---

INTERVIEW OBSERVATIONS "Any first time author can be made to look "fabulous" -- it's all about how an agent, author and publisher present the author. Every author has a background and a story, which can be told to the book- sellers and public in a boring way or a way that is spectacular."   Barbara Zitwer "If an author is a terrific writer and has a voice or perspective or style that's not been seen before, there is a far greater chance it will have a place in the literary market. Though it's true that it can be tough to get a first book published, agents and editors are always looking for the next voice or story."   Elise Capron "Whatever you're doing in this business, whether you're an agent, editor, or writer, it's crucially important to keep on top of what's happening in the industry. Agents and editors are much more likely to take writers seriously if they can name other writers in their genre whose work they admire ..."   W. Gottlieb "The truth is that most publishing professionals needn't read further than that ... Judging a book in five sentences might sound like an outrageous idea. But it's really not."   Noah Lukeman

With more than forty years experience in the publishing world, and over fifteen years in entertainment, Ken Atchity is responsible for launching dozens of books and films. His life's passion is finding great storytellers and turning them into bestselling authors and screenwriters. As well as being a famed literary agent at AEI, he has produced 26 films, including "Joe Somebody" (Tim Allen; Fox), "Life or Something Like It" (Angelina Jolie; Fox), "Shadow of Obsession" (NBC), "The Madam's Family" (CBS), "Henry's List of Wrongs" (New Line), and Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not (starring Jim Carrey; Paramount-- approaching production). His 14 books on writing cover every stage of a writer's career. Based his teaching, managing, and writing experience, he has successfully built bestselling careers for novelists, nonfiction writers, and screenwriters from the ground up.

Robert Bausch has taught literature and creative writing at George Mason University, The University of Virginia, and The American University. He is the author of six novels, including ON THE WAY HOME, THE LIVES OF RILEY CHANCE, A HOLE IN THE EARTH, THE GYPSY MAN (winner of the 2003 DLB Award for Distinguished Fiction). His collection of short stories, THE WHITE ROOSTER AND OTHER STORIES won the DLB Award for Distinguished Short Fiction in 1995.

Melissa Broder is a Senior Publicist at Penguin Group (USA) in the Berkley/ NAL/ Riverhead/ Perigee division. Most recently, she has worked with such bestselling authors as: Harumi Kurihara (HARUMI'S JAPANESE COOKING), Kate Jacobs (THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB) and Sloane Crosley (I WAS TOLD THERE'D BE CAKE). Melissa began her journey in literary publicity at Tor/Forge, an imprint of what was then Holtzbrinck publishers (now Macmillan). Melissa holds a BA in English from Tufts University and is currently getting her MFA in Poetry at The City College of New York, where she is the recipient of The 2008 Stark Poetry Prize in Honor of Raymond Patterson and The 2008 Jerome Lowell Dejur Award in Creative Writing.

Elise Capron is an agent for the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency--widely regarded as the best on the west coast. Their authors include Amy Tan, Kate White, Janell Cannon, and many more. Elise is list-building and looking for new manuscripts. She is Sandra's assistant and specializes in literary and women's fiction.

David Cole has spent almost 30 years in book publishing with stints in editing, production, publicity, marketing, and management. His company, Bay Tree Publishing, focuses on nonfiction works in the areas of business, personal finance, psychology, health, and current affairs. He is the author of three nonfiction books, including The Complete Guide to Book Marketing. The Founder and first President of the San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival, he also served as an instructor in the University of California Extension certificate program in publishing. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Independent Book Publishers Association and the Northern California Book Publicity and Marketing Association.

Julie is a freelance editor with twelve years of experience as a staff editor at Dutton and Vintage Books. She has edited seven New York Times bestselling novels by Eric Jerome Dickey, two highly acclaimed memoirs (INSIDE, INSIDE by James Lipton and THE COMMITMENT by Dan Savage); and a National Jewish Book Award-winning humor anthology (THE MODERN JEWISH GIRL'S GUIDE TO GUILT by Ruth Andrew Ellenson and contributors). She is also the editor of two mysteries by Edgar Award-nominated writer Barbara Parker, and several well-reviewed thrillers, including SEASON OF THE WITCH by Natasha Mostert, CONTACT ZERO by David Wollstencroft, and IN THE COURTS OF THE SUN by Brian D'Amato.

Verna Dreisbach, of Dreisbach Literary Management, is an award winning published author who has been featured in books, literary journals, magazines, and newspapers. Her Seal Press anthology, Why We Ride, is due for publication spring 2010. Verna is the founder and president of Capitol City Young Writers, a national non-profit organization that supports and encourages creative writing in aspiring youth. Verna represents both fiction and non-fiction authors, a variety of fiction including commercial and literary, with a particular interest in books with a political, economic or social context. With over 13 years as a police officer, Verna also has a genuine interest and expertise in the genres of mystery, thriller and true crime.

April Eberhardt of Kimberley Cameron and Associates is hungry to build her list. Her specialty is adult commercial and literary fiction, particularly contemporary urban fiction, ironic family dramas and realistic midlife tales, often with a twist, preferably involving strong female characters. She enjoys working with new authors to edit and streamline their manuscripts before submitting them to publishers.

Amberly Finarelli has worked in the book publishing and freelance writing business for over five years and joined Andrea Hurst Literary Management in 2008. Previously, she has worked as a manuscript evaluator, developmental editor, publisher's assistant, copy editor, proofreader and freelance writer. She graduated magna cum laude in 2007 with a B.A. in English. She is particularly interested in women's fiction, cozy mysteries, and upscale or literary fiction.

Scott Hoffman's fiction list is about half literary, and half commercial. If your project doesn't fit one of the "established" categories, he might be your guy. He is always on the look out beautifully-written literary fiction, dark novels, SF and Fantasy, as well as heartbreaking memoirs. More about Scott can be found here.

Michael Larsen, together with Elizabeth Pomada, founded the first literary agency in San Francisco in 1972, and since that time they have helped hundreds of authors to achieve successful publication of their books. Recent manuscripts represented and sold to Pantheon, Warner, Berkley, and Tor. Two novel ms were recently selected from Algonkian workshops.

JSill is an acquiring agent with the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, one of the most respected literary agencies in the U.S. Representing an impressive and eclectic client roster, SDLA has helped guide the illustrious careers of many best selling authors in several genres, including Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Lisa See and Diane Mott Davidson and on the non-fiction side, Peter Irons, David Landes, Mike Davis, Chalmers Johnson and Susan Faludi, among others. Jill is interested in commercial fiction, especially women's fiction, multi-cultural fiction, historic fiction, mysteries, thrillers, and horror.

Isabella Michon is a former TV and radio producer with more than 20 years of publicity and promotion experience. She has worked with many bestselling and award-winning authors including Deepak Chopra, Clive Barker, Day in the Life series co-creator David Cohen, and Robert Thurman, who Time named as "one of the 25 most influential people". Isabella's bookings include USA, Today, NBC Nightly News, CBS This Morning, The Associated Press, NPR, CNN, The Tom Snyder Show, and the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Neff is Editor-in-Chief of DEL SOL REVIEW, the founder and director of WEBDELSOL.COM (#10 in the Writer's Digest Fiction Top 50 and the largest publisher of periodical contemporary literature in the U.S.) and the founder and chief editor of ALGONKIAN WRITER CONFERENCES. He is publisher of several national literary magazines at WEBDELSOL including IN POSSE REVIEW, LA PETITE ZINE, 5_TROPE, and DEL SOL REVIEW. His own work has appeared in THE LITERARY REVIEW, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, MUDLARK, QUARTERLY WEST, PITTSBURGH QUARTERLY, CONJUNCTIONS, AND AMERICAN WAY MAGAZINE ... [more].

Elizabeth Pomada, together with Michael Larsen, founded the first literary agency in San Francisco in 1972, and since that time have helped hundreds of authors to successful publication of their books. Recent manuscripts represented and sold to Pantheon, Warner, Berkley, and Tor.

Peter is the President of Peter Rubie Literary Agency. Prior to becoming an agent, he was a book doctor for such publishers as Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Random House and others, the fiction editor for Walker & Co., a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, a broadcast journalist (BBC Radio News; ITN News), and a print journalist (Fleet Street, London). He represents narrative non-fiction, crime novels, thrillers, science fiction/fantasy, as well as literary novels and children's fiction. Peter has written two novels himself, and his nonfiction book, THE ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLING is known for being one of the best in the business. Novels currently represented by his agency include THE LAND OF ELYON, by Patrick Carman (Scholastic); THE THIEF AND THE BEANSTALK, by Paul Catanese (Simon&Schuster); ESCAPE CLAUSE, by James Born (Putnam); TOWARD RATIONAL EXHUBERANCE, by B. Mark Smith (Farrar, Straus); and THE GLASS HARMONICA, by Louise Marley (Ace).

After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in English, Charles broke into the world of magazine writing: NEW YORK MAGAZINE, ESQUIRE, NEW YORK, GQ, and a variety of others. This experience eventually led to books, the most recent ghostwritten book making the NYT bestseller list. Charles has been a Visiting Professor of writing at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence, The New York Writers Workshop, and the Writer's Voice. His clients for editorial work include such publishers and literary agencies as Viking/Penguin, Dell, Simon and Schuster, Henry Holt, St. Martin's, M. Evans, Trident Media Group, Peter Rubie Agency, Graybill & English, and the Spieler Agency, among others.

Susan Schwartzman has been in the publishing field for more than 20 years. She began her career in book publicity in 1992 as a freelance in-house book publicist, working for major publishers, including Workman Publishing, William Morrow, Penguin-Putnam, Harcourt Brace, Villard, Wiley, Avon Books, Simon & Schuster, Warner Books, Red Dress Ink, New American Library, and Downtown Press. As an independent book publicist, Susan has promoted a wide variety of literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction titles. Her business, Susan Schwartzman Public Relations, has provided major media placements for her clients in major media throughout the country.

A member of the prestigious Castiglia Literary Agency, Sally van Haitsma is actively looking for proposals and her fiction list covers literary and women's fiction, and SF/F as well. Her recent sales include SILVERSTEIN & ME by Marv Gold (Red Hen Press), WESLEY THE OWL by Stacey O'Brien (Free Press/Simon & Schuster), and THE LEISURE SEEKER by Michael Zadoorian (HarperCollins).

Tina is actively list building at ICM. Her tastes are eclectic--most types of fiction, nonfiction, and even YA. Recent sales include the first two books in Susan Runholt's mystery series, THE MYSTERY OF THE THIRD LUCRETIA and RESCUING SENECA CRANE (Viking), and commercial fiction sales including Donna Gephart's AS IF BEING 12 ¾ ISN'T BAD ENOUGH (Delacorte), Robin Friedman's THE GIRLFRIEND PROJECT (Walker), Sanjay Patel's THE LITTLE BOOK OF HINDU DEITIES (Plume), and many more. Prior to joining ICM over three years ago she worked at the Ellen Levine Literary Agency, Trident Media, and the Karpfinger Agency. She earned an MFA before becoming an agent.

From his start as an intern, Gordon has worked his way up to becoming a full agent and an integral part of Andrea Hurst Literary Management. He frequently participates in conferences and workshops and speaks throughout the community. He is an honors graduate with a B.A. in Creative and Professional Writing. Gordon has his eye out for works which will not only thrive in the current market but will also withstand the test of time. He is especially interested in literary, general and upscale fiction, as well as memoir and true crime.

Paige Wheeler is the past President of Creative Media Agency and a current partner with Jeff Kleinman in Folio Literary Agency. She is actively seeking new manuscripts for commercial, literary, thriller/mystery, SF, YA, and other genres. An interview with Paige can be [found here]

Howard Yoon is the Vice President and Editorial Director of the Gail Ross Literary Agency. He also handles foreign rights for the agency. Yoon specializes in editing and developing book ideas with clients. He has more than 14 years of experience as a literary agent, editor, and writer. A list of GRLA literary projects can be found here.