Writers have all the skills needed to be entrepreneurs, yet we often don’t have the support to transition into that self-led space. MAKING IT UP: Creative Entrepreneurship for Writers is a four-part virtual learning series offering guidance and insight to writers of all levels about becoming self-employed, entrepreneurs, and using our writing practices to catapult us toward owning our own time and labor.

From insight on business operations, financial/legal considerations, to guidance on funding, and how to leverage the skills you already have along the journey, these sessions are built to ensure you leave with tangible steps towards entrepreneurship whether that’s part-time, full-time, or something in-between.

Each session will consist of a combination of interactive activities, community conversations, guest speakers, and resources and tools to help guide you toward your entrepreneurship journey. Participants will also be added to the growing Starshine Arts Collective. Community virtual community to connect with other writers and to receive resources and guidance virtually.

Register for all four sessions (at a discounted rate) here or register for this individual session here.

Once registered, you’ll receive a Zoom invite to the session below within 48 hours.

Session 4: Growing Your Entrepreneurial Vision

September 25th 7-8:30pm EST [VIRTUAL]

In this final session, we’ll combine all of our learnings together while also learning from the instructor about her own processes and systems as a founder and writer. We’ll also discuss the tangible next steps you can take to continue making progress towards owning our own labor as writers. We’ll also have some group work time to make progress on this step in the presence of each other as support. Last, but certainly not least, we’ll hear from a real-world author and small business owner, Melissa Lozada-Oliva about her life as a writer-entrepreneur.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is a Guatelaman-Colombian-American writer. Her chapbook peluda (Button Poetry 2017) explores the intersections of Latina identity and hair removal. In her novel-in-verse Dreaming of You (2021, Astra House), a poet brings Selena back to life through a seance and deals with disastrous consequences. Candelaria (Astra House, 2023) follows a Guatemalan grandmother at the end of the world and her three lost American granddaughters who started it. Candelaria was named one of the best books of 2023 by VOGUE and USA Today. Her collection of short stories BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT, JESUS IS ALIVE! was released in September (Astra House, 2025). Her newsletter READING SUCKS tracks the books she’s read and the distractions she had while reading them, while interviewing authors about their relationship to reading. Melissa has done brand work with Facebook, Instagram, Google, Armani, and Topo Chico Hard Seltzer. Melissa’s work balances the line between horror and humor. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in NPR, VOGUE, REMEZCLA, PAPER, The Guardian, BreakBeat Poets, Kenyon Review, Vulture, Bustle, Glamour Magazine, The Huffington Post, Muzzle Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and BBC Mundo. She teaches fiction and poetry at the Center for Fiction and the Red Hook Public Library, and Columbia University.

A recording of this session will be available and sent to all who’ve registered after the session.

Please note this learning series will not offer any financial and legal advice. All content is for learning purposes only. Please connect with a professional for any specific advice on financial and legal matters.

Series Instructor: Tatiana Johnson-Boria, MFA

Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (Sundress Publications, 2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As an educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore the complex magic of mothering.

Tatiana is an award-winning writer and recipient of fellowships and grants from Tin House (now the McCormack Writing Center), the Massachusetts Cultural Council, MacDowell, the Brother Thomas Fellowship, and the St. Botolph Club Foundation, among others. She’s the winner of the Matt Clark Poetry Prize at New Delta Review (2021) and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net recognition. Tatiana has also been named a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry at Anhinga Press, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, The Southern Humanities Review Auburn Witness Prize, and the 92Y Discovery Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review Online, The Cincinnati Review, Transition Magazine, and many other publications.

Tatiana is the founder of the Starshine Arts Collective, a creative community focused on tending to writers, especially writers most often marginalized in our society. She’s a trauma-informed certified teaching artist and brings more than a decade of experience teaching to her work. The Starshine Arts Collective was born from Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me” specifically the line, “i made it up//here on this bridge between// starshine and clay.” With this origin story she guides writers to see themselves as sacred storytellers who also have the power to manifest their creative work. Tatiana is currently a visiting lecturer at Framingham State University, and has served as an affiliated faculty member at Emerson College, teaching courses on poetry, composition, and intersectional identity within poetics. She also teaches at GrubStreet and has previously led workshops at Catapult and the Boston Center for Adult Education. Her teaching philosophy is rooted in accessibility, social justice, and the power of storytelling as a tool for self-discovery and change.

In addition to her literary work, Tatiana has an extensive background in strategic communications and marketing and is founder and principal strategist at her own consultancy, Johnson-Boria Creative LLC. As a strategist, she has developed messaging and tactics for mission-driven organizations, ensuring that their narratives focus on people, their lives, and their communities.

Tatiana holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and a BA in English and Cinema & Media Studies from Simmons University. She is represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.