SATURDAY, April 12th
8:00 – 9:00am
Registration/Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15am
Buzzbuilders: Marketing and Publicity
Marketers and publicists discuss how to get the word out.
- Johanna Ingalls BIO, Akashic Books
Johanna Ingalls graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in Theatre. After seven long years working in the music industry with bands such as the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Beck, and most importantly, the noise rock band Girls Against Boys, she was rescued from the world of rock by one of the bass players
from Girls Against Boys -- Johnny Temple. She has basically worked at Akashic Books since its inception and is currently the managing editor.
- Anne Watters BIO, Broadway
Anne Watters is Associate Director of Marketing for Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. A nine-year veteran of Random House, she has also held various positions in Marketing and Advertising and Promotion capacities for the Crown Publishing Group. She has worked on campaigns for a wide-ranging list of bestselling titles, including the current New York Times bestseller Tell Me Where It Hurts by Dr. Nick Trout, The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, La Bella Figura by Beppe Severgnini, Mosaic by Amy Grant, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D., and The Fast Track Detox Diet by Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., C.N.S.
- Chris Knopf BIO, author, moderator
Chris Knopf writes the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery series published by Permanent Press. Two Time (06) was listed in Marilyn Stasio's NYT "Recommended Summer Reading". Publishers Weekly chose it as one of the “Best 100 Books for 2006.” Head Wounds, number three in the series, earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, March ’08. Chris is a principal of Mintz & Hoke, a marketing communications agency in Avon, CT. The agency’s clients include Pratt & Whitney, AIG, Aetna, Rockwell Collins, Embraer Aircraft, Prudential and the Connecticut Department of Social Services.
- Jenny Leff BIO, Random House
Jenny Leff is a Creative Marketing Manager at Random House. She oversees
cross-promotional and advertising campaigns as well as collaborates on
brand-development objectives for Fodor's Travel, The Princeton Review,
Random House Reference, and more. Prior to that, she was a Marketing Manager
at HarperCollins Hardcovers, where she implemented marketing campaigns and
collaborated on national advertising for bestselling authors including
Michael Chabon, Michael Crichton, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Jenny began
her career in the marketing department for the Morrow Cookbooks line, where
she worked on creative campaigns and online initiatives with brand-name
authors like Emeril Lagasse. Dating back to internships at the Howard Stern
Show and Conde Nast Magazines, and continuing with speaking engagements to
audiences of publishing interns, Jenny has developed a passion for
grassroots marketing, and its applications in the ever-changing world of
publishing.
- Janet Goldstein BIO, Publishing Consultant
Janet Goldstein is the founder of Janet Goldstein Enterprises, a boutique publishing and strategy firm based in New York City. She works with authors, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and nonprofits at all stages to take their ideas, platforms and brands to the next level. Since January 2005 she has worked with clients on concept and proposal development, constituency-building strategies, launch plans and a select number of fiction and nonfiction editorial projects. She directs the book section of the annual NYU Summer Publishing Institute. Her first book, coauthored with Howard Behar, titled It’s Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principals from a Life at Starbucks, was published by Portfolio/Penguin Group USA in January 2008. Previously she rose up the editorial ranks at HarperCollins Publishers, was part of the original start-up team at Broadway Books, and was an executive editor and director of Viking Penguin’s spirituality imprint. She has published many influential and best-selling books in the fields of business, psychology, women’s issues, parenting, health, social history, spirituality and fiction by authors too numerous to mention including Barbara Kingsolver, Wayne Dyer, Harriet Lerner, David Allen and the Dalai Lama.
Querial Killers: How Not to Get an Agent
Learn how to write an effective query letter.
- Katharine Sands BIO, Sarah Jayne Freymann Agency
Katharine Sands, a literary agent with the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, has worked with a varied list of authors who publish a diverse array of books. Highlights include XTC: SongStories; Make Up, Don't Break Up with Oprah guest Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil; The Complete Book on International Adoption: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Child; Writers on Directors; Ford model Helen Lee's The Tao of Beauty; Elvis and You, to name a few. She is the agent provocateur of Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye, a collection of pitching wisdom from leading literary agents. Actively building her client list, she likes books that have a clear benefit for readers' lives in categories of food, travel, lifestyle, home arts, beauty, wisdom, relationships, parenting, and fresh looks, which might be at issues, life challenges or popular culture. For faction, memoir and femoir, she likes to be transported to a world rarely or newly observed; for fiction, she wants to be compelled and propelled.
11:00 am – 12:15pm
Demystifying Lit Mags
Literary magazine and journal editors discuss how to find the right outlet for your work.
- Maribeth Batcha, One Story
- Charles Flowers BIO, Bloom
Charles Flowers is the Executive Director of Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading organization for LGBT literature. He is also the co-author of
Golden Men: The Power of Gay Midlife (with Harold Kooden, Ph.D.), and his poems have appeared in
Gulf Coast,
Barrow Street,
Indiana Review, and
Puerto del Sol. Flowers is also the founding editor of
BLOOM, a journal for lesbian and gay writing that Edmund White has called “the most exciting new queer literary publication to emerge in years" (
www.bloommagazine.org).
- Brigid Hughes BIO, A Public Space
Brigid Hughes is the founding editor of A Public Space. Previously, she was editor of The Paris Review.
- Peter Selgin BIO, Alimentum
Peter Selgin’s first book of short stories, “Drowning Lessons” won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the Fall of 2008. His autobiographical novel,
Life Goes to the Movies, was a two-finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and Second Place Winner of the AWP Award, and will be published in April of 209 by Dzanc Books. His book on fiction writing,
By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers, was published by Writer’s Digest Books, 2007. His short works have garnered six Pushcart Nominations and appeared in over 50 publications, including
Salon.com,
The Sun,
Glimmer Train,
The Literary Review,
Salon. Com,
Poets & Writers,
Colorado Review,
Missouri Review,
Alaska Quarterly Review, and
Best American Essays 2006. He edits the journal
Alimentum: The Literature of Food.
- Alex Steele BIO, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, moderator
Alex Steele is the dean of faculty at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, the largest private creative writing school in the country. He has edited the books Writing Fiction, Writing Movies, and Fiction Gallery.
From Frustration to Publication: Writers’ Life Q&A
Successful authors give straight answers to your questions about the writing life.
- Gayle Feldman BIO, author
Gayle Feldman was born in Philadelphia and educated at Penn and Cambridge. She began her career in book publishing in England, working primarily as an editor of academic and educational books. She returned to America at the end of 1985 and in 1986 became a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly. From 1989 through 1995 she was Book News Editor at PW, then went freelance and has written many articles for PW as well as the New York Times, The Nation, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Self magazine, etc. Since 1999 she has been the New York correspondent for The Bookseller of London, writing a regular column, news articles and features on the book business. Her first book, a family memoir of breast cancer, You Don't Have to Be Your Mother, was published by W.W. Norton in 1994. In 2001-2 she was a National Arts Journalism Program research fellow at Columbia University and in 2003 published a 100-page monograph, Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business of Trade Books, as part of the fellowship. Since September 2002, she has been under contract to Random House for a biography of its co-founder Bennett Cerf.
- Marshall Karp BIO, author
Marshall Karp, after writing hundreds of commercials, dozens of TV shows, a play (Squabbles), and a feature film (Just Looking), fulfilled a lifelong fantasy by killing the people he used to work with. His first novel, The Rabbit Factory, set in a Disneyesque studio introduces LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs. In Bloodthirsty, they returned when some of the most powerful and hated men in Hollywood began turning up dead. Flipping Out, the next in the series, will be published by St. Martins/Minotaur. Janet Maslin in The New York Times Book Review said Karp “brings to mind Robert B. Parker, Janet Evanovich, Dean Koontz, Stuart Woods and a lot of other fast-paced authors.” But what the hell does she know?
- Paul McComas BIO, author
Paul McComas has written short fiction that has appeared in numerous literary magazines, and he is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Planet of the Dates (2008, The Permanent Press) and Unplugged (2002, John Daniel & Co.), plus a short story collection, Twenty Questions (1998, Daniel & Daniel), now in its third printing. He also edited and contributed work to the fiction anthologies First Person Imperfect (2003, iUniverse) and Further Persons Imperfect (2007, iUniverse) and wrote the Foreword for Ships in the Night (2005, Capra Press), a short story collection by Logan’s Run author William F. Nolan, with whom Paul is currently co-authoring the novel Logan’s Quest. He teaches writing in the adult continuing-education program at Northwestern University and at the graduate level as an adjunct faculty member of National-Louis University.
- Michael Paul Mason BIO, author
Michael Paul Mason, a professional writer, has served as an editor for two literary publications, and has appeared on several national media outlets, including the Lehrer Newshour, CBS News, and NPR's Morning Edition. Mason remains active as a lecturer and speaker. Mason has also built a reputation for noteworthy journalism. When Mason's article in
Discover Magazine,
"Dead Men Walking" appeared in mid-February of 2007, it ignited a national debate about the treatment of brain injured soldiers. Mason has since traveled to Iraq to report on healthcare and humanitarian issues. Mason's first book,
Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath (Farrar Straus & Giroux, April 2008), is an exploration into the harsh realities endured by brain injury survivors.
- Patricia Smith BIO, poet
Patricia Smith, a Chicago native, is the author of four books of poetry, including Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection, winner of the 2007 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. Teahouse was also voted the Best Poetry Book of 2006 by About.com. Blood Dazzler, a book of poems chronicling the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2008. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly and many other journals. She is also the author of the groundbreaking history Africans in America and the children’s book Janna and the Kings, winner of a Lee & Low Books New Voices Award. In addition, she is a Pushcart Prize winner, a Cave Canem faculty member and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. In 2006, during a ceremony at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University, she was voted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.
- Philip Schultz BIO, The Writers Studio, moderator
Philip Schultz is the founder/director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing based in New York City. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including his most recent Failure (2007), Living in the Past (2004), and The Holy Worm of Praise (2002), all published by Harcourt, Deep Within the Ravine (Viking 1984), a recipient of The Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, and Like Wings (Viking 1978) winner of an American Academy & Institute of Arts and Letters Award as well as a National Book Award nomination. His work has been published in The New Yorker, Partisan Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Slate, and he’s the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. He has also received a NEA Fellowship in Poetry (1981), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry (1985), and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine.
12:30 – 2:00pm
Lunch
- Keynote speaker: Alice Hoffman BIO, Introduction by Audrey B. Pass BIO
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. She attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 1974, receiving an MA in creative writing. She currently lives in Boston and New York. Hoffman’s first novel, Property Of, was written when she was twenty-one and studying at Stanford, and was published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. She credits her mentor, professor and writer Albert J. Guerard, and his wife, the writer Maclin Bocock Guerard, for helping her to publish her first short story in the magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff then contacted her to ask if she had a novel, at which point she quickly began to write what was to become Property Of, a section of which was published in Mr. Solotaroff’s magazine, American Review. Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published a total of eighteen novels, two books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults. Her novel, Here on Earth, was an Oprah Book Club selection. Practical Magic and Aquamarine, a novel for young adults, were both bestsellers and Hollywood movies. Other New York Times bestselling novels are The River King, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The Ice Queen and Skylight Confessions. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s work has been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Her new novel, The Third Angel, will be published by Shaye Areheart Books/Crown this month.
Audrey B. Pass has enjoyed a 20-year career as a corporate communications and public relations specialist and media strategist. Pass is currently the Senior Director of Communications and Public Affairs for WNYW-TV/ FOX5 and WWOR-TV/ My9, the Fox-owned flagship stations in New York. In this capacity, she oversees media and talent relations, as well as public and community affairs. Pass serves as executive producer for three weekly public affairs programs, “Good Day Street Talk,” New Jersey Bow,” and “Real Talk.” She has also executive produced the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, the Hispanic Day Parade, and Gospelfest 2008. Previously, Pass was Director of Communications for WCBS-TV, where she oversaw media relations and corporate communications for WCBS, including news, local programming, talent relations, community relations and public affairs. Pass joined CBS from Harpo Productions in Chicago, where she served as Senior Publicist for Oprah Winfrey, Oprah’s Angel Network, Oprah’s Book Club and Harpo, Inc
2:00 – 3:15pm
All About MEmoir
Memoirists share their experiences and challenges in writing about their lives.
- Phoebe Damrosch BIO, memoirist
Phoebe Damrosch is the author of the memoir
Service Included(William Morrow), chosen as a
New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2007. She teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop. Phoebe holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
- Stephanie Elizondo Griest BIO, memoirist
Stephanie Elizondo Griest has mingled with the Russian Mafiya, polished Chinese propaganda, and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her award-winning memoir
Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004) and guidebook
100 Places Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales, 2007). Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish her memoir
Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines in 2008. She has also written for the
New York Times,
Washington Post,
Latina Magazine, and the Associated Press. A 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, she lectures and performs nationwide, and recently won the Richard J. Margolis Award for social justice reporting. Visit her website at
www.aroundthebloc.com.
- Janice Erlbaum BIO, memoirist
Janice Erlbaum is the author of the memoirs
Girlbomb (Villard), and
Have You Found Her (Villard). She is a columnist for
Bust magazine, and her essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in
New York Press,
Interview,
PAPER, and
McSweeneys Internet Tendency. She teaches memoir writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop.
- Stephen O’Connor BIO, memoirist
Stephen O’Connor is the author of Rescue, short fiction and poetry; Will My Name Be Shouted Out?, memoir and social analysis; Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed, narrative history. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Conjunctions, TriQuarterly, Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Quarterly, Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Fiction International, and many other places. His essays and journalism have been published in The New York Times, DoubleTake, The Nation, AGNI, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The New Labor Forum, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing from Columbia University; the Visiting Fellowship for Historical Research by Artists and Writers from the American Antiquarian Society; and the DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. He teaches fiction and nonfiction writing in the MFA programs of Columbia and Sarah Lawrence.
- John Sellers BIO, memoirist
John Sellers is the author of Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life (Simon & Schuster). In addition to writing and editing the back-page Q+A at Time Out New York every week, he contributes regularly to GQ and The Believer, among other publications. He's currently at work on The Old Man and the Swamp (Simon & Schuster), a memoir about his eccentric father.
- Catherine Texier BIO, memoirist
Catherine Texier is the author of four novels, Chloé l'Atlantique, Panic Blood, Love Me Tender, and Victorine, and a memoir, Breakup. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. Her latest novel Victorine won ELLE Magazine’s 2004 Readers’ Prize for Fiction.
- Richard Goodman BIO, Gotham Writers’ Workshop instructor/author, moderator
Richard Goodman is the author of the memoir French Dirt (Algonquin) and the craft book The Soul of Creative Writing (Transaction). He has written for the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Garden Design, Grand Tour, Writer's Chronicle, salon, Saveur, Ascent and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He teaches memoir writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop.
DIY: Self-Publishing Roundtable
Successful self-publishers discuss taking the empowering route of going it alone.
- Robert W. Cabell BIO, author
Robert W. Cabell has spent the past two decades working in the entertainment industry with giants like Time Warner, HBO, Spelling International, Columbia Pictures, and the New York Post. He has written a book on humor with Joey Adams, numerous plays, and musicals and served as entertainment editor for Shout Magazine. His first novel, The Hair-Raising Adventures Of Jayms Blonde – Project Popcorn, has received unanimous rave reviews across the United States and Canada. Three of his plays produced in the United States, two musicals “Pretty Faces” and “Z The Masked Musical of Zorro” (both NY Cast CD’s are available on iTunes) and his play “I Sarah, The Divine” (about the life and times of the legendary French actress, Sarah Bernhardt) are currently being translated into German for productions in Germany and Scandinavia in 2009. In addition to his work as an author and playwright Mr. Cabell is noted videographer and producer of documentaries, as well as theatrical multimedia designer.
- Carol Hoenig BIO, publishing consultant
Carol Hoenig’s novel,
Without Grace, has been awarded the Silver Medal for Book of the Year 2005 by
ForeWord Magazine and given First Place for Fiction by the DIY Book Festival. Jada Press also gave her novel honorable mention. Carol's essays, articles, book reviews and short stories appear in a wide number of publications. Her essay “I'm with the Band” won the Face of Writing Edge Magazine essay competition. Carol blogs for The Huffington Post at
www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-hoenig and Where I Stand at
www.whereistand.com/CarolHoenig. Carol also contributed to
Putting Your Passion Into Print, written by Arielle Eckstudt & David Henry Sterry. Carol's new book,
An Author's Guide to Planning Book Events has been nominated for Book of the Year by
ForeWord Magazine in the category of writing and named finalist in the How-To category by Reader Views.
- Perry Brass BIO, Belhue Press, author
Perry Brass, a poet and novelist, has published 14 books through his small press, Belhue Press; his newest is
Carnal Sacraments,
A Historical Novel of the Future—“one of the most unusual novels I’ve read in years,” said
Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco. He has been a finalist 6 times for national Lambda Literary Awards, and was given an IPPY Award from Independent Publisher for
Warlock, A Novel of Possession. He is currently working on a new novel,
The Membrane of Doubt, about the nature of God in the search for love. He has been featured in 25 anthologies, and his numerous poetry collaborations with composers have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Tokyo. He lives in the cultural and literary epicenter of New York, the Bronx, where he reads, writes, and watches the Hudson River. He can be reached through his website,
www.perrybrass.com, or at MySpace/PerryBrassbooks.
Open Master Class with Sol Stein
Sol Stein
BIO, best-selling author, editor, creator of WritePro
Sol Stein edited and published some of the outstanding writers of the 20th century, including James Baldwin, David Frost, Jack Higgins, Elia Kazan, Dylan Thomas, Lionel Trilling, W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and three heads of state. He is a prize-winning playwright produced on Broadway, an anthologized poet, the author of nine novels, plus nonfiction books, screenplays, and TV dramas. His novel The Magician sold over one million copies. His book Stein on Writing is now in trade paperback, and on tape, CD, and MP3. A more advanced writing book, How to Grow a Novel, has been selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. Stein’s work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Finish, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, and Russian. He is the creator of three computer software programs for writers, the award-winning WritePro®, FirstAid for Writers®, and FictionMaster®. His software is in use by over 110,000 writers in 38 countries.
Topics:
- The Actors Studio Method for Generating Conflict
- Foolproof Dialogue
4:00 – 5:15pm
Getting Past the Gatekeeper
How to get your work past the assistants who answer the phone.
- Jessica Sinsheimer BIO, Sarah Jane Freymann Agency
Jessica Sinsheimer has been reading and campaigning for her favorite queries since 2004. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she went east for Sarah Lawrence College and stayed for the opportunity to read soon-to-be books for a living. Now an assistant at the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, she's developed a reputation for fighting office members to see incoming manuscripts first—and for drinking far too much tea. Her favorite slushpile finds include Wisdom 2.0 (Harper Collins, 2010), How to Say It With New Media (Perigee, 2009) and Birth: The Wonders and Oddities of Life's First Day (Ballantine, 2008). Always on the lookout for new writers, she is most excited about finding memoirs, psychology, parenting, literary fiction and works that speak to life in the twenty-first century
- Laura Walsh BIO, Wiley & Sons
Laura A. Walsh is an Assistant Editor at John Wiley & Sons, Inc. where she works in the finance, trading and general business fields. She has acquired a number of books in these areas for Wiley, including The ETF Book: All You Need to Know About Exchanged-Traded Funds (December 2007), The Market Guys' Five Points for Trading Success: Identify, Pinpoint, Strike, Protect, and Act! (January 2008), and most recently, Portable Alpha Theory and Practice: What Investors Really Need to Know (April 2008). Walsh was promoted to Assistant Editor after spending two years as an Editorial Assistant for two editors. Prior to her time at Wiley, Walsh worked for the Associated Press at a Hartford, Conn.-based bureau. She received her bachelors degree from Fairfield University in 2003 and is working toward receiving her MBA from NYU Stern School of Business with a completion date of May 2009.
- Marcela Landres BIO, Editorial Consultant
Marcela Landres is an Editorial Consultant who edits manuscripts, critiques proposals, and advises on how to launch and manage a writing career. She was formerly an editor at Simon & Schuster and is the creator of Latinidad, one of
Writer’s Digest magazine’s 101 Best Web Sites for Writers. A member of the Women’s Media Group, she has acted as a judge for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and speaks frequently for organizations such as The Learning Annex. For more information, please visit
http://www.marcelalandres.com.
- Marissa Walsh BIO, Gotham Writers’ Workshop instructor/author, moderator
Marissa Walsh is the author of the comic memoir Girl with Glasses: My Optic History (Simon Spotlight Entertainment,) and the YA novel A Field Guide to High School (Delacorte); coauthor of the cult classic Tipsy in Madras: A Complete Guide to 80s Preppy Drinking (Perigee); and editor of the YA anthologies Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything (Delacorte) and the forthcoming Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? (Clarion). A former children's book editor at Delacorte Press/Random House Children’s Books, she teaches Children’s Writing at Gotham Writers’ Workshop.
What’s Next? A Round Table Writers’ Conference Wrap Up
You’ve spent two days learning everything you need to know about publishing--here’s how to apply it!
- Susan Breen BIO, author
Susan Breen is the author of the novel
The Fiction Class (Plume and Headline Review UK). She has published short fiction in
American Literary Review, Chattahoochee Review, Nebraska Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and
anderbo. She teaches fiction writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop.
- Henry Grinberg BIO, author
Henry Grinberg was born and educated in England, where he spent World War II as a schoolboy in London, sometimes subjected to severe bombing by the Nazi enemy, sometimes evacuated to the country. His novel Variations on the Beast (The Dragon Press, New York, 2006), written from the viewpoint of his corrupt protagonist, reflects his interest in music, the giant egos to be found there, and the contradictions that arise when moral corruption and genius exist in the same person. Now a United States citizen, he holds a Ph.D. in medieval studies and has taught literature and writing at the City University of New York. He is the author of scholarly and popular articles and reviews. He has recorded selections from The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, released on his own Medieval Sounds label. He is also a certified psychoanalyst with a practice in New York City. He is married to prize-winning poet and playwright Suzanne Noguere.
- Sandra Newman BIO, author
Sandra Newman is the author of the novels
The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done (HarperCollins) and
Cake (Random House UK), and co-author (with Howard Mittelmark) of
How Not to Write a Novel (HarperCollins). Her work has been published in Harper's, Granta, Conjunctions, and in the UK's
Observer,
Express, and
Mail on Sunday newspapers. She has taught writing at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, Temple University, the University of Colorado, and Chapman University.
- Mark Kohut BIO, publishing consultant, moderator
Mark Kohut has spent a lifetime in book sales and marketing. He has worked in bookstores, for wholesalers and as a salesman and executive with a number of publishers including Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin and the Macmillan Companies. In recent years Mark Kohut has been a consultant, free-lance writer and the Publisher of a small POD Press, Redburn.
Open Master Class with Sharon Mesmer
Sharon Mesmer
BIO, poet/author, The New School
Sharon Mesmer, a proficient prose and poetry writer, teaches undergraduate fiction writing and literature, as well as graduate seminars in poetry, at the New School. Her fiction collections are The Empty Quarter and In Ordinary Time (Hanging Loose Press 2000 and 2005) and Ma Vie à Yonago (Hachette Litteratures, France, in French translation, 2005). A two-time New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry, her recent collections include Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2008) and The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose Press, 2008). Allen Ginsberg described her work as "beautifully bold and vivaciously modern," and Alice Notley as "a long stream of indomitable spunk." Her fiction recently appeared in The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology and Gargoyle 50.
Topic:
- When Words Won't Come: Generating New Work When You Think You Can't
5:30 – 6:30pm
Cocktail Reception