Hey kids, we’re getting back to basics this week with a down-n-dirty episode on pitching, focused on opinion pages everywhere. We’re talking to Lisa Levenstein, an academic, historian and feminist (and the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Greensboro) with two books under her belt: A Movement Without Marches: African American Women and the Politics of Poverty in Postwar Philadelphia and They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties. Lisa took that expertise and those books and turned them into a growing career writing passionate freelance pieces of a kind that really appeal to editors—blending current issues with her special historic perspective on women’s issues.

We talked about everything from subject lines to finding your topic to using one piece as a steppingstone to break into another market, and it was fabulous. Enjoy!

Links from the pod

Lisa herself

#AmReading

Lisa: Big Friendship How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

Sarina: What Happens In Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand

KJ: The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Have you checked out our new sponsor? Thanks to The Great Courses for coming on board. Jess has been a fan for literally years, while Sarina and KJ are planning to catch up. Find out more at https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/amwriting.

And—is this the year you launch your own book coaching business? You know how much we love Author Accelerator, and their book coaching course is everything you need to get started. Find out more at bookcoaches.com/amwriting.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic and Chris Hardwick Guest