Professional Empowerment Across Genres: How to Successfully Pitch, Promote and Fund Your Creative Projects with Kristina Marie Darling (via Zoom)

This workshop will walk students through the basics of writing convincing and persuasive pitches; crafting applications to fellowships, residencies, and grants; promoting their creative work; and discovering an appreciative audience more generally. We will address such topics as the fine art of pitches, artist statements, personal statements, project proposals, choosing the work sample, tailoring the C.V. toward specific opportunities, effectively spreading the word about books and events, and building a creative portfolio as a whole. Students will leave the workshop with a packet of resources for publicity, researching residencies and discovering grants, as well as sample application materials and strategies for effectively presenting their own work to decision makers in the arts.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and will be capped at 15 students. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your spam folder if you do not receive it. It will also be sent the day before class as a reminder. Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email misty@writerscenter.org with any questions.

All HVWC scholarship applications will be available on Dec 1 and will be due on Dec 15 for all winter/spring 2024 classes.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-nine books. An expert consultant with the U.S. Fulbright Commission, and a twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Darling’s work has also been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry; eight residencies at the American Academy in Rome, where she has also served as an ambassador for recruitment; grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and Harvard University’s Kittredge Fund; a Fundación Valparaíso fellowship to live and work in Spain; a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, funded by the Heinz Foundation; an artist-in- residence position at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; two grants from the Whiting Foundation; a Faber Residency in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities; an artist-in- residence position with the Andorran Ministry of Culture; an artist-in-residence position at the Florence School of Fine Arts; and an appointment at the Scuola Internazionale de Grafica in Venice, among many other awards and honors. She has taught at Yale University, the American University in Rome, and the New School, and has been an invited speaker at the United States Embassy and The Betsy, a four-star hotel on Miami’s iconic Ocean Drive. Dr. Darling serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press & Tupelo Quarterly. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between the United States, Greece, and the Amalfi Coast.