Courtney Maum, author of the memoir, The Year of the Horses (“Wry and tender,” Publisher's Weekly), a chronicle of how horses helped her deal with depression, joins us for a conversation with Halimah Marcus, Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype. Moderated by Melisse Gelula, co-founder of the media company Well+Good.

Courtney Maum is the author of five books, including the game changing publishing guide Before and After the Book Deal and the forthcoming memoir, The Year of the Horses. A writer and book coach hellbent on preserving the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands, Maum is a nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates prize and the host of the monthly “Beyond Fiction” conversation series at Edith Wharton’s The Mount. Her essays and articles on creativity have been widely published in outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, and her short story “This is Not Your Fault” was recently turned into an Audible Original., Courtney is also the founder of the learning collaborative, The Cabins.

Halimah Marcus is the Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. She is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. Her short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review, and The Southampton Review. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in the Catskill region of New York.

Melisse Gelula (moderator) is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of the media company Well+Good. With a career that spans digital, magazines, and book publishing (Random House), she's written for dozens of lifestyle outlets and been quoted in the New York Times, Fast Company, and more. Melisse has degrees in literature and studied psychoanalysis for 6 years. She's currently writing a mental-health memoir and begins an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College this fall.