Earning a living as an author often requires multiple streams of income because advances and royalties alone won’t support the majority of writers. But too often authors still focus on writing as the primary way to earn a living instead of diversifying their income streams. A move that can put your income potential at risk when opportunities in the freelance market become scarce. 

Money Matters host, Erin Lowry, will lead a panel discussion with authors (and multi-hyphenates) Noah Ashley Blooms, Scott Broker, and Ariana Brown about how to expand beyond writing and use your expertise as an author to create other opportunities. 

Special thanks to Blue Stoop and the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning for collaborating with us on this event.

A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.

The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.

Panelists

Noah Ashley Blooms (they/them) is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Where I Can’t Follow and Every Bone a Prayer. Their work has been nominated for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, Weatherford Award, and Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and they have been named a South Arts State Literary Fellow for Kentucky. Their fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, The Oxford American, Reactor, and elsewhere. They received their MFA as a John and Renee Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi and are a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop.

Scott Broker is a queer writer based in Los Angeles. A Lambda Literary Fellow and Tin House Scholar, he has been a finalist for the Iowa Review Prize in Fiction, the New England Review‘s Emerging Writer Award, and a nominee for three Pushcart Prizes. His debut novel, The Disappointment, is forthcoming from Catapult on March 3, 2026. Other writing has appeared in Ecotone, New England Review, Guernica, Fence, the Idaho Review, the Cincinnati Review, Joyland, and the Adroit Journal, among other publications.

Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from San Antonio, TX, now based in Houston. She is the author of the poetry collections We Are Owed. (Grieveland, 2021) and Sana Sana (Game Over Books, 2020). Her academic and poetic works explore queerness, Black personhood in Mexican American spaces, girlhood, loneliness, and care. Ariana is a national collegiate poetry slam champion, winner of two Academy of American Poets Prizes, and a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant. She holds a BA in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies from UT Austin, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. She currently develops ethnic studies and ELA curriculum for high schools and colleges and teaches creative writing to teens in Houston. Ariana has been writing, performing, and teaching for over a decade.

Erin Lowry is the author of the four-part Broke Millennial series, including: Broke Millennial, Broke Millennial Takes On Investing and Broke Millennial Talks Money and her soon-to-be-published Broke Millennial Workbook: Take Control and Get Your Financial Life Together. Erin’s been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and on CBS Sunday Morning, CNBC and The Rachael Ray Show. She has written for The New York Times, USA Today, and as a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

In Collaboration With:

Literary Agents of Change, the nonprofit born out of American Association of Literary Agents’ (AALA) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, was formed to help dismantle the barriers to entry into a career as a literary agent for members of historically underrepresented groups, particularly people of color while recognizing the systems of overlapping oppressions in regard to race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, and ability. Literary Agents of Change offers a Fellowship Program to encourage recruitment into the profession, and a Mentorship Program focused on the retention and promotion of agents from these communities.

Special Thanks to Our Supporters and Partner Organizations

With support from the National Endowment for the Arts and our donors, the Authors Guild Foundation is pleased to offer this program free to the public.

Several writers organizations have partnered with the Authors Guild Foundation to help shape these programs. Our deepest appreciation to these organizations.