Join Zaina Arafat (author of You Exist Too Much), Madeline Leung Coleman (writer and New York magazine cultures features editor), and Adjunct Assistant Professor James Yeh '09 (writer and Believer reviews editor) for a frank and demystifying conversation about pitching and publishing. This 90-minute session discussed topics such as how to get your foot in the door, how to pitch editors, general best practices for freelancers, and what, exactly, is a “peg”? Panelists also fielded questions from the audience.
Organized by the School of the Arts Undergraduate Creative Writing Program.
Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American author. Her debut novel, You Exist Too Much, won a 2021 Lambda Literary Award and was named Roxane Gay's favorite book of 2020. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, VICE, BuzzFeed, Granta, Guernica, the Believer, Harper’s Bazaar, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She holds an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Zaina was awarded the 2018 Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts and named a 2020 Champion of Pride by the Advocate. She is currently at work on an essay collection.
Madeline Leung Coleman is a culture features editor for New York magazine, where she also writes the weekly newsletter "The Critics." She was previously an editor at the Nation, Topic magazine, and Aperture, among others, and has written for publications including New York, the New York Times, the Atlantic, New York Review of Books, and the Washington Post.
James Yeh is a writer, editor, and journalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, NOON, VICE, and Harper’s, and is forthcoming in the Drift. A graduate from Clemson University with a BA in English and Columbia University with an MFA in fiction, he was an emerging writers fellow at the Center for Fiction; a writer-in-residence at the Hub City Writers Project; and a visiting writer at the Black Mountain Institute. He works as the reviews editor of the Believer and teaches writing at Columbia University.