Publishing Matters

Publishing Matters: Going from “Idea” to “Book”

You’ve written a poem, a story, an article, a memoir, a novel.  Your family seems to like it.  Your teachers and mentors tell you that your work is good.  So, what now?  As makers of art, we must constantly keep our focus on craft and process, on improving and perfecting our art.  However, at certain points in the creative process, it’s helpful to think about product—about revising, polishing, packaging, proposing, and submitting—in order to get what we’ve created into a published form.

In this two-hour interactive session, we will cover various approaches to taking your creative work public including the following: finding journals to publish your work; shaping a book from stand-alone pieces; finding and querying agents; identifying publishers appropriate to your work; and finding and submitting proposals to fellowship and grant opportunities. We will also discuss how to nurture and sustain your creative life by attending conferences, joining writing groups, and applying for artist residencies.

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate.  A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

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Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University.

To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.