Our 2024 “HippoCamp Weekend”: An Event Run-Down

Session description: In this session, we’ll explore a few of the many ways you can invite play and spontaneity into your writing life. Play increases problem solving skills, fosters more innovative thinking, and reduces stress. It’s a core part of the creative process! Discover how to nurture and keep play in your practice.

About the speaker: Jennifer (Jenny) Hill is a published poet, circus performer, and arts educator who has worked as a teaching artist with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for 24 years. Everything she does begins with play. You can find more about her online at actsofjennius.com.

Session description: A short session focused on honoring (and raising!) the stakes, characters, and themes in YA nonfiction. Participants will learn new strategies for character- and world-building, pitfalls to avoid, and how to repurpose memories and life events with integrity.

About the speaker: Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a memoir in verse. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, The Millions, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the LA-based food and culture magazine Compound Butter. Originally from New York, she has an MFA in poetry from Hunter College and lives in Philadelphia.

Session description: Writers will leave this quick-witted workshop with tools to help them determine when and how to incorporate humor into their creative nonfiction. We’ll discuss guiding questions to ask while writing and explore using rhetorical devices to craft humor. This is for writers of all levels who are looking to find more funny in their stories.

About the speaker: Maryann Aita (rhymes with beta) is a writer and performer in New York City and the author of Little Astronaut: A Memoir in Essays (ELJ Editions, 2022). She is also the nonfiction editor for Press Pause Press, a journal with zero social media presence. She has three cats.

Session description: A rapid-fire workshop with journalism tips and tricks to bolster writers pursuing creative nonfiction and/or memoir. Participants will learn some journalistic methods of researching, sourcing, interviewing and editing. Participants will leave the workshop with new skills and strategies to enhance their own writing.

About the speaker:

Molly Bilinski is an award-winning journalist and storyteller based in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. She writes on the environment and science beat for LehighValleyNews.com, but her byline has also appeared in the Reading Eagle, The Press of Atlantic City and The Morning Call. She was the first-place winner of the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s 2022 Diversity Portfolio.

Molly earned her master’s of fine arts in creative nonfiction in June 2024 from Wilkes University’s Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is Hippocampus Magazine’s articles editor, in charge of the CRAFT and WRITING LIFE columns.

Session description: Creative nonfiction and poetry share a long and undefended border. Many craft elements —immediacy, lyricism, arresting imagery, and others — enjoy dual citizenship. But there is still much the CNF writer can learn from a visit in the land of poetry and, once back on her side of the border, adapt to her own needs and purposes.

About the speaker: Doug Van Gundy directs the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Guernica, Poets & Writers, and The Oxford American. He is the author of a book of poems, A Life Above Water and co-editor of the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary Writing from West Virginia.

Session description: This flash session will  share some hard-earned wisdom and insights to consider when promoting your book and planning your own tour without a publicist. Participants will gain tips on approaching bookstores and libraries, partnering with other authors, using local media and targeted organizations, marketing, anticipating challenges, event preparation, and more.

About the speaker: Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023), shortlisted for the 2024 Memoir Prize from Memoir Magazine, named a 2023 Foreword INDIES Finalist, and Winner of a Bronze Medal in the Wishing Shelf BookAwards, and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a certificate in narrative medicine from Columbia University. She’s had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from illness, loss, and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today,  Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. Though she is still a proud Canadian, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university in Toronto), and chocolate Lab.

Session description: Everyone wants an agent but no one knows where, or how, to find one. Join Amy for this flash workshop where she will offer seven quick tips that you can implement immediately to bring yourself closer to representation. Participants will learn how to set themselves up for success, how to remain persistent when they are discouraged, and how to research agents that might be a good fit. Everyone will walk away with actionable steps for their agent search plan.

About the speaker: Amy Fish is a committed HippoCamper and a born story-teller with a tendency to over-research. Her latest Chapbook, Honeymoon Sneakers: A Cautionary Tale (Cactus Press 2024) came out a few months ago, and she is the author of the forthcoming One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity (Goose Lane Editions 2025). Amy writes a weekly Substack called Persistence for Writers.

Session description: When a radio talk show host, podcaster, or TV producer requests your bio before a scheduled interview, do you have the right one to send? What about bios for other opportunities related to the business of being an author? In this fast-paced, content-rich session, learn what belongs in your bio, what raises red flags, and how to write bios that level up your literary career.

About the speaker: Joey Garcia is an editor and book coach who helps writers get known while she’s editing their books. Her clients have been featured in major media, including The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian magazine, Ms. magazine, CNN, and The Tamron Hall Show. A recognized relationship expert, Joey has been interviewed by USA Today, Deutsche Welle, KVIE public television, KTLA radio, and the Dear Prudence podcast. Joey’s personal essays can be found in Hippocampus CNF magazine, Hypertext, the Brevity blog and (HER)oics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Coronavirus Pandemic, among others. In 2017, Joey established the first-ever literary fellowship in Belize, her birthplace.

Rae Pagliarulo

Session description: What would you do with $5,000 or $10,000 just to work on your writing? In this session you’ll learn about where to look for grant opportunities, what you’ll need to apply, and how this seemingly-unreachable source of revenue can help move your project from floundering to finished!

About the speaker: Rae Pagliarulo works as a nonprofit fundraising consultant in her lifelong home of Philadelphia. Her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in Full Grown People, bedfellows, Hippocampus, The Manifest-Station, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, the Brevity Blog, and numerous others. Her work is anthologized in The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition. She is the 2014 recipient of the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize, a 2019 Best of the Net nominee, and a graduate of Rosemont College’s MFA program.

Session description: Often, we promote our work among writerly circles, but what about the everyday reader? Those folks who love to immerse themselves in true stories, but who you also won’t find in the online and real-life literary communities we spend so much time in. In this brief talk, Donna will dive into discoverability and explore ways readers can find YOU and what you write about. She’ll cover researching and using keywords, writing for search engines (including AI assistants), crafting marketing copy for products and events, and finding opportunities to collaborate with local partners.

About the speaker: Donna Talarico, founder/publisher of Hippocampus Magazine, has more than 25 years of experience in marketing and communications; about half of that time has been in higher education. She serves as an editor for Link Journal (from the HighEdWeb Association), writes an adult learner recruiting column for Wiley, and has contributed to Guardian Higher Education Network, The Writer, mental_floss, Games World of Puzzles, and others. Her creative nonfiction appears in The Superstition Review, The Los Angeles Review, The New York Times (Tiny Love Stories), Wanderlust Journal, and The Writing Disorder (which nominated her essay “A Prequel to My Sister’s” for a Pushcart Prize). Donna serves on the residency faculty (with a focus on the business of publishing) at the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University.

Tometich’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, Catapult, the Tampa Bay Times, and many more outlets. She has won more than a dozen awards for her stories, including first place for Food & Travel Writing at the 2022 Sunshine State Awards. She (still) lives in Fort Myers with her husband, two children, and her ever-fiery Filipina mother.

If that doesn’t work, look in the mirror, spin around twice while saying, “Do you want to watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice?” and she’ll show up behind you with a bottle of wine, ready to go.

If you’re interested in connecting and seeing what’s coming next, you can find her at: audreyjean.net | Instagram: audreyjean_writes

About the speaker: Lara Lillibridge (she/they) is the author of Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent; Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home, and co-editor of the anthology, Feminine Rising. Her essay collection: The Truth About Unringing Phones, releases March 2024 with Unsolicited Press.

DW McKinney is a writer and editor based in Las Vegas, Nevada. A 2024 Torch Literary Arts Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships from the VCCA, PERIPLUS Collective, Writing By Writers, Voodoonauts, and The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. Her work appears in Oxford American, Los Angeles Review of Books, Ecotone, TriQuarterly, and Narratively, among others. She also serves as a nonfiction editor at Shenandoah Literary. Learn more about her at www.dwmckinney.com.

Hattie Fletcher is a senior editor at Belt Publishing and a co-founder of “Short Reads,” a weekly email-based publication showcasing flash nonfiction. She was the managing editor at Creative Nonfiction from 2004 – 2022 and the editor of the monthly True Story magazine.

Stories she’s worked on have been reprinted in the Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing and the Best Women’s Travel Writing and have been awarded the Pushcart Prize. She is an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches “Editing for Writers.”

About the speaker: Michael B.  Tager is the managing editor of Mason Jar Press and ostensibly the author of Pop Culture Poetry: the Definitive Collection. He is also well aware of the fleeting nature of life, so doesn’t really claim ownership of anything. One time he beat Contra without using the Konami Code and estimates that he had to burn several hundred hours of his life becoming good enough to do that. His website is Michaelbtager.com.

Steph Auteri has written for the Atlantic, the Guardian, Pacific Standard, VICE, and other publications. Her more literary work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Creative Nonfiction, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Dirty Word and the founder of Guerrilla Sex Ed.

Rae Pagliarulo works as a nonprofit fundraising consultant in her lifelong home of Philadelphia. Her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in Full Grown People, bedfellows, Hippocampus, The Manifest-Station, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, the Brevity Blog, and numerous others. Her work is anthologized in The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition. She is the 2014 recipient of the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize, a 2019 Best of the Net nominee, and a graduate of Rosemont College’s MFA program.