Course Details

So you've come out- congratulations! Or you've been out for years. Now you want to take it one step further- to write for LGBT newspapers and magazines and websites or to write essays and articles for the mainstream and share your queer perspective.

Never has there been more interest in LGBT issues, culture, life styles, relationships. We've come a long way from the time period when my mother declared, " But I don't understand why you have to tell everyone." (Or heaven forbid, write about it).

Today's heightened interest in queer culture means more opportunities but it also means writers must dig deeper and find new twists, new angles.

This seminar will cover the following:

• An overview of the main national and local LGBT markets and what types of articles they use from from freelancers: essay and opinion pieces, features, profiles, reviews, travel.
• When to pitch vs. when to submit the whole piece.
• How community journalism is different and how it's the same.
• Selling gay themed essays and articles to non gay markets.
• When your idea or piece is too queer for the mainstream but too obvious for the gay markets, then what?
• When your piece isn't really about a gay issue, but the narrator is obviously gay, then what?

Instructor Bio

Kate Walter's Courses

Kate Walter is a freelance writer based in Manhattan. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Daily News, The Advocate, and many other places. She currently contributes to the "City Life" column in NYNewsday.

During the 1990s, Kate wrote popular columns for two downtown weeklies: the feisty and opinionated "A View from St Marks Place" (New York Press) and the poignant and personal "Queer City" (Manhattan Spirit). Kate's personal essays have been included in anthologies, including In the Shadow of the Towers and the best-selling Nesting: It's a Chick Thing.

Her articles and reviews have run in The Village Voice, The Nation, Ms., Yoga Journal, Body & Soul, and elsewhere. Kate has read her work at numerous venues including the Great Hall of Cooper Union, Fez under Time Cafe, Acme Underground, Gotham Comedy Club, and Stand Up NY. She is currently finishing a memoir.