Imagine: You work for a publishing company that’s getting ready to promote Stieg Larson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, in the United States who hails from another country. This author hasn’t been widely heard of and so it’s up to you to get a reading audience excited about their new work. Using your reading project as a springboard, write a 600-word blog post hyping up your selected author. Tailor your blog post to a reading audience that has expressed no real interest in reading outside of their own culture. Why should they be excited to learn about this author? To read their work? What about the author’s culture will the reader potentially learn that is important to know in the context of our ever-globalizing world? Hint: The author is the one you selected for the reading project. Yes, it might be difficult to imagine a world that hasn’t heard of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but put yourself in the shoes of that first editor who had to promote their first novel, memoir or non-fiction book. How did they make the pitch? This “paper” is an opportunity to be creative. Take the knowledge that you’ve gained from your reading project research to create an effective, engaging call to your potential readership! Write it like your job (and your future in publishing) will depend on it! Grading: How will I grade this creative entry? Because this assignment is creative, you have a high degree of freedom when it comes to how you produce the post. You may include photos, embed a video, draw a map of their country of origin. All of that is up to you. But still, how do you get full credit? The blog post should demonstrate that you know a lot about both your author and the culture or cultures from which they come. Many of your author’s grappled with multiple identities – was that true at the time they published their first work? Consider all elements of their identity when writing this post. The writing of the blog post should be polished. Spelling errors, typos, grammatical errors, incorrect punctuation – all of this will cause you to lose points. The post should really make the reader excited to read this author’s work. Your reading projects already did that – you all, to a person, were very enthusiastic when reporting on your authors. Maintain that sense of enthusiasm in the blog post. I have attched my previous writing.
