During the first ten weeks of this eleven-week course, a professional writer will teach you the fundamentals of feature article writing. You will have a weekly writing assignment and two opportunities to present a longer work for instructor and classmate feedback. The eleventh week will be devoted to an online Q&A with a New York Times editor.

Using a balance of lecture, exercise, and feedback on work from the instructor and classmates, this  workshop gives students a firm grounding in all the basics of feature article writing. Everything is presented in a clear, accessible manner.

• Begin writing two feature articles
• Lectures on types of features and basics of craft
• Writing exercises
• Present work for critique (two times)

Only this Premium article writing workshop includes a week-long Q&A with an editor from The New York Times.

Article Writing I is for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals.

Class size is strictly limited to 16 writers.

View a course syllabus

Instructors
S. James Snyder (September 14) has written articles for USA Today, Newsday, the Newark Star-Ledger, L Magazine, the Villager, and Art Forum. He has served as film critic for the New York Sun, arts reviewer with Downtown Express Collider, film editor for SOMA magazine, and is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. He holds an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Porter Fox (October 5) has published articles, nonfiction, and fiction in The Believer, New York Times Magazine, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Salon, Story Quarterly, Northwest Review, and Third Coast. He served as a features editor for Powder magazine and as a fiction editor for LIT.

Guest Editors
Nicholas Confessore (September 14) - bio tk

Bruce Weber (October 5) rejoined The New York Times as an obituary writer in April 2008, after a two-year hiatus during which he wrote As They See ‘Em, a book about baseball umpires that was published by Scribner in March 2009.
     Mr. Weber first joined The New York Times in July 1986 as a desk person for The New York Times Magazine and became articles editor in January 1991. He became a reporter on the metropolitan desk in November 1991 and moved to the culture department September 1992. From 1992 until 1994 he wrote the On Stage and Off column for the weekend section. In 1997 he became The Times’s first national cultural correspondent, and during that time he was based in the Chicago bureau. From 2000 through 2003, he was a theater critic, concentrating on Off Broadway and regional theater productions. He then spent two years as part of the “How We Live” cluster of reporters examining various aspects of American life; his focus was on recreation.

During the first ten weeks of this eleven-week course, a professional writer will reinforce the basics of feature article writing, and delve into the fine points. You will have a weekly writing assignment and three opportunities to present a feature article for instructor and classmate feedback. The eleventh week will be devoted to an online Q&A with a New York Times editor.

Focusing on developing projects and receiving feedback from the instructor and classmates, this course helps students sharpen their skills and work toward completion of publishable work. Writers often repeat Article II to continue their projects.

• Generate numerous ideas for articles
• Begin and/or refine several articles
• Writing exercises
• Present work for critique (three times)

Instructor
S. James Snyder (October 6) has written articles for USA Today, Newsday, the Newark Star-Ledger, L Magazine, the Villager, and Art Forum. He has served as film critic for the New York Sun, arts reviewer with Downtown Express Collider, film editor for SOMA magazine, and is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. He holds an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

Guest Editor
Christine Haughney (October 6) - bio tk

• Begin writing two articles or a book
• Lectures on types of food writing and basics of craft
• Writing exercises
• Present work for critique (two times)

Only this Premium food writing workshop includes a week-long Q&A with an editor from The New York Times.

Food Writing is for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals.

Class size is strictly limited to 16 writers.

View a course syllabus

Instructor
Evan Rail (September 14) has written about food and travel for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Concierge.com and Imbibe, and he is the author of Good Beer Guide Prague and the Czech Republic (CAMRA, 2007), several editions of the Prague Post Dining Guide, and Tsunami, a poetry chapbook. His work is included in the Best Food Writing 2005.

Fran McNulty (October 5) has written food stories and reviews for The New York Times and New York magazine. Her features have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Barrons, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, and New York Woman. Writing as Fran Schumer, she penned Most Likely To Succeed (Random House) and co-authored Powerplay (Simon & Schuster).

Guest Editor
Julia Moskin (September 14) has been a reporter for the Dining section since 2004. A lifelong New Yorker, Ms. Moskin began writing about food in 1993 as restaurant critic for the weekly New York Press, while working as an editor of cookbooks. Later, as a freelance writer, she co-authored nine cookbooks while writing for magazines including Saveur and Metropolitan Home.
     At the Times, she has written on such diverse subjects as the punk-vegan movement, illegal traffic in Girl Scout cookies on ebay, the best recipe for macaroni and cheese, and the widespread practice of freezing fish for sushi.

Kim Severson (October 5) is a staff writer for the Dining section of The New York Times.  She previously wrote about cooking and the culture of food for the San Francisco Chronicle, after a seven-year stint as an editor and reporter at the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska.  Before writing about food full time, she covered crime, education, social services and government for daily newspapers on the West Coast.
     Ms. Severson has won several regional and national awards for news and feature writing, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for her work on childhood obesity in 2002 and four James Beard awards for food writing.  She has written two books, The Trans Fat Solution: Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat from Your Diet, and The New Alaska Cookbook.  Her new book, Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life, will be published in April 2010 by Riverhead Books.

During the first four weeks of this five-week course, a professional freelancer will walk you through the strategies for selling work to magazines, newspapers, and websites on a regular basis, and each student will have two opportunities to present a pitch to the instructor for feedback. The fifth week will be devoted to an online Q&A with a New York Times editor.

Using a balance of lecture and feedback from the instructor, this class gives students a firm grounding in how to start and maintain a freelance career. Everything is presented in a clear, accessible manner.

Among the topics covered:

• Overview of the magazine/newspaper market
• How to generate saleable ideas
• How to write great pitch letters
• How to scope out and analyze magazines, newspapers, and websites
• Effective ways to make contact
• How to send your materials
• Deciphering rejections
• Understanding contracts
• Managing the business side of writing

Only this Premium How to Freelance class includes a week-long Q&A with an editor from the New York Times.

Class size is strictly limited to 25 students. 

View a course syllabus

Instructor
Cindy Price (September 15 and October 20) is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and writes for the American Michelin red guides. She primarily covers food and travel for the Times' Escapes, Travel and Dining sections, but has covered a range of topics for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Sports section, Conde Nast Traveler, Philadelphia Weekly, Gotham, FHM, and the New Leader.

Guest Editor
Lynda A. Richardson (September 15) has been a reporter on the metropolitan staff of The New York Times since December 1991.  She has written the Public Lives profiles since January 2001.  She was among the original writers of the Portraits of Grief, the miniature profiles of victims in the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster.  Ms Richardson has covered a range of subjects at The Times, including education, courts, AIDS and intellectual life.
     Before joining The Times, she was a reporter at The Washington Post, The St. Petersburg Times, Dallas Times Herald, The Austin American-Statesman.

Francis Flaherty (October 20) has worked for the last 15 years at The New York Times as a columnist and editor, and is currently the Deputy Editor of the City Section. He has written for Harper’s, the Atlantic, Commonweal, and the Progressive and teaches journalism at New York University. His book on writing, The Elements of Story, was published in 2009 by HarperCollins.

Using a balance of lecture, exercise, and feedback on work from the instructor and classmates, this workshop gives students a firm grounding in all the basics of feature travel writing. Everything is presented in a clear, accessible manner.

• Begin writing two travel pieces or a travel book
• Lectures on types of travel writing and basics of craft
• Writing exercises
• Present work for critique (two times)

Only this Premium travel writing workshop includes a week-long Q&A with an editor from The New York Times.

Food Writing is for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals.

Class size is strictly limited to 16 writers.

View a course syllabus

Instructor
Colleen Kinder (September 14 & October 5) is the author of the guidebook Delaying the Real World (Running Press), and she co-edited the essay anthology Confessions of a High School Nerd (Penguin). Her articles and essays on travel and current events have been published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Salon, the New Republic, Transitions Abroad, Ms., Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, A Public Space, and Prairie Schooner, and the anthologies A Woman’s World Again (Traveler’s Tales) and 20-Something Essays by 20-Something Writers (Random House).

Guest Editor
Dan Saltzstein (September 14) has worked at The New York Times for over 10 years. He began as a producer at the Web site, handling the online production of sections including Dining, Home, Styles and the Magazine. He spent 3 years as Arts Editor at nytimes.com overseeing the Arts section, as well as the Book Review, the Magazine and the Week in Review. For the last 6 months, he has edited in the Travel, Home and Dining sections of the newspaper, as well as the Globespotters travel blog. He now edits full-time in the Travel section, handling columns including 36 Hours, Surfacing and Bites. His writing and photography has appeared in the Dining, Travel, Weekend Arts and City sections.

Joe Sharkey (October 5) writes a weekly business travel column for The New York Times.  He also contributes regularly to the Week in Review and other sections of that newspaper, and frequently writes for magazines.
     For six years until 1990, he was an assistant national editor and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.  He also was a reporter and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer; a reporter and assistant city editor for The Philadelphia Bulletin, and the executive city editor at the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union.