moderator: Linda Marsa, ASJA / @feveredthebook

Linda Marsa is a Discover contributing editor and author of the upcoming book Fevered: How a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health and How We Can Save Ourselves. A former Los Angeles Times staff writer, her work was anthologized in Best American Science Writing, 2012. She was the recipient of ASJA's June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Writing in 2009 and 2011.

Alice Fried Martell

Alice Martell is a literary agent who has had her own firm, The Martell Agency, in Manhattan for over twenty years. Prior to establishing the agency, she practiced law and then worked as in house counsel and as an agent at The John Hawkins Agency. She currently represents numerous award-winning and NYT's best selling authors, both in fiction and narrative nonfiction, including Gail Collins (As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda), Carlos Eire (Waiting for Snow in Havana, a National Book Award Winner), Domingo Martinez (The Boy Kings of Texas, a 2012 National Book Award finalist), Leslie Morgan Steiner (Crazy Love: A Memoir), and William Knoedelseder (Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer)

Celeste Fine

Celeste Fine, an agent with Sterling Lord Literistic, represents expert,celebrity and corporate clients with strong national and international platforms, particularly in the health, science, self-help, food, business, academic, and lifestyle fields. She partners with marquee clients to support their professional and personal publishing goals. Her clients include New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, international, and regional bestseller and award winners.

Constance Hale, ASJA

Constance is the author of Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Prose, Sin and Syntax, and Wired Style. A former editor at the Oakland Tribune, San Fransciso Examiner, Wired and Health magazines, her journalism has appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Los Angeles Times, among others. Hale edits books and is a founder of The Prose Doctors and curates sinandsyntax.com, an online salon "for those who love wicked good prose."

Kent D. Wolf

Kent Wolf began his publishing career in 1997 at Dalkey Archive Press. He then moved to Harcourt Trade Publishers where he headed the Subsidiary Rights Department, handling right sales for many acclaimed authors, including Nobel Prize winners Octavio Paz, Gunter Grass, and Jose Saramago, and novelists Umberto Eco, Yann Martel, and Michel Faber. At Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, Kent represents a number of New York Times bestselling authors and is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives and PEN.

Today there are many paths to getting your book published, and among the newest is crowdfunding -- coming together to support the efforts of someone else to accomplish something. How does crowdfunding work? What do you need to make your pitch and project successful? And what will you do if you get the funding (or if you don't)? We'll cover the specifics of mounting a successful campaign, including videography, perks and funding levels; and using social media and other outlets to spread the word. Panelists will address all of these questions and more as well as discuss the pros and cons of the various crowdfunding platforms or even doing it yourself).

Moderator: Sandra Gurvis, ASJA / @CCWivesNovelist

Sandra is the author of fifteen books, including Careers for Nonconformists, Where Have All the Flower Children Gone? and the novel The Pipe Dreamers. Her newest titles are Ohio Curiosities 2nd ed. (Globe Pequot, 2011); Paris Hilton: A Biography (Greenwood, 2011); and a second novel Country Club Wives (Loconeal, 2012). Sandra has also written extensively on business and medical topics and lectures frequently on writing, the '60s, and her books.

Rose Spinelli

Rose Spinelli is a working journalist who, after managing several successful crowdfunding campaigns, started her own consulting service, The Crowdfundamentals. A former ASJA member, Spinelli has also produced films and screenplays, making her uniquely qualified to create the right blend of print, media outreach, and social networking so important to a successful crowdfunding campaign. She lives in Chicago.

Alex Fair / @MedStartr

Alex Fair is an innovator, ex-scientist, executive, public speaker and business developer. Along with creating the first open network for healthcare (FairCareMD), the first connecting app for cell phones and bar/QR codes (ScanBuy), he also developed MedStartr. The first crowdfunding site designed specifically for healthcare, MedStartr focuses on providing an alternate funding source for new and innovative ventures that might otherwise not get it from more traditional sources. He is based in New York City.

Sang Lee / @RoCspeaks

A contributor to Forbes, Under30CEO, Ecopreneurist among many others, twentysomething-Sang Lee currently serves as CEO and cofounder of Return on Change (RoC), an equity crowdfunding portal for high impact startups. Lee, a former European banker, liaisons between startups and investors and spearheads education efforts for the future of startup finance. He is based in New York.

Craig Engler / @craigengler

Craig Engler is the author of WEIGHT HACKING, a how-to book for "geeks" who want to lose weight and get fit; he raised over $17,000 on Indiegogo to cover the publishing costs. The Senior Vice President and General Manager of Syfy Digital for the SyFy channel, his previous positions include founding Science Fiction Weekly, the first internet magazine devoted to science fiction. He has also worked as a freelance writer for several publications including The New York Times and Wired.

Writing opinion and commentary can raise your profile and boost your brand, while advancing your ideas and your values. This interactive workshop will help you craft and sell compelling opinion pieces. You'll learn to advocate for your unique point of view in a public conversation still dominated by conventional voices -- helping you change the world and your career, too.

Moderator: Christine Larson, ASJA / @LarsonWrites

Christine is an award-winning freelance writer who covers business, technology and the workplace. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, and many other publications. She is the co-author of four books, including INFLUENCE: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Change Our World for the Better. A former Knight fellow, she teaches journalism at Stanford, where she is completing her PhD in Communication.

Katie Orenstein

Katie Orenstein is founder and CEO of The OpEd Project,an organization dedicated to expanding the range and quality of voices and ideas we hear from in the world. She has contributed to the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. Her commentaries on women, power, popular culture and human rights have been nationally syndicated. She has lectured at Stanford and appeared on ABC TV World News, Good Morning America, MSNBC, CNN and NPR All Things Considered. A graduate of Harvard (BA) and Columbia (MA) universities, she is the author of Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. Orenstein is a recipient of The Diana P Scott Integrity in Action Award, and a fellowship from Echoing Green, which selected The OpEd Project as one of the most innovative social enterprises worldwide.

Chloe Angyal

Chloe Angyal is a writer and commentator from Sydney, Australia. She is based in New York City. Chloe is an Editor at Feministing, where she blogs about gender, sex, politics, pop culture and body image. Her freelance writing has been published in The Atlantic, The LA Times, The Guardian, Jezebel, Slate, and Salon. Her writing covers a range of topics, including sexual assault prevention, women in politics, and reproductive rights. She has also appeared on MSNBC, Al Jazeera English, and NPR. Chloe's academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis, currently in progress, is about how the genre depicts gender, sex and love.

Katherine Lanpher

Katherine Lanpher is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. She is a contributing editor at both More magazine and Reader's Digest, as well as the host of "Upstairs at the Square," a reading and performance series for the Barnes & Noble Studio page (www.bn.com/upstairs) that Daily Candy has described as "an awesome literary salon on a date with an intimate rock concert." Her short essays have been published in The New York Times op-ed page and Slate.com; one of those pieces turned into her memoir, Leap Days, published in 2006 by Springboard Press. She is a substitute host for "The Takeaway," a collaboration of WNYC, PRI, the BBC and the New York Times. In 2008, she won a Gracie from American Women in Radio and Television for her weekly show "More Time," a radio companion to More magazine that aired on XM Satellite Radio and she is the former host of a weekly podcast on the economy for TIME.com.

Have you always felt you have a book-length personal story to tell? Even though you may be a successful feature writer, nonfiction book writer, business reporter (fill in the blank), does writing a memoir seem like a big leap outside your comfort zone? Find out how to know if you have a commercially viable story, how to start writing it, some of the pitfalls of memoirists and what agents and publishers are looking for in a commercial memoir.

Moderator: Judy L. Mandel, ASJA / @judymandel

Judy L. Mandel has been a journalist, advertising copywriter, public relations professional and marketing director. She now balances her business writing with writing fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of Replacement Child - a memoir (Seal Press/Perseus, 2013).

Rita Rosenkranz

A former editor with major New York houses, Rita founded Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency in 1990. She represents health, history, parenting, memoir, music, how-to, popular science, business, biography, popular reference, cooking, spirituality, sports and general interest titles. Rita works with major publishing houses, as well as regional publishers that handle niche markets. She looks for projects that present familiar subjects freshly or lesser-known subjects presented commercially.

Kaylie Jones

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels, including A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, which was made into a Merchant-Ivory film in 1998. The novel Celeste Ascending was published by Harper Collins in 2001, and the memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me came out to critical acclaim in 2009. She has been teaching creative writing for almost 25 years at The Writers Voice, SUNY Stony Brook-Southampton MFA Program, and the Wilkes University low-residency MFA Program, and is Chairman of the annual $10,000 James Jones First Novel Fellowship.

Brenda Copeland

Brenda Copeland is an Executive Editor at St. Martin's Press, where she has worked since 2010. Brenda publishes a vibrant mix of fiction and nonfiction, from the commercial to the literary, and looks for strong stories told with a strong voice. Current authors include Matthew Dicks, author of Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, Ann Leary, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Good House, and Amy Sue Nathan, whose debut novel The Glass Wives will come out in summer, 2013. Over the course of her career Brenda has published such bestselling authors as Dean Koontz, Claire Cooke, Cecily Von Ziegesar, Melissa de la Cruz, as well as Gotham and Deepak Chopra. Brenda teaches book editing at New York University and has a weakness for cheese.