Writing the Book Proposal
Mondays: July 14 - August 11
7:30 - 9:30 p.m. EST
Led by RAKSHA VASUDEVAN
with guest authors Lauren Markham, Elisa Gabbert, Noelle Falcis-Math, & Anni Liu
$400
Please register with the email to which you’d like to receive class correspondence and readings.
A book proposal must do the seemingly impossible: Pitch a project that doesn’t fully exist, while anchoring it in practical details like structure, audience, and timeline. It must function as sales document, project plan, and creative vision—all at once.
How to craft such a thing? How to begin when there are so few examples of book proposals that are publicly accessible? How do you get agents and editors excited about a project that doesn’t yet exist? And how do you do it all while allowing space for the mystery and experimentation that’s crucial to the artistic process?
This five-week Masters’ Series course, led by essayist and journalist Raksha Vasudevan, author of Empires Between Us, a forthcoming reported memoir from Graywolf/Knopf, will feature guest editors, agents, and writers to guide students through the art and strategy of writing a compelling proposal. It will unpack why proposals matter, how publishers evaluate them, and how this strange hybrid document can actually support the creative process rather than stifle it.
Students will study the anatomy of successful proposals from real-world examples, learn how to balance clarity with imagination, and explore how to make the case for a book’s urgency and perspective. The course includes close readings, structured assignments, and sample proposals that led to book deals. By the end, students will have a working draft or detailed outline of their proposal (25–35 pages, not including sample chapters), and a deeper sense of how to shape it into something that excites agents, editors, and themselves.
Open to writers at any stage, this course is designed to transform the proposal from a daunting publishing requirement into a generative, guiding force for the book to come.
This course will:
Parse the strategic considerations behind book proposals: what a proposal is and is not, how agents and publishers evaluate proposals, and how crafting a proposal might actually support you in writing the full manuscript.
Delve into proposal structure. We’ll look at what each section of a standard proposal—from the cover page to the chapter summaries to the author bio and more—should accomplish and how they all work together as a cohesive whole.
Share and analyze real examples of proposals that successfully sold to publishers.
Help students develop a rough draft or outline of their proposals.
Provide students with a grasp of how to refine and tighten this document, and tips about how to get in the mindset of agents and editors while honing their book proposal draft.
Ultimately, transform the process of writing the book proposal into one of clarifying your own book’s vision and execution.
About the Instructors
Raksha Vasudevan
Lauren Markham
Elissa Gabbert
Noelle Falcis-Math
Anni Liu
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Raksha Vasudevan is a journalist and former aid worker. Her debut nonfiction book, Empires Between Us, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press/Knopf Canada. She has reported on issues of race, environmental justice, and "progress" for The New York Times, VICE, The Guardian, Outside, and High Country News, where she is also a contributing editor. Her essays and commentary on colonial legacy and family estrangement appear in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Guernica, Hazlitt, The Washington Post, LitHub, and others. Her work has been nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award, two Pushcart Prizes, a Best of the Net award, and listed as "Notable" in Best American Essays 2020 and 2021.
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Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life; A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging; and Immemorial. The Far Away Brothers won the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, & a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography. A Map of Future Ruins is a finalist for the California Book Award, and The New Yorker listed it as a best book of 2024. Her writing has appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is a contributing editor), Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Guernica, Freeman's, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lit Hub, California Sunday, Zyzzyva, The Georgia Review, Best American Travel Writing 2019, and on This American Life. She teaches writing at Ashland University, the University of San Francisco, and St. Mary’s.
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Elisa Gabbert is the author of seven collections of poetry, essays, and criticism: Any Person Is the Only Self; Normal Distance; The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays; The Word Pretty; L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems; The Self Unstable; and The French Exit. Any Person Is the Only Self, The Unreality of Memory and The Word Pretty were each named a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Believer, the New York Review of Books, A Public Space, The Yale Review, and many other venues.
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Noelle Falcis-Math has garnered a breadth of experience as a writer and editor before transitioning into agenting. She has received fellowships or residencies from VONA, Tinhouse, The Seventh Wave, and Lemontree House. At VONA, she realized the lack of knowledge accessible to marginalized writers, which fueled her interest in publishing. In 2021, she completed the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Publishing Workshop and Transatlantic Agency’s BIPOC mentorship program. In 2022, Noelle began assisting Amanda Orozco and Chelene Knight, and became the Marketing Assistant for the Transatlantic Agency. In 2023, Noelle transitioned into an Associate Literary Agent where she is now building her list.
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An editor at Graywolf Press, Anni Liu acquires and edits fiction and nonfiction that takes bold risks on the level of style and content. Her list has an international focus—from translations to those writing in English all over the world—and she is interested in explorations of power, cultural taboos, migration, class, political resistance, desire, and new approaches to writing kinship and the living world. She is also the author of the prize-winning poetry collection Border Vista (Persea Books) and translates occasionally from Mandarin Chinese. The recipient of fellowships from Undocupoets and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, she lives in Philadelphia.
Class Schedule
We'll be joined by guest authors Lauren Markham on July 21, Elisa Gabbert on July 28, Noelle Falcis-Math on August 4, and Anni Liu on August 11.
Details
This course will take place on Zoom on Mondays July 14 - August 11 from 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterward.
There is a 10% cancellation fee if you cancel your enrollment more than 1 week before the start of the course. No refund will be given if cancelling within less than a week of the course start date (or after the course has begun).
Please email courses@offassignment.com with any questions.
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Financial Aid
The full price for this course is $400; a limited number of scholarships are available. Please fill out this form by June 23, and we’ll get back to you within a week.
Off Assignment’s Masters’ Series courses are unique five-session courses that delve deep into a specific writing topic by harnessing the expertise and craft tactics of a renowned writer in a particular niche, plus four celebrated authors. Participating writers gain a wealth of advanced techniques while benefiting from a cohesive community of disciplined writers.