Erika Hayasaki Joins Us to Talk About Writing Longform Features and Cover Stories

The award-winning journalist has penned pieces for The New York Times, The Atlantic and many other top outlets. On this week's Open Book, she'll join us live to chat about how she makes it happen.

Pretty much anyone who’s ever started working in freelance journalism has hoped their career would look an awful lot like Erika Hayasaki’s. A former contributing editor at Narratively, Erika has written cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, WIRED, Newsweek and more, plus features for The Atlantic, The Guardian, National Geographic, Men’s Health, Elle, New York magazine, The Cut, and many other publications. She has a unique talent for finding human subjects whose lives illustrate big, important issues—and getting those people to open up and share their stories.

Erika is also an incredible educator and champion for emerging journalists. A professor at the University of California, Irvine’s Literary Journalism Program, she’s part of UC-Irvine’s Center for Storytelling, which aims to help diverse communities tell their own stories; and a member of the planning team for the Institute for Independent Journalists, led by women of color who are devoted to improving conditions for freelancers from underrepresented backgrounds. Her new Substack, The Reported Essay, is an absolutely invaluable resource for working journalists.

I can’t wait to chat with Erika about how she built her career, how she finds her story ideas and connects with editors, and what the process of reporting a big, ambitious feature for a top outlet is really like. I hope you’ll join us this Thursday, August 21 at 1pm ET—and bring your questions for Erika!

This chat will be held on Substack Live. Simply open up your Substack mobile app or head to NarrativelyAcademy.com on your desktop this Thursday at 1 p.m. to access the live video stream.

To make sure you never miss one of our live videos, click here to add the entire Open Book video series to your calendar.

Before you join us on Thursday, check out a few or Erika’s most exciting recent features—we’ll chat a bit about how each of these came together.

• What Would a Real Friendship With A.I. Look Like? Maybe Like Hers. [New York Times Magazine]

• The Fire of Freedom [Men’s Health]

• Daughters of the Bomb [Narratively]

P.S. Did you know that we also host a weekly morning writing hour called Writers’ Room for folks to write alone-together? It’s every Wednesday morning from 8-9 ET, and it’s the perfect place to come to work out the kinks of your new essay, brainstorm your next novel or polish off a paragraph you’ve been struggling with. Head here for more info, and we hope to see you Wednesday morning!