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Writing It!

The Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida

"Writing It! The Podcast About Academics & Writing" dives deep into the world of academic writing and publishing. Join us for conversations with academics and editors as we discuss challenges, strategies, and insights from our writing lives. As we share our experiences and helpful hacks, we make the process of writing and getting published a bit more transparent and a bit less overwhelming.

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  • 25 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 48 min
  • English

Episodes 25

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  • January 26 · 47 min

    Episode 68: The Agent’s Perspective with literary agent Alia Hanna Habib

    We’re talking with Alia Hanna Habib of the Gernert literary agency about how academics can successfully find agents; what’s the best way to write a cold-call query letter to agents; how an academic author can include her own intellectual history in the book proposal; avoiding the “voice from nowhere” style of writing; how much money is reasonable to expect as a first-time trade press author; and what to expect from an agent. We also discuss how book deals differ from their cinematic portrayals

  • January 12 · 34 min

    Episode 67: When Your Academic Study Becomes a Surprise Bestseller with Richard Breitman

    We’re speaking with Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of history at American University about his 45+ year career, and his 12 books. We talked about how research on FDR and the Holocaust spawned many research projects; how convenience and cost affects archival projects; how an agent can helpfully shape a writing project; how journalists can play a useful role in disseminating academic research; how even successful co-authoring has its rough patches; and getting past the “Hasn’t

  • Dec 29, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min

    Episode 66: Rediscovering the Pleasures of Academic Writing with Helen Sword

    We’re talking with Helen Sword, emeritus professor at the University of Auckland, and founder of the writing community, the WriteSPACE. She is also the author of several books about academic writing, including Writing With Pleasure (Princeton, 2023); Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Harvard, 2017), The Writers Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (Chicago, 2016), and Stylish Academic Writing (Harvard, 2012). We talk about what Helen has learned about academic writing through her

  • Dec 15, 2025 · 58 min

    Episode 65: On Being an Academic Who Writes Popular Books w/ Noah Isenberg

    We’re talking with film historian Noah Isenberg, the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor and former Chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin. Isenberg is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller, We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood’s most Beloved Movie, and several other books about film. We talk about why and when we might drop theory from our writing; finding a literary agent; the excitement of finding your audien

  • Dec 1, 2025 · 1 hr

    Episode 64: Reinventing the Traditional Academic Journal

    We’re speaking with founding and current editors of In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, about what it means to establish a new journal. Founded in 2015, In Geveb partook in the decade's ethos of disruption in technology by seeking to reimagine the academic journal. Aspiring to be the “N+1 of Yiddish studies, the journal is completely online, and contains sections on pedagogy and translation, as well as a blog, and has remained accessible to readers outside of the academy. Our guests, Jessica

Showing 21–25 of 25 episodes