Selling south; expats to talk about cracking the U.S. freelance market

Freelancers who wonder how to sell to U.S.-based magazines will have the opportunity to learn at the seminar called "Cracking the 49th parallel". It's on Thursday, October 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Ryerson University School of Journalism, 80 Gould Street, Toronto. Price is $20, $10 for students. It's being sponsored by the American Association of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), a 1,300-member international group that is seeking Canadian members.

The panelists are all Canadian expats, New York-based journalists Clive Thompson,(Wired, contributing editor, New York Times Magazine), Gold National Magazine Award winner Duff McDonald (Portfolio, New York), and ASJA board member Caitlin Kelly (New York Times, Glamour, Family Circle).

Thompson was at one time editor of This Magazine. Kelly was a freelancer, a gold Canadian National Magazine Award winner, a reporter for the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette and one of the leading lights of PWAC in Toronto in the late '70s before moving to the U.S. in 1988. McDonald was an investment banker who turned to writing and editing and was formerly executive editor of Red Herring magazine. In 2004, he was the recipient of two Canadian National Magazine Awards — gold for best business story and silver for best investigative reporting — for his article Conrad’s Fall in National Post Business.