HURRY! BOOT CAMPS BEGIN IN JULY! APPLY NOW!

Want to try out a new beat? Take one (or all!) of our Specialty Boot Camps and learn from the experienced writers and editors who've mastered these genres:

Food Writing | Travel Writing | Business Writing | Stiletto Boot Camp: Writing for Women's Magazines

These are selective, rigorous courses that requires a significant time commitment (count on at least 3 hours outside of class per week; sometimes reporting and writing will require up to 10 hours). However, unlike many classes, you will not have to edit other students' writing outside of class.

If you have the appetite to write about food and wine, we can help you get the edge in this highly competitive market.

CLASS STRUCTURE Every week, the instructor provides a copy of the prototype article (e.g., a restaurant review) for the following week's assignment and gives tips on how best to tackle it. Everyone writes his/her pitch letter, the article itself and list of sources and brings in enough copies to hand around to the group. Then veryone reads his/her work aloud (all assignments will be 1,000 words or under) and then gets critiqued by the group. Finally, the instructor weighs in last with wrap-up commentary and gives recommendations. Assignments will include:

• Newsy Product or Cooking Tip
• Personal Essay w/ Recipe(s)
• Profile of a Food Personality
• Restaurant Review or Roundup
• Solving a Food-Related Mystery
• Regional Food Feature
• Trend piece
• Cultural, Travel or Holiday-Oriented Food Feature
  

Carolynn Carreño has written features for Saveur and her work has also appeared in Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, Glamour, Self, Travel and Leisure, and National Geographic Traveler. She is a frequent contributor to the food page of The Los Angeles Times Magazine. Her first cookbook, Once Upon a Tart: Soups, Salads, Muffins and More from New York City¹s Favorite Bakeshop and Café, will be released by Knopf in February 2003. She is currently at work on a memoir based on a feature she wrote for Saveur which was nominated for a 2001 James Beard Award. One of her pieces will appear in Best Food Writing 2002 (Avalon Books, fall 2002).

APPLY for this specialty class at http://www.ersvp.com/reply/foodbootcamp

"Carolynn Carreño is a find--a deft, evocative, and (when appropriate) funny writer who seems, in her articles, equally adept at exposing her own foibles or delving into her own family history and reporting on some unfamiliar but story-worthy situation. She has an intuitive grasp of the writer's craft." -- Colman Andrews, Editor-in-Chief, Saveur

"To write well about food, one most have passion and knowledge. CC has both. Her food writing is always appetizing, and demonstrates the best attributes of writing well. In addition, she is someone who really knows the media landscape. Her magazine pieces attest to her fluency in what it takes to get published." -- Paul Bogaards, Senior VP, Alfred A. Knopf

"I've worked with Carolynn Carreno on a dozen stories for the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and have each time been impressed with the freshness of her ideas and originality of her voice. A good food writer does not merely impart facts or history about a subject, but brings an original persepective. Carreno's writing elegantly blends information with voice, and it's a pleasure to work with a freelancer writer who understands that balance." -- Heather John, Senior Style Editor, Los Angeles Times Magazine

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves,” the travel writer Pico Iyer writes. “And we travel, next, to find ourselves.” Writing about travel takes us even deeper. It’s a way to engage with the world and to build a bridge that brings faraway places home. Great travel writing wakens the senses and stands everything we take for granted on its head. “Writing the World” is an advanced look at the romance and realities of travel writing. Over the course of eight three-hour sessions, the seminar will consider the various forms of the field, from heavily-reported service pieces to first-person essays from the road. Be warned, though. This is not a course for people looking to score free trips or work their way onto the travel junket circuit. It is a rigorous course that requires a commitment of at least eight hours a week of outside work.

CLASS IS OPEN TO The seminar is open to devoted writers with mobile minds and willing feet, who are prepared to abandon the safety of the comfort zone. Travel writing is about stepping outside your boundaries, even when you’re in your hometown. Students will be expected to investigate unfamiliar neighborhoods, seek out experts in the field and demonstrate the highest levels of research and reporting.

CLASS STRUCTURE Each week, students will be assigned a travel-related article up to 1,000 words in length. The assignments will be based on prototypes from major travel magazines and the goal is to sell pieces to local, regional and national publications. Travel is a requirement for several assignments. After an initial lecture, students will read aloud their completed assignments along with a completed pitch letter. The pieces then will be critiqued by the group and finally by the instructor. Though subject to change, assignments are likely to include:

• A travel-related news item or trend story
• A service round-up on hotels or local attractions
• A destination piece on a cultural landmark
• A day trip within the region
• A historical research piece on a neighborhood, local tradition or attraction
• An article on the tourism business
• A personal travel essay

Paula Szuchman (NYC Instructor) is a contributing editor at Travel & Leisure. A former news editor at Conde Nast Traveler, her freelance stories have appeared in Business Traveler International, Conde Nast Traveller (UK), Wallpaper, The Daily Telegraph, Independent, Working Mother, SmartMoney, Time Out New York, Mademoiselle, Shoot, Home Journal (Hong Kong), Unlimited, Forbes.com, Bride's, Elite Traveler and Paper. She reviews restaurants for Time Out New York's annual Eating & Drinking Guide and hotels for the Time Out Guide to New York City, and has edited listings for Road Guides, a new series of Fodor's travel guides. Paula holds a Master's of Fine Arts degree from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spork and 88: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry. She lives in Brooklyn, just down the street from the 76th precinct, where she serves as an Auxiliary Police Officer.

Paula's class is held on Thursdays, and begins Sept. 5. This class is still open.

APPLY for New York Travel-Writing Boot Camp at: http://www.ersvp.com/reply/nyctravelsept

James Sturz has taught English in Bologna, Italy, worked in publishing in New York, and spent three years on staff at Vanity Fair. In addition to his novel Sasso, he has written for more than fifty newspapers and magazines. His features, articles, essays and reviews have run in such publications as The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, The New York Observer, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Travel & Leisure, Condé Nast Traveler, Men’s Health, Playboy, Detour, Mondo, Entertainment Weekly, US, Glamour, Marie Claire, Redbook, Mirabella, Forward, Judaism, and directly online for SonicNet and Alphabetstreet. Sturz has also served as a guest editor for the adventure magazine Blue and as a contributing editor for the style monthly Manhattan File. His journalism has been republished in Australian, British, Finnish, Greek, Italian, South African and Spanish magazines; it has also been anthologized in the sociology textbook Human Sexuality (Dushkin Publishing Group/McGraw Hill). On television, Sturz has appeared on NBC’s Inside Edition, CNBC’s Real Personal, Sky News's The Book Show, and on Fox’s Good Day New York; he has also been on the German radio station NDR and on London's LBC.

James' class is held on Tuesdays, and begins July 2. Registration is now closed.

David Hochman (LA instructor) has been writing for newspapers and magazines for ten years, from both L.A. and New York. A former senior staff writer for Entertainment Weekly, he now writes freelance full-time for Esquire, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Harper's Bazaar, InStyle, T+L Golf, Outside, Men's Journal, Details, Food + Wine and many other publications. While at E.W. and earlier as a staff writer at Us Weekly, he interviewed and profiled many of the biggest stars in entertainment and visited film and television sets from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the jungles of Palau Tiga, Borneo (for the original "Survivor"). Upon graduating from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, David received the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship to work as a travel writer anywhere in the world: he chose Australia and New Zealand, and recently returned to Australia for a fourth visit, this time to live for seven months, where he was traveling, living and writing as part of a home exchange in Sydney. He lives in Santa Monica with his wife, Ruth Kennison.

"I found Boot Camp invaluable in helping me sharpen my skills as a freelance writer and as an on-staff editor. I forced me to look at the entire process -- from story idea to final draft -- in a whole different way, and I got lots of practical tips that I can use on the job every day." -- Doug Newcomb, executive editor, Mobile Entertainment

David's class is held on Tuesdays, and begins July 23. The class is still open.

APPLY for Los Angeles Travel-Writing Boot Camp at: http://www.ersvp.com/reply/latravelapps

Now that the party's over for Enron, Arthur Andersen and ImClone, there's more business and finance news to cover than ever. Business-Writing Boot Camp provides basic training for spotting stories, developing them and pitching them to the right outlets. Assignments will range from local small business issues to national trends and CEO profiles. Having a head for business opens doors into a variety of glossy magazines, an endless supply of trade titles and virtually every section of daily newspapers.

David Wallace started freelancing in 1987, when he investigated a national recall of ambulances as a staff writer at the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida and found many paramedics and fire departments knew nothing about the issue. Since 1993, he's been a full-time free agent, writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, Boston magazine, and several now-defunct. magazines including Business 2.0, Knowledge Management, Home Office Computing, and World Trade. From 1993-1997 he self-syndicated a weekly column on international trade/small business and has traveled to Cuba, Taiwan, Brazil and Europe in search of stories (and the perfect trade show tchotchke).

CLASS STRUCTURE Every week, the instructor provides a copy of the prototype article (e.g., a company profile) for the following week's assignment and gives tips on how best to tackle it.

• Everyone writes his/her pitch letter, the article itself and list of sources and brings in enough copies to hand around to the group.
• Everyone reads his/her work aloud (all assignments will be 1,000 words or under) and then gets critiqued by the group.
• Instructor weighs in last with wrap-up commentary and gives recommendations.

APPLY for Business- Writing Boot Camp at: http://www.ersvp.com/reply/bizwriting

"Make no mistake, this is probably the best affordable workshop for journalists anywhere. Apply now if you want to do your best writing for eight weeks, partake in whip-smart critiques and receive oodles of practical advice. " - Mitch Baranowski, freelance writer/producer and student in fall 2001 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class.

"mediabistro.com's Bootcamp is well worth the price of admission. It's an intensive course that pushed my reporting and writing skills to the limit. The critique format was helpful; it was like having 17 editors go over my work. The class was insightful, challenging and fun." - Arthur Zaczkiewicz, business editor, Fairchild Publications

"There's a big difference in the quality of students in the Bootcamp class vs. other writing classes I've taken. With higher caliber writers you're apt to learn more not just by their feedback of your pieces but also by reading their work as well. Sophia's a fly teacher because she can nail exactly what needs to be done within seconds of reading something -- I have new knowledge of what's been missing from my work in the past. Also, she encouraged everybody, regardless of their genre, to keep at it. Not everyone in a teaching capacity makes that kind of effort." - Barbara Goodwin, freelance writer, student in fall 2001 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class.

"Not only did I graduate Boot Camp with several sellable articles, I learned the fine art of authoring pitch letters and coming up with original and timely stories. Victoria was a wonderful teacher, strict but funny, and I generated some of my best writing in this class." --Raven Snook, freelance writer and student in fall 2001 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class

"Run, don't walk, to mediabistro.com's Bootcamp for Journalists course, but make sure to free up your schedule for eight weeks, because you're going to be busy as hell!" -- Henry Hample, managing editor, Fairchild's Executive Technology, and student in fall 2001 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class

"Victoria's responses to my work alone would make the class worth the price, but she's brought together a group of amazing critics in my peers as well. This class exceeded my expectations and changed the way I think about a writing career: I wish I had found it YEARS ago."
Bill Tipper, freelance writer, former English professor and student in summer 2000 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class

"It's the best thing I've done for my writing career besides moving to NYC."
Deborah Snoonian, Senior Editor, Architectural Record and student in summer 2000 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class

"Forget about a good man -- a good editor is hard to find. Victoria Rowan has skill, patience, flair and the ability to whittle down a hundred idea fragments into one truly excellent concept. Her insights made me a better writer, and her sense of humor kept me laughing. What more could you want from the writing experience?"
Michele Mitchell, CNN Headline News columnist ("Fired Up"); also author of A New Kind of Party Animal (Simon & Schuster, 1998)

"Victoria's really wonderful. She's a very thoughtful, thorough critic and she keeps the discussions focused and meaningful. She's shared valuable information about freelancing as a writer herself. She's intelligent, fun, and her commitment comes through loud and clear."
Laura Schiller, freelance writer and student in summer 2000 session of mediabistro.com Boot Camp class

"The level of constructive criticism Victoria Rowan gives far surpasses anything I have experienced in every other class I have taken -- in college, in journalism graduate school and in a variety of continuing ed programs around the city."
Jennifer Cohen, former network news producer; currently working on a non-fiction book

"Sharp and amazingly patient, Victoria knows what it takes to make it in this biz and she isn't afraid of letting you know."
Allen Salkin, freelance writer for the New York Times, Talk, Details, InStyle, US Weekly & others.

"Victoria Rowan is enthusiastic, articulate, endlessly curious, perceptive and empathetic. If you were building the perfect teacher, you would pick those traits before any other. And then you'd top it off with just one more: she is never, ever boring."
David N. Meyer, Adjunct Professor of Film at The New School; author of The 100 Best Films to Rent You've Never Heard Of, former Music Video columnist for Entertainment Weekly

"Victoria Rowan came into my life at the perfect time as both a writing group leader and reading series coordinator. She helped me hone my voice and sharpen my focus as a memoirist and gave me a stage from which to share my experiences with an amazing audience. She continues to offer me practical, thorough, hands-on advice I can incorporate into my writing immediately, and her knowledge of everything from syntax to the publishing industry is priceless. Victoria Rowan is a sensitive editor who is genuinely passionate about writers and writing."
Elise Miller, memoirist and maven of the downtown reading scene