Monday, November 4, 2019 4-6:50PM

Getting in the Door: The art of pitching book proposals and articles

Laura Scudder Conference Room, Roosevelt Hall 121

Getting your work into the publishing industry can be confusing. This workshop seeks to define terms, provide tips and offer templates to assist you with that process.

Samantha Dunn, author, journalist, writing teacher and advocate for storytellers everywhere

I’m Samantha Dunn, an author, journalist, writing teacher and advocate for storytellers everywhere.

I wrote the novel Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN West Fiction Award in 2000. I also published the bestselling memoir Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life (Henry Holt & Co.), a BookSense 76 pick, as well as Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation.

My essays are anthologized in a number of places, including the short story anthology, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles, which I co-edited with Julianne Ortale. Other collections showcasing my work include the Seal Press releases Dancing at the Shame Prom: Sharing the Stories That Kept Us Small and Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up. David Ulin’s anthology of L.A. writers, Another City, also features my work, as does Rob Spillman’s The Time of My Life.

As a journalist, my bylines have been widely published, from O the Oprah Magazine to Ms., Shape, the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald, not to mention InStyle, Glamour, SELF, Men’s Health and a variety of other consumer magazines. I have also written for the stage and have taken a few turns screenwriting as a member of the Writers Guild of America.

In a former life, I was a longtime writer-in-residence at the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Now I teach memoir at Chapman University, work with Pam Houston‘s nonprofit writing program Writing x Writers, and direct the Esalen Writers Camp, founded by Cheryl Strayed.

I’m currently the executive editor of Coast Magazine in Southern California. I live in Orange, California, with my husband, musician/politico Jimmy Camp, our son Benen, and a menagerie of horses, dogs, a goat, a cat and one grumpy pet pig.