Estelle Erasmus

My writing students from NYU and Writer’s Digest often ask for advice on how they can improve their work. I often answer with the word “elevate.” It’s one of my favorites because it implies gracefulness and forward momentum, much like a good piece of writing.
It’s one of the reasons I wrote Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published, which distills my thirty years in publishing on both sides of the publishing wall, and why I created the Freelance Wr...

Estelle Erasmus is an award-winning journalist, writing coach, and NYU SPS adjunct writing instructor. Her first job in publishing was at Woman’s World, which she describes as “a bootcamp in service journalism.” She has served in various editorial roles at American Woman, Woman’s Own, and Hachette’s Body by Jake. She also launched the publications Esthetique, Women in Touch, and The American Breast Cancer Guide. In 2019, she wrote a piece for The New York Times, How to Bullyproof Your Child t...

Health and beauty is an expanding genre of writing that editors are hungry for. How do you craft a compelling service journalism piece, personal essay, or reported feature on this topic? In Estelle Erasmus’ course Writing About Health and Beauty, you can learn the ins and outs of finding your story, reporting, and pitching on this subject. Erasmus is an award-winning journalist and writing coach who has published extensively in this genre. Read on below for our Q&A with Erasmus to learn more ...

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Estelle Erasmus’s debut writing craft book, Writing that Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published, (New World Library, July 2023), is a delicate combination of memoir and top-notch professional advice.
Before becoming a mother, Erasmus had a successful career as the editor-in-chief of five national women’s magazines, such as Woman’s Own, W.I.T. Women in Touch, Hachette’s Body by Jake, and The American Breast Cancer Guide. Then, she got married, had di...

Have you had the experience of reading a writer at the top of their game like Cheryl Strayed and Ann Hood, both writers I’ve had on my podcast, Freelance Writing Direct, and immediately knowing it is their work?
If you answered yes, you would be sharing a universal response to voice. I say words are like music in my new book Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published. People can recognize they are hearing Barbra Streisand or Rhianna — often from the...

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Director Penny Marshall’s 30-year-old female baseball movie A League of Their Own is finding a new fan base in its latest incarnation on Amazon Prime as a video series, shining a light on multiple story lines the movie left out. With that hit film coupled with Big, Marshall was the first woman in history to break the $100 million mark at the box office.

When Abbi Jacobson, star and series cocreator of Broad City, spoke with Marshall in 2018, the director — who died in December 2018 — supporte...

When I became a magazine editor-in-chief in my thirties, I thought that my perk rich, cash poor, high-flying single gal lifestyle in the 1990s—press trips to Amsterdam and Paris, drinks with Ivana Trump at the Plaza, dinner with Christie Brinkley’s manager—sufficed for my lack of a maternal urge.
As “The Dating Diva” my alter ego, I penned a column for the magazine I edited and made television appearances excoriating women to value themselves, be a “sweet” bitch, and always leave a man wantin...