The spring 2025 edition of Spalding’s Business of Writing Seminars takes place Saturday, March 8, 2025, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. ET, for students, faculty, and alumni of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. Three virtual sessions offer extracurricular instruction in the world of publishing and production.
The seminars are free to School of Writing students and faculty.
Alums register by making a donation in any amount here: www.spalding.edu/mfa-payments. (For the donation, use the email address where you'd like the Zoom links sent.) The registration deadline for alumni is Friday, March 7. Your donation helps make possible these educational evets for our community. If alums can’t attend on the day of the event, all sessions (except the roundtables) will be recorded, and the recordings will be available until April 8, 2025.
Here’s the program for the event:
Saturday, March 8, 2025
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. ET / 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. CT / 9:30 – 10:30 a.m. MT / 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. PT
Publishing 101 with the University Press of Kentucky
with Ashley Runyon
Visit with University Press of Kentucky Director Ashley Runyon to learn about the ins and outs of publishing. Ashley will showcase the entire publication process, including crafting a proposal, the critical revision stage, the importance of an author’s platform, and discussion about finding the right publisher/agent for your work.
12:45 – 1:45 p.m. ET / 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. CT / 10:45 – 11:45 a.m. MT / 9:45 – 10:45 a.m. PT
Publishing Roundtables by Genre
During our virtual Business of Writing Seminars session last September, students and alumni expressed desire for an opportunity to ask questions of colleagues who’ve had success with publishing a first book or having had a first play or screenplay produced. For this session, we’ve invited Naslund-Mann published or produced alumni to facilitate informal break-out room discussions in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children and young adults, and writing for TV, screen, and stage. Bring your questions about publishing and producing, or just drop in to listen. Facilitators include MFA alumni A. H. Jerriod Avant, Nathan Gower, Nancy Chen Long, Jeffrey Fischer-Smith, Brigette Portman, Kaylene Johnson, Holly Gleason, Jessica Love, Andie Redwine, Bridgette Dutta Portman, and Susan Sojourna Collier. Other alumni facilitators TBA.
Pictured L to R: Nathan Gower, Nancy Chen Long, Kaylene Johnson, Andie Redwine, Susan Sojourna Collier, Jeffrey Fischer-Smith, A. H. Jerriod Avant, Bridgette Dutta Portman
2:00 – 3:15 p.m. ET / 1:00 – 2:15 p.m. CT / 12:00 – 1:15 p.m. MT / 11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PT
All the Legal-Smeagle Stuff Writers Need to Know!
with Thea Rademacher, JD, and President of Flint Hills Publishing
Join Thea Rademacher JD, President of Flint Hills Publishing, for an informative, fast-paced presentation designed to educate authors of prose, poetry, and script about critical legal and publishing information they need to know to protect their work and avoid problems in their writing careers. Topics include an in-depth explanation of copyright law, including emerging issues with AI. Authors will be given important tips about how to avoid trouble when it comes to issues of defamation, interviews, and the ever-growing problem of publishing scams. There are many roads to publishing—you’ll learn the pros and cons of each. You’ll also learn about the business of being an author, including work-for-hire arrangements, licensing, and publishing contracts. Finally, you’ll get to put a publisher on the hot seat and ask your burning questions. All participants will receive a complimentary PDF of Thea’s book Authors Beware! Arm Yourself with Knowledge to Help Avoid Legal Pitfalls.
Spalding’s Business of Writing Seminars, presented virtually each spring and fall, have three main goals:
To help Spalding writers learn more about working with agents, literary magazines, presses, and theaters and production companies.
To help students better understand how to market work once it’s published or produced.
To provide enriching instruction to Spalding writers interested in writing in the professional workplace. Sessions include advice on how to break into new freelance markets; work as a copywriter, editor, speechwriter, or grant writer; and write for nonprofits or for-profit organizations.
To learn more, email schoolofwriting@spalding.edu.
Presenter Bios
A. H. Jerriod Avant was born and raised in Longtown, Mississippi. His first book, Muscadine, (Four Way Books, 2023) received the 2024 Mississippi Institute of the Arts and Letters Poetry Award. A graduate of Jackson State University, Jerriod has earned MFA degrees from Spalding University and New York University. A graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, he’s received scholarships from the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference and Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. A former resident at the James Castle House and Vermont Studio Center, Jerriod has received two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and an emerging artist grant from the St. Botolph Club Foundation. His work has appeared in The Boston Review, Pinwheel, Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Obsidian, The Yale Review, and other journals. Jerriod’s work has been produced in collaboration with the Emily Harvey Foundation, the Highline NYC, and the Kitchen Lab. Jerriod is the 2024-2025 John and Renee Grisham Writer-In-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
With a background in poetry and playwriting, Susan-Sojourna Collier received an Emmy® nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Dramatic Series for All My Children. A veteran television writer, Susan-Sojourna has written for many acclaimed daytime drama series, including All My Children, Port Charles, and One Life to Live. Susan-Sojourna partnered with the late Tommy Ford (Martin, Who Got Jokes?, Harlem Nights) to produce two feature films distributed by Lionsgate/Grindstone: Conflict of Interest, currently airing on Amazon Prime, and Switching Lanes, now available on Peacock. She served as Consulting Producer on Rejuvenation, airing on Tubi. Additionally, she penned the screenplay Get the Show on the Road, an adaptation of a romantic comedy novel and a semi-finalist in the Tribeca Screenwriting Festival. Her latest work includes completing the documentary Through My Lens: A Study of Bullying in the African American Community. Susan-Sojourna was honored as the Writer in Residence at Abu Dhabi Women’s College, where she designed their digital storytelling course and edited the college’s first book of poetry, Insights into Emirati Life. She has taught screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts, Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, and Georgia State University. As the co-founder of the Mamie & Jimmie Collier Writing Fellowship, Susan-Sojourna supports emerging BIPOC playwrights and screenwriters through mentorship and writing competitions. Currently, she serves as an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where she teaches TV writing and screenwriting.
Joan Donaldson is the author of two novels set at Historic Rugby, On Viney’s Mountain and Hearts of Mercy. While touring the Victorian village in Tennessee, she sensed the voices of the settlers telling her their stories. Accompanied by her cats, Turnip and Puca, she writes from her yellow house nestled on an organic blueberry farm in Michigan. Every year, she, and her husband plant four acres of poppies in honor of their deceased son. The Poppy Fields of Fennville draw thousands of visitors who find comfort, beauty, and peace in the waving red flowers. In her free time, she sews quilts, gardens, plays a wire harp, and enjoys her grandchildren.
Jeffrey Fischer-Smith (concept & book) is a New York based writer originally from Riverhead, New York where some of the play takes place. He works in theatre, film, and television. Jeffrey’s stage plays have been produced in New York, around the USA, and in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, and the Philippines. His play Reservations was produced at Stella Adler Theatre (Los Angeles), Samsung Hall (Manila), Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Center, The Playhouse Theatre (Hobart, Tasmania), Nuyorican Poets Café (New York), Factory Theatre (Sydney), Pegasus Theatre Company (Guerneville), Doris Harper White Playhouse (Flagstaff), amongst many others, and was taught in the Colorado Prison System. Jeffrey’s play A Dog Dreams has been produced at Concordia University (Irvine), Theatre Rhinoceros (San Francisco), Longwood University, The Road Theatre Company (Los Angeles), Players Workshop (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), Boston Playwright’s Theatre, Alex Theatre (Melbourne), West Side YMCA (New York), amongst many others, and was a featured play in The Grief Dialogues which toured the USA. Both plays were made into short films which have been Official Selections at numerous festivals and have won multiple awards. Reservations was co-written by Spalding alum Julie Nichols. His play When the Son Is Shining was produced at Cincinnati LAB Theatre and The Road Theatre Company. As a poet, he has been published in Three Line Poetry and The Risley Review. Jeffrey is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and The Playwrights’ Center. He received his MFA in Playwriting and Post Graduate Certificate in Television Writing from Spalding University.
Holly Gleason is a New York Times best-selling author, the National Arts + Entertainment Journalism Awards 2024 Independent Journalist of the Year, and 2023 Southern California Media Awards Entertainment Journalist of the Year. Her Woman, Walk the Line: How the Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives won the 2018 Belmont Book Award and was named to the Best Music Book lists at Variety, No Depression, Rolling Stone, Pop Matters, and Mojo. She co-authored Miranda Lambert's Y’all Eat Yet: Welcome to the Pretty B*thcin Kitchen, which was nominated for an ANDY in Memoir/Creative Non-Fiction and was runner up for Best Nonfiction Book at the 2023 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards. Prine on Prine: Interviews & Encounters with John Prine, which she edited and contributed to, was the Chicago Review Press’s biggest seller for 2023/4, and it was named in top 10 [music] book lists from No Depression, Chicago Tribune, Variety, Consequence of Sound, and Tennessean. Currently ghost-writing two as-yet-unannounced memoirs, she is the Nashville Editor of HITS and a Sr. Contributing Editor at POLLSTAR, as well having her work published in the New York Times, PASTE, Vineyard Gazette, Salvation South, RELIX, Variety, Los Angeles Times, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Program.
Nathan Gower is the author of The Act of Disappearing (Mira Books/HarperCollins), a debut novel hailed by the Washington Post as one of "ten noteworthy books" upon its publication in May 2024. He holds an MFA in fiction from Spalding University and a PhD in humanities with an emphasis in creativity and aesthetics from the University of Louisville. His work has been published in Had, Baltimore Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Louisville Magazine, Louisville Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, New Southerner, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. He currently serves as Professor of English at Campbellsville University and holds editorial positions at the Campbellsville Review and the Russell Creek Review.
Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan is an author, editor, and small press publisher. Her work includes seven nonfiction books including biography, history, and memoir. Her award-winning essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The North American Review, The Louisville Review, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. Her small company, Ember Press published historical books about Alaska for the Kenai Mountains-Turnagain Arm National Heritage Area as well as other titles in memoir, biography, and children's picture books.
Jessica Love Kim (published as both Jessica Love and Jessica Patrick) runs a high school library by day, writes YA romance novels by night, and pets as many dogs as possible in between. She lives in Southern California with her cute family and she has an MFA from Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, an MLIS from San Jose State University, an annual passport to Disneyland, and about seventy-five tabs open on her internet browser. Jessica's debut novel Push Girl, co-written with Chelsie Hill, was published in 2014 by St. Martin's Press. In Real Life was published in 2016, also by St. Martin's Press. Her third novel, This Is For Tonight, was released in 2021 by Swoon Reads/Macmillan. You can find her online at jessica-patrick.com or @readwritejess on Substack, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.
Nancy Chen Long is the author of Wider than the Sky (Diode Editions, 2020), which was selected for the Diode Editions Book Award, and Light into Bodies (University of Tampa Press, 2017), which won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Her poetry has been supported by a National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry and the Poetry Society of America Robert H. Winner Award. She works at Indiana University in the Research Technologies division
Bridgette Dutta Portman is a playwright and novelist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. More than two dozen of her plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally. She is a member of the Pear Theatre board of directors, the Pear Playwrights' Guild, the PlayGround SF writers pool, and the Dramatists' Guild. She received the 2023 June Anne Baker Prize from PlayGround, and has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, the Theatre Bay Area TITAN award, the PlayPenn Conference, the Kentucky Women’s Theatre Conference Prize for Women Writers, the New Dramatists playwrights' residency, and more. Her young adult fantasy trilogy, the Coseema Saga, was published by Titan1 Studios in 2021-23, and she is currently querying another YA novel. She graduated from Spalding in 2018 with an MFA in creative writing and now teaches composition and dramatic writing at UC Berkeley.
Thea Rademacher started her professional career as a social justice attorney after graduating with honors from the University of Minnesota School of Law. In 2015, she started Flint Hills Publishing after her inspiring experience co-authoring A Drop in the Night, the Life and Secret Mission of a WW II Airman. Her company has published over eighty books—including a Spur Award winner—and she has presented to authors around the world about important and relevant legal topics.
Andie Redwine likes to use her words. A writer/director based in Indianapolis, Indiana, Andie won multiple film festival awards with her debut feature, Paradise Recovered, distributed by Netflix. Her PBS documentary Clessie Cummins: Hoosier Inventor was nominated for a regional Emmy. Her use of film and narrative for strategic planning led to over $100M in investment in community development projects for small towns and minority- and women-owned businesses. She co-hosts the Once Upon A Disney podcast to make screenwriting accessible for beginning writers. Currently, Andie is in post-production on her latest documentary feature, The Tenderness Tour, funded in part by The Lilly Foundation, and she’s always excited to hear about your writing project.
University Press of Kentucky Director Ashley Runyon has worked in the publishing industry for more than two decades in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly and trade book publishing. A lifelong Kentuckian, she is dedicated to not only publishing forward-thinking books by local authors but offering Kentucky communities access to history and literature regardless of their income level.
Katy Yocom’s debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear, has been named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite and winner of the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, the New Horizon award, and others. She co-edited the anthology Creativity & Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty Years. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, Salon, LitHub, the American Airlines in-flight magazine, Terrain.org and elsewhere. She is associate director of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University and prose editor of the literary magazine Good River Review. She co-directs a reading series, teaches writing workshops, and works privately with fiction and nonfiction writers. She holds an MFA from Spalding and lives in Louisville with her spouse, goldendoodle, and mostly tolerant cat.