One-Day Upod Pop-Up: Write & Sell Your Memoir

Sunday, May 17, 2026 - livestream - 8:30 am PT to 4 pm pt

Participate, Ask questions, get feedback, tell your story

Enrollment: $299

ayelet waldman

Ayelet Waldman is a bestselling memoirist and novelist known for her unflinching, darkly funny explorations of marriage, motherhood, and mental health. The acclaimed author of Bad Mother and the candid, formally inventive A Really Good Day, Waldman brings a rare combination of emotional honesty, moral complexity, and narrative control to personal writing. A former federal public defender, Waldman often draws on her legal background to interrogate questions of justice, identity, and responsibility on the page. She is also the co-creator, with her husband Michael Chabon, of the Netflix series Unbelievable.

Iris Blasi

Iris Blasi is a literary agent at Arc Literary Management who specializes in voice-driven memoir and narrative nonfiction with strong emotional, cultural, and intellectual stakes. She has worked with Sari Botton, Erica Jong, Ira Levin, Alexandra Silber, Jerry Stahl, Gloria Steinem and Fay Weldon. She’s known for working closely with writers to develop deeply personal material into structurally sound, commercially viable books, with a particular eye for projects that connect individual experience to larger conversations around identity, power, and belonging. Blasi is especially drawn to memoir that pushes beyond confession into insight—stories that are as rigorous in thought as they are intimate in voice.

Tanya Mckinnon

Tanya McKinnon is a literary agent known for championing bold, voice-driven memoir and narrative nonfiction. At McKinnon Literary, she has built a reputation for developing deeply personal projects into distinctive, market-ready books, working closely with authors on structure, positioning, and long-term career strategy. She is especially drawn to memoirs that pair intimate storytelling with larger cultural, intellectual, or investigative stakes, and is valued by writers for her sharp editorial instincts, clear-eyed feedback, and collaborative approach from proposal through publication.

Kathleen Schmidt

Kathleen has in-depth experience in all aspects of the publishing industry, including as a publicist, literary agent, acquisitions editor, writer and Substacker.

To date, she has worked on 50 New York Times bestsellers, and her PR clients have continuously appeared in top-tier national print, broadcast, and radio outlets such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, Vogue, Elle, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, and Sirius XM.

Her fast-growing Substack newsletter, Publishing Confidential, shares her wealth of inside knowledge that she hopes will help demystify the book industry. Married with two children, she resides in New Jersey.

Lucinda Halpern

Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent and founder of Lucinda Literary, known for guiding memoirists and narrative nonfiction writers toward commercially compelling, deeply resonant books. Based in New York, she has worked with all major publishers and built a reputation for helping authors sharpen personal stories into clear, marketable concepts with strong narrative stakes. She is the author of Get Signed, praised by Adam Grant as “the definitive guide to attracting an agent and laying the groundwork for a book well worth publishing,” reflecting her practical, insider approach to turning lived experience into publishable memoir.

David Hochman

David Hochman has been running Upod since the early ‘00s with a focus on helping fellow writers find the stories only they can tell. Upod alums have sold thousands of articles, books and more through the connections and support of people they’ve met at these sessions.

UPOD SCHOLARS PROGRAM
Thanks to the generous contributions of the Upod writers community, several free spots are available at Upod Academy workshops for writers and journalists who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color. Apply For A Scholarship