Journalists often evolve into authors, but Sam Freedman, a journalist, prize-winning author and professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, thinks the fine art of nonfiction book writing can be taught. To prove it, he can point to seven book contracts in seven years that have been garnered by students in his class on nonfiction book writing -- as well as to his students' work published in magazines and anthologies.
Freedman had worked for 14 years, both as a reporter for the New York Times and as a freelance writer, before he published three critically acclaimed books: Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School (HarperCollins, 1990, nominated for the National Book Award), Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church (HarperCollins, 1993, winner of the Helen Bernstein Award for Journalism) and The Inheritance: How Three Families and America Moved from Roosevelt to Reagan and Beyond (S&S, 1996, Pulitzer Prize finalist).
"I used to think there were two species of journalists," explained Freedman, "newspaper reporters and book writers, who seemed to be divinely ordained." Freedman compares his class to the fiction-oriented Iowa Writers' Workshop: "Why couldn't you do the same thing for nonfiction?"Freedman's five-month course has 15 slots for students; he selects them based on the viability of their book idea. By the end of the course, students come away with a complete book proposal and a thorough understanding of the publishing industry and marketplace.
"Writers who come out with that [experience] are a step ahead," said Rosemary Ahern, a senior editor who has bought three Freedman graduates' books for Dutton. "As an editor, I'm wary of writers' workshops," she explained. "Workshops have a tone -- you can tell an Iowa book -- that is untrue of Sam's class."
Freedman's teaching recipe is two-thirds writing -- the students' own and reading published authors who then participate in class discussions -- and one-third learning about the industry, via guest appearances by editors, agents and reviewers. "He brings the publishing world to the classroom," said Tara Bahrampour, a '93 graduate whose book To See and See Again, a family memoir set against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution, is being published by Farrar, Straus &Giroux next year. The latest grad to land a book deal is Patrick Jameson (class of '98); in 2000 Random House will publish Jameson's The Street Stops Here.
Books published by Freedman's Columbia alumni include Leah Cohen's Train Go Sorry (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) and S.H. Fernando's The New Beats (Anchor, 1994). The three forthcoming titles from Dutton are Leslie Chang's Beyond the Narrow Gate: The Journey of Four Chinese Women from the Middle Kingdom to Middle America, Brian McDonald's My Father's Gun and a book about the relationship between African blacks and American blacks by Philippe Wamba, tentatively titled Transatlantic Passages.
"It serves me to keep [the class] a secret," Dutton's Ahern said about Freedman, "but we owe him a debt of gratitude. He is dedicated to serious nonfiction and wants to make it a thriving part of the publishing industry. That's something to be encouraged."
