Estelle Erasmus

Legendary memoirist Abigail Thomas is known for writing about memory, aging and the slow unwinding of time. But recently, she found herself caught in a more immediate unraveling: a scam that siphoned money from her bank account in small, nearly invisible increments — $5 here, $30 there — totaling over $1,500.
Credit: Getty
It started with a strange call from her bank about a charge for a taxi ride in Florida. Thomas hadn't been to Florida. Then came notifications of food purchases, crypto-bas...

Here’s what I have learned that I got right and here’s what surprised me
I am about to celebrate 20 years of marriage to a wonderful man. Jennie Young, founder of the popular Burned Haystack Dating Method — which is focused on helping women cull good men from dating apps — would say he's "a neeedle." The idea is that to locate a needle in a haystack (dating pool), you need to burn the haystack to the ground (get rid of the unsuitable people).
My "needle" is a great father to our teenage daugh...

She was my mom’s worst nightmare, but she taught me how I wanted to parent my daughter decades later
By Estelle Erasmus
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December 17, 2024
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Living
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I had my daughter in my forties after a long bout with infertility, a little help from modern medicine and a few meridian-stimulating acupuncture sessions. She is a teenager now. At 15 years old she is dealing with a lot of firsts: her first boyfriend (a very sweet teenage boy), her first time traveling into the city with her friends, her f...

If you’ve read Abigail Thomas, you might think you know everything there is to know about the esteemed writing teacher and legendary author of profound memoirs and insightful fiction.
You might think the same of ASJA member Estelle Erasmus if you’ve read her book “Writing That Gets Noticed,” listened to her Freelance Writing Direct podcast, or subscribe to her Substack of the same name.
You’d be wrong on both counts. Thomas and Erasmus know the power of putting enough – but not too much – of ...

I have been called the “title queen” by my students and bosses. As a magazine-editor-in-chief in the 90s and up till the mid-aughts, I specialized in writing the coverlines, article, column and essay titles for the print publications I worked and wrote for, including Hachette Filipacchi’s Body by Jake, The American Breast Cancer Guide, W.I.T. (Women in Touch), and Esthetique. I also wrote for publications including New Woman and Family Circle, and later the online publications weightwatchers....

The first time I cut a line, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was in Las Vegas on vacation and had come across a book signing for Suzanne Somers’ Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones. I had a little bit of a connection to Somers. A few years before, in the early aughts, I was editor in chief of the American Breast Cancer Guide, and Somers gave us an exclusive cover story about how she’d treated her breast cancer with a mistletoe extract that was not FDA-approved, instead o...

Illustration: J Studios/Getty Images
Whether you're a student, a journalist, or a business professional, knowing how to do high-quality research and writing using trustworthy data and sources, without giving in to the temptation of AI or ChatGPT, is a skill worth developing.
As I detail in my book Writing That Gets Noticed, locating credible databases and sources and accurately vetting information can be the difference between turning a story around quickly or getting stuck with outdated info...

I live with hearing loss. Nobody but my family and closest friends know that beneath my cascading shoulder-length hair, I have worn miniscule, virtually invisible hearing aids with super-tiny microprocessors in each ear since my 30s because of a potent combination of genetics and all the rock concerts I went to as a teen.
Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with mild-to-moderate hearing loss two decades ago. I’m not alone, although I often feel as if I am. According to the World Health Organizatio...

Want to know what you were like before you were, well, you? Try a past life regression therapy session.
Words Estelle Erasmus
10/27/23
An attractive woman in dangly earrings and a Bohemian black midi dress handed me a soft lavender blanket to snuggle under.
“I want you to feel comfortable,” she said. I think she was trying to make the whole experience more “therapeutic” and less spooky. But then, I am a fan of the supernatural. Who needs to dwell in the scientifically provable all the time? S...

Minda Zetlin cites Estelle Erasmus in her article on emails, based on her interview with Estelle Erasmus

Estelle Erasmus, former editor of five women’s magazines and author of Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published is winner of the 2023 Teaching Excellence Award as a writing professor at New York University. Read her interview here with trained health and personal essay writer, Viney Kirpal.
Viney: Congratulations on the publication of Writing That Gets Noticed! Writing to get noticed can be a daunting task. How can one write to get noticed?
Estell...