By Katrin Schumann

Media marketing experts agree that maintaining a robust newsletter is one of the best ways for an author to build a core audience--a group of people who will be more interested and committed to you and your work than, say, that stranger lurking on twitter or the random people liking your Instagram shots.

This summer, GrubStreet instructor Jonathan Escoffery found much more than a workshop at the Kimbilio retreat for writers of the African Diaspora. Describing that transformative week to his white peers, however, was not always a positive experience.