Now Available: RTA Episode 10

The Unicorn Authors Club and how to pitch your novel

Randy Winston

Apr 21, 2025

0:00

-1:08:46

*(top, left to right: Randy Winston, Raychelle Heath, Minal Hajratwala)*

Episode Breakdown

00:00:10 Opportunities for fiction writers

00:02:40 Guest bios

00:04:08 Start of episode

00:08:18 How Minal and Raychelle entered writing early on

00:10:19 Creative growth anchors

00:13:57 Writers supporting writers

00:17:20 Unicorn Authors Club origins

00:19:52 Unicorn Authors Club’s key programs

00:27:27 Unicorn Authors Club workshop model

00:31:38 Tips for pitching your project

00:44:50 Advice for the beginning stage of bookwriting

00:48:55 Unicorn Authors Club success stories

00:51:47 Raychelle and Minal on resting

00:58:00 Listener Q&A

Episode 10 Guests: Minal Hajratwala & Raychelle Heath

Minal Hajratwala (they/she) has been coaching authors since the 2009 publication of their first book, Leaving India: My Family’s Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents, which was called “incomparable” by Alice Walker and “searingly honest” by the Washington Post. It won a Pen USA Award, an Asian American Writers Workshop Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and a California Book Award.

Minal is also the author of a poetry collection, Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment, and a travel guidebook, Moon Fiji. In 2010-11 they spent a year as a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar in Mumbai, then moved to Bangalore for six years. While in India, they edited a groundbreaking anthology, Out! Stories from the New Queer India, and co-founded a poetry press, The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, which published nine books by emerging poets.

As a journalist, Minal was most recently an editor-at-large at Zócalo Public Square during the first year of the pandemic. She started her career as an intern reporter-researcher at TIME magazine. In the 1990s, she ran the Sunday Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News.

A turning point came in 2000, when Minal was awarded a yearlong National Arts Journalism Program fellowship at Columbia University. She enjoyed a practicum with Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters production at The Public Theater, and she took the j-school’s renowned Book Seminar, where she wrote a proposal that resulted in a six-figure book contract with a major publisher.

Minal spent seven years researching and writing the book that became Leaving India, traveling the world to interview more than 75 members of her extended family. The writing was often difficult, and in hindsight, those seven years were an intensive study of craft, writer’s block, internalized oppression, and how to develop one’s own supportive writing community. Since publishing Leaving India to critical acclaim, Minal has turned their knowledge and editorial expertise toward supporting other writers as a coach and teacher.

Raychelle Heath (she/her) is our Club Co-director. She is also a Sanctuary coach and manages our curriculum. Outside of her work with the Club, she is a poet, artist, teacher, yoga and meditation guide, and podcaster. She holds a BA in languages with a focus in Spanish, anMFA in poetry, and is a VONA alum. While Raychelle primarily writes poetry, she considers herself a storyteller. Her work explores the multi-faceted experiences of black women in the world. She is also an avid traveler and often weaves her travel experiences into her work. She has been published in various places including Travel Noire, Fourth Wave, Feelszine, Yellow Arrow Journal, The Brazen Collective, and Community Building Art Works. When she is not writing, she is engaging with the wellness community as a certified Kripalu Yoga, Yoga Nidra, and Mind Body Meditation instructor.

About the host

Randy Winston is the Creative Director of Fiction at The Black List, and former Director of Writing Programs at The Center for Fiction, where he managed, curated, and directed the production of all writing courses, the illustrious First Novel Prize, the famed Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellowship, and the highly-sought Writers Studio membership. Prior to his work at The Center, Winston served as Fiction Editor of Slice Literary Magazine for 6 years and has over 10 years of executive admin experience in higher education. Before his MFA, Randy served as editor-in-chief of, formerly Southern Polytechnic State University, now Kennesaw State University’s, online and print student publication in Marietta, Georgia. He is a 2016 graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing (Fiction) at The New School and sits on the board for Orion Magazine and WriteOn NYC.

About the series

A pillar of our Fiction educational resources, Read The Acknowledgements is a live visual podcast designed for book and writing professionals to share their industry experiences and help give writers a clear picture of the ecosystem that is publishing.

This podcast series exists, in part, to fundraise for writers and literary nonprofits in need. Attendance is free, and we encourage viewers and listeners to make donations to writer support funds such as the Authors League Fund, Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, and Lampblack's Direct Aid Fund.

Read the Acknowledgments is a subsidiary of The Black List, LLC.

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