Feb. 21, 2024
Wednesday, 5pm–8pm EST (2pm–5pm Pacific)
How do you capture the essence of your subject—their triumphs and failures, beauty marks and warts—without losing their trust in you as a journalist or ghost-writer? How do you build rapport, manage their egos, surprise them with fresh questions, ask uncomfortable and hard-hitting questions, and just open up your subjects to imagining their lives as narratives? In this masterclass with Omar Mouallem, a National Magazine Award-winning profile writer and ghost-writer of two bestselling memoirs, writers will learn and practice interviewing techniques with each other. Omar will also cover structural techniques, secondary-sourcing, reconstructing memories as scenes, and fact-checking. You’ll leave with the skills to produce an unflinching and honest profile that your subjects may not like but can’t disagree with.
REGISTRATION
After checkout, you’ll receive a receipt with a link to download your tickets, which will include Zoom passcodes and additional webinar information. You will also receive an emailed reminder a few days before the event.
ACCESSIBILITY & RECORDING
This webinar is designed for live participation but a recording of the webinar will be provided to all registrants to stream if they’re unable to attend in full or wish to view it again. Closed captioning is also available for both live and recorded video, however, it’s auto-generated and subject to error.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
In addition to founding Pandemic University School of Writing, Omar Mouallem is an author, journalist and filmmaker. He’s contributed stories to The Guardian, WIRED, and NewYorker.com and received three National Magazine Awards and other honours. Several of his articles have been adapted into books and movies, including Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas, which was named one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 best books of 2021. He also wrote and directed The Lebanese Burger Mafia, which won the Audience Choice Award at the 2023 Northwest International Documentary Festival.
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