2022 Presenters

Amy Elizabeth Bishop

Amy Elizabeth Bishop joined DG&B in 2015 after interning for them in 2014. At DG&B, she's cultivating a wide-ranging list in literary and upmarket fiction, expert-driven narrative nonfiction, and select YA, with a special interest in BIPOC voices. Her list includes titles such as The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim (a Reese's Book Club selection and NYT bestseller) and The Silence of Bones by June Hur (a Junior Library Guild selection and Edgar Award nominee). Before diving into the world of publishing, she graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Creative Writing. Though she grew up upstate, she currently resides in Woodside, Queens. You can find her on Twitter at @amylizbishop.

SESSION: On Reading Submissions

Querying can often feel like sending your beloved work into a black hole. What are agents doing with your work anyway? How do they make their decisions? What are they looking for in your query and sample pages? Some of this, of course, is subjective, but in this session, literary agent Amy Elizabeth Bishop pulls back the curtain and takes you through some of the decision-making process and what she looks for in a query, sample pages, and some of the little craft elements that can really take your project over the finish line.

Jan

2022

Amaryah Orenstein

Amaryah Orenstein, founder and president of GO Literary, a Boston-based boutique agency, is thrilled to help writers bring their ideas to life. Aiming to give voice to a broad range of perspectives, Amaryah represents a wide array of literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction. She is actively seeking works that wed beautiful writing with a strong narrative and tackle big issues in engaging, accessible, and even surprising ways. In addition to negotiating contracts, Amaryah works closely with each of her clients throughout every step of the publishing process, from concept development through publication and beyond. She takes a particular interest in the editorial process, offering skilled advice and guidance to help clients bring out the best in their writing.

Amaryah began her career at the Laura Gross Literary Agency in 2009 and, prior to that, worked as an Editorial Assistant at various academic research foundations, including The Tauber Institute, where she edited books for Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England. Originally from Montreal, she earned a BA at McGill University before coming to the United States to pursue graduate work in American History. She received her MA from the Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University and her PhD from Brandeis University.

SESSION: First Impressions: How To Hook an Agent/Editor with Your Opening Pages

You only get one chance to make a first impression. When it comes to your written work, this means that your opening pages are critical! Why? Well, if an agent or editor isn’t hooked by your submission immediately they will put it down and move on. It’s as simple as that. In this seminar, literary agent Amaryah Orenstein will show you how to capture a reader’s attention with your opening pages and how to avoid the weak openings that lead to instant rejection. We will discuss the most common pitfalls found in first sentences and first pages, including overused beginnings and clichés that can drag down a work. We will also examine the pros and cons of using a prologue as the opening chapter of your novel.

Jan

2022

Carrie Howland

Carrie Howland founded Howland Literary, LLC in 2018, after thirteen years as an agent, most recently at Empire Literary.

Carrie holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Albion College, where she was the Poetry Editor of The Albion Review. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals and magazines.

In her spare time, Carrie volunteers as a foster for a local dog rescue and is an active member of the Junior League. Her passions include music, pop culture, and the Midwest.

She has been featured in several publications discussing her work as an agent including Poets & Writers, SCWBI Insight, Akashic Books, and Slice Magazine.

Carrie is accepting submissions for: adult literary and upmarket fiction as well as memoir, narrative, and prescriptive nonfiction.

Kaitlyn Johnson

After receiving a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, Kaitlyn refused to leave the concept of nightly homework behind. A literary agent for Belcastro Literary Agency, she is also a freelance editor at her own company, Strictly Textual. Kaitlyn started her literary journey as a copyeditor for academic publisher codeMantra, a YA editor for Accent Press, a Conference Assistant for GrubStreet, Boston, and has been agenting since 2016. She has written various articles for Writer’s Digest, has had a flash fiction story published in the anthology A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed, and also a short story published in the "Rest & Recovery" issue for Please See Me.

Learn more about her agency on their website.

SESSION: Common Publishing Myths... Debunked

Publishing is a labyrinth in and of itself, especially when writers begin speculating what it takes to be successful. When is editing truly considered "done"? Does being published mean I'll get a film deal? Once I get an agent, they'll be with me for my entire career, right? These are just some of the questions covered in Publishing Myths... Debunked. In this session, Literary Agent Kaitlyn Johnson discusses the most common myths about publishing and what the reality for writers truly is, delving into the subjects of querying, agenting, the publishing industry itself, and the money that goes into it.

Maggie Cooper

Maggie Cooper is an agent with Aevitas Creative Management, representing adult fiction and select nonfiction projects. Based in Boston, Maggie joined Aevitas in 2018. She holds a degree in English from Yale University, attended the Clarion Writers Workshop, and earned her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as an editor for The Greensboro Review. Prior to becoming an agent, she worked in the world of independent and university presses, as a bookseller, and as a teacher to students ages 10 through 85. Maggie is actively seeking adult literary and book club fiction, beach reads and romance, creative nonfiction, and select reported and prescriptive nonfiction projects, with an emphasis on queer voices, non-white perspectives, and writers from communities traditionally not centered by mainstream publishing. She loves imaginative writing, language that make the reader pause over its peculiar specificity, and books that embody a sense of humor, tenderness, or joy.

SESSION: "I Hate My Cover!" and Other Tribulations: An Agent-Led Session on How to Navigate the Not-So-Good, the Really-Quite-Bad, and the Ugly of Publishing a Book

In publishing, as in life, sometimes things don't go the way we wish they would, and in this session, literary agent Maggie Cooper will offer some real talk about how to navigate the bumps in the road from manuscript submission to publication. Using sample scenarios, we'll explore three major strategies for navigating sticky situations like when your queries aren’t landing, when your manuscript doesn’t sell, and when your agent/editor/publisher doesn’t understand your vision. We'll also consider the ugly truth of how factors like racism and other forms of systemic oppression might impact your experience—and what you can do to be your own best advocate, identifying opportunities to feel connected and empowered as you bring your work into the world. Finally, we'll discuss strategies for cultivating our creativity and writing lives in the face of disappointments and challenges in order to continue doing our best work many years into the future.

Jan

2022

Christine Gross-Loh

Christine Gross-Loh is the author of Parenting Without Borders: Surprising Things Parents Around the World Can Teach Us, as well as co-author of the bestseller The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life. In addition to creative nonfiction, she has written on history, education, philosophy, and global parenting, and her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Vox, among others. She has a PhD from Harvard University in East Asian history.

Learn more about Christine on her website.

SESSION: Writing the Extremely Personal: Sex, Health, Family

What does it mean to write the extremely personal? How do you navigate the inclusion and publication of intimate details in your fictional or nonfictional work? In this lecture, two writers for The Atlantic and The New York Times’ “Modern Love” discuss how to navigate the writing process when your work includes deeply personal details about yourself or others—sex, family, health, romance, and so much more. Questions we will address include "How do we approach the writing process?" and "What public and private considerations should we keep in mind during and after the publication process?" What are the advantages and disadvantages of plumbing your own life for artistic truth? How does the personal differ in fiction and nonfiction, if at all?

CO-PRESENTER: Courtney Sender

Jan

2022

Val Wang

Val Wang is an author and filmmaker interested in the intersection between the personal and the global. Evan Osnos has called her book Beijing Bastard "a memoir perfectly suited to the Beijing that she brings to life so well: heedless, pungent, and proudly insubordinate."

Val recently directed the documentary short The Flip Side about a Chinese circus artist. Before that, she created and produced Planet Takeout, an interactive, multiplatform documentary for WGBH on the role of Chinese takeouts as a vital cultural crossroads in America. Her other multimedia work has been broadcast on PBS, WGBH, and WBUR, among others.

She is an Associate Professor in the English and Media Studies Department of Bentley University. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and twin children.

Learn more about Val on her website.

SESSION: Place as Character, Place as Politics

When a setting is rendered especially vividly or in a way crucial to the operation of a story, we say the setting is “almost a character.” How can we build fictional worlds that also vividly evoke a politics? How can we use landscapes and the built environment to mediate between physical reality and the more abstract realms of political ideals and imaginaries as well as historical memory? How can settings work as sites of ambiguity, struggle, and reclamation? In this session, we will examine fiction that has successfully done all this. We will complete several short writing exercises and have time for feedback, questions, and discussion.

Jan

2022

S.K. Brownell

S.K. Brownell is a writer, artist, and educator from the American Midwest. Their work has been shortlisted for the inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellowship in Speculative Fiction and has received the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Excellence Award, Solstice Literary Prize Editor's Choice in Fiction, and other honors. They are a 2021 Tin House Summer Workshop alumn and a 2018 Sewanee Writers Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar. Their fiction, poetry, and drama has been published in Speculative North, Decoded Pride, Great Lakes Review, Newfound, and elsewhere. Stephanie holds an MFA from Boston University, teaches writing at schools including Carroll University, GrubStreet, and Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop, and leads a rag-tag band of speculative writers in community-building and writing accountability. They currently live in Boston with a cat called Wander. Connect at their website or on Twitter.

SESSION: The Otherworld Without the Othering

Sci-fi, fantasy, and all of their sibling genres love a good underdog. Here orphans, outcasts, and second sons become heroes at every turn. At the same time, many imagined worlds have long upheld the biases and divisions of the primary world, constructing societies rooted in medieval European traditions and leaning on the essentialism of fictional “races.” Increasingly, contemporary speculative fiction is pushing the boundaries not only of physics, but of social structures. In this seminar, we’ll examine existing tropes in SFF and look at writers who are turning those tropes on their heads. We’ll brainstorm ways to avoid clichés and problematic tropes in your stories. We’ll ask, “How does the Otherworld express being Othered?” and talk about using the particular powers of speculative fiction to create inclusive worlds and reflect on primary-world conflicts in constructive ways.

Jan

2022

Colwill Brown

Colwill Brown was born and raised in South Yorkshire, England, and is based in Austin, Texas, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin (2022). She is a recipient of a James A. Michener Center Fellowship, scholarships to the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, top-fifty placing in the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award, the Wellspring House Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, the Henry Blackwell Essay Prize, and a Crawley-Garwood Research Grant. Colwill’s writing has also received awards and support from Boston College, Kansas State University, the Anderson Center, and GrubStreet. Her work appears in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

SESSION: Writing Sentences that Sing

What are captivating sentences, and how do we write them? How can prose writers borrow from music and poetry to produce vivid, arresting prose that activates the imagination and delights our inner ear? In this session, we’ll explore concrete strategies for crafting musical sentences in fiction and nonfiction. We’ll look closely at how to harness rhythm, meter, assonance, consonance, alliteration, internal rhyme, sense memories, and other techniques to deepen meaning and create unforgettable prose that readers will linger over. We'll explore examples from a diverse range of contemporary authors and discuss exercises and techniques to try out on your own. Together, we'll work toward a collective understanding of what makes great sentences sing.

Jan

2022

2022 Presenters

Amy Elizabeth Bishop

AMY ELIZABETH BISHOP

SESSION: On Reading Submissions

Amaryah Orenstein

AMARYAH ORENSTEIN

SESSION: First Impressions: How To Hook an Agent/Editor with Your Opening Pages

Carrie Howland

CARRIE HOWLAND

SESSION: Don't Send Your Query Letter with a Box of Doughnuts: How NOT to Become an Anecdote

Kaitlyn Johnson

KAITLYN JOHNSON

SESSION: Common Publishing Myths... Debunked

Maggie Cooper

MAGGIE COOPER

SESSION: "I Hate My Cover!" and Other Tribulations: An Agent-Led Session on How to Navigate the Not-So-Good, the Really-Quite-Bad, and the Ugly of Publishing a Book

Christine Gross-Loh

CHRISTINE GROSS-LOH

SESSION: Writing the Extremely Personal: Sex, Health, Family

Val Wang

VAL WANG

SESSION: Place as Character, Place as Politics

S.K. Brownell

S.K. BROWNELL

SESSION: The Otherworld Without the Othering

Colwill Brown

COLWILL BROWN

SESSION: Writing Sentences that Sing

Christine Carron

CHRISTINE CARRON

SESSION: Muse Daily Gather