Chick Lit: Writing Women's Literature
with Stephanie Lehmann

Sex. The city. Single girl. Cheating boyfriend. Glamorous job. Evil boss. Jimmy Choos. These are some of the staples of chick lit, the popular novels with candy-colored covers that aren't romance and aren't literary, but something in between ... and a little of both. Editors are looking for the next Bridget Jones's Diary or The Devil Wears Prada because women, who make up 85 percent of all readers, are buying them up. In today's world, where we're expected to be smart and ambitious yet wear 6-inch heels, these books are like friends: easy to relate to, intimate, funny, sarcastic and definitely not preachy. They're a window into what's really going on inside the hearts and minds of other women. Often a form of masked memoir, chick lit can be light and breezy, but it can also be deeply felt stories of self-actualization.

Editors are looking for novels that will help the genre stay fresh. The market is constantly evolving; marriage, motherhood and divorce are all part of this ongoing dialogue about what it means to be a woman today. You can be one of the writers who helps define what the genre will become.

In this class you can expect to work on:

-- Strategies to help get out that first draft
-- Creating a heroine your readers will root for
-- Plotting her journey so everything goes wrong (at the right time)
-- Creating romantic and sexual tension
-- Rewriting with the objectivity of a therapist
-- Gaining an understanding of the business, why you need an agent, and how to get one
-- Finding information about what's happening in publishing now
-- Finding your voice -- the one that tells the story that can only be written by you

Admission requirements:
You should submit a letter of interest, including a brief work history, previous coursework, and a writing sample of no more than 15 pages and no less than 1. See course details, below, for exact instructions.

From a student...
"I recently took Stephanie Lehmann's 12-week "Writing Chick Lit" course through Salon.com. First, the course itself was excellent. Stephanie's lessons were engaging, well-written, and extremely useful. Her feedback on my submissions was completely on point. She was encouraging but specific in her feedback -- I'm convinced that my novel-in-progress is already much much better than it would have been! Second, the participants were all good writers to begin with, so we did not have to spend time on basics. Congrats to whoever did the selection! The chats were so much fun, and yet so useful, that we have created a Yahoo! group to continue working together. It's rare that such a diverse group of people can bond so quickly and be so engaged." -- Mary R. Wise, author, Girl Clown

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Stephanie Lehmann is the author of Are You in the Mood?, Thoughts While Having Sex, and The Art of Undressing. Her plays have been produced off off Broadway, and she is a contributor to Salon. Originally from San Francisco, she's a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and has a master's in creative writing from New York University. Lehmann now lives with her husband and two children in Manhattan, where she's an associate at the Elaine Koster Literary Agency. Her fourth novel will be published by Penguin/NAL in March 2006.