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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

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.

Eve Bridburg is Boston's foremost creative writing guru, now a literary agent at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth agency and actively seeking new works of literary fiction, memoir, biography and creative nonfiction. Recent fiction sales by ZSH and Eve include include Jon Keller's THE BLUEST STATE, BREAD AND DREAMS by Jonatha Ceely (Bantam), CI an army counterintelligence series by David DeBatto and Pete Nelson (Warner), CRABS IN A BARREL by Byron Harmon (Agate Publishing), DYING LIGHT AND OTHER STORIES by Donald Hays (McAdam/Cage), HOUSE OF MANY GODS by Kiana Davenport (Ballantine), MY LIFE ON MARS by Alicia Metcalf Miller (Plume), and THE WINTER CHAMBER by Alisa Libby (Dutton Children's Books). Eve is also the founder of Grub Street Writers, Boston's only independent writing center.

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.

Susanne's short fiction has been published in numerous journals, including American Short Fiction, Notre Dame Review, descant, Feminist Studies, Carve and others. Her short stories have won honors and distinctions including second place American Short Fiction Prize, finalist Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, short-listed for Carver Award and distinguished story in Best American Short Stories series. Her first novel, LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP, won the Hemingway First Novel Award and her second novel, GRAVITY HILL, is currently under consideration for publication. She teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut and directs the Study Abroad writing program in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Kate Gale is 2005-2006 President of PEN USA and president of American Composers Forum. She is the founder of Red Hen Press, The Los Angeles Review, the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Series, the Geffen reading series, and the Writers in The Schools program for underserved communities. Her RIO DE SANGRE, an opera with Don Davis, was performed in part at Disney Hall November of 2005 and her opera PARADISES LOST was performed in part at the New York City Opera in May of 2006. She holds a Ph.D in literature from Claremont Graduate University.

Ami Greko oversees the marketing and publicity department for Folio Literary Management. Her first publicity job took place at at Viking Penguin. Honing her skills with the likes of A. M. Homes, J. M. Coetzee, Martha Grimes, Dave Sobel and Simon Reynolds, she found strengths in both online marketing and event coordination. Advancing to a publicity job with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2006, she continued her focus on events and got the opportunity to further challenge herself and expand her publicity skills. At Folio Literary Management, Ami works with authors and publishing houses to create comprehensive publicity campaigns that utilize internet, regional and grassroots marketing, in addition to traditional publicity methods.

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.

Donna Levin has published two novels with major New York houses, and has also published two books about writing, GET THAT NOVEL STARTED and GET THAT NOVEL WRITTEN. She has taught fiction writing for ten years at University of California and hosts the Literary Luncheon series at "A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books" in San Francisco.

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.

Rachel is the author of the short story collection The First Hurt (Open City Books), a finalist for the International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award and one of the 25 Books to Remember of 2006, chosen by the New York Public Library. She has published fiction in such magazines as McSweeney's, Open City, Post Road, Conjunctions, and Story Quarterly, and in the book Full Frontal Fiction: The Best of Nerve Anthology. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia and teaches fiction classes at Gotham Writers Workshop and for the New York Writers Workshop at the JCC in New York.

Tim is a founding member and president of New York Writers Workshop and holds an MFA from Columbia University. He has been teaching workshops on both fiction and the screenplay since 1991 at various institutions including New York Writers Workshop, the Writer's Voice, the University of the Philippines, Webster University, Cha-am, Thailand, and the Media Development Authority, Singapore. At New York University, he teaches courses on writing and contemporary culture. His fiction, articles, and other work have been published in numerous venues including The New York Times, The North American Review, The Missouri Review, Downtown Express, and Time Haiku. He is co-author of "The New York Writers Workshop Portable MFA: A Guide to the Craft of Writing (Writer's Digest, May 2006)".

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.

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.