Michael Borum has been working in digital media since 1994, holding in leadership positions at agencies and non-profits in technical, marketing, and creative roles. In addition to his extensive corporate experience, he established his own digital marketing agency, etherweave, in 2002, with a mission to serve writers, artists, and small non-profits. Since then, Michael has worked with over 60 authors (across multiple genres), publishing houses, and literary agencies to help them build strong and successful online presences. His clients have included authors Steve Almond, Christopher Castellani, Kevin Young, Margot Livesey, Scott Heim, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Stephen McCauley, Aminatta Forna, Elinor Lipman, Michael Lowenthal, Stacy Schiff, Caryl Phillips, Tom Perrotta, Robin Hemley, Mameve Medwed, Carla Kaplan, Michael Rowe, Peter Spiegelman, Cormac McCarthy (for whom he developed a website on behalf of Knopf), Alfred A. Knopf, Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, PEN New England, and Grub Street. He resides in Boston, where he works for international non-profit Oxfam America.

Originally from England, where he worked as a literary scout, consulting for foreign publishers and for film, Peter Blackstock moved to Grove Atlantic in 2011, where he is now an Associate Editor. His list includes literary fiction, thrillers, nonfiction, drama, and books in translation. Peter’s titles include the debut novel Fobbit, which was named a New York Times notable book of the year and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the New York Times bestselling memoir Full Service, and The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, longlisted for the Booker Prize and selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. Upcoming titles include the debut novel The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen and a collection of short fiction by the actor Jesse Eisenberg. Aside from books, Peter is interested in running, theatre, film, food blogs, and discovering restaurants in Queens and beyond.

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Vicky Bijur runs the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency, which she started in 1988. Vicky has served as president of the AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives) and is currently chair of its Ethics Committee. She represents both fiction and nonfiction.   Among her clients are NY Times bestseller Laura Lippman, whose novel Every Secret Thing was filmed with Dakota Fanning, Diane Lane, and Elizabeth Banks; NY Times bestseller Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice, now a film with Julianne Moore; James Sallis, whose novella Drive was the basis of the Ryan Gosling/Carey Mulligan film; Steven Greenhouse, NY Times labor reporter, now writing his second book for Knopf; food blogger Kenji Alt, whose Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Though Science will be published by Norton in 2015;  NY Times bestseller Larry Gonick, author/cartoonist of The Cartoon History of the Universe; and Sujata Massey, author of The Sleeping Dictionary.   Vicky also represents The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Indian Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel, just filmed with Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons.

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Currently, Ms. Bishop is CEO of Vast Entertainment, a book-to-screen company with numerous projects in various stages of development, including feature films: REBOOT (Peter Chernin/Chernin Ent) for Fox 2000, Bloody Mary; Origins (Neal Moritz/Original Films), Accused (Mike Medavoy/Phoenix Pictures), The Fallen (Film Engine), The Last Apple (Ineffable Pictures), Hemlock(Ivan Reitman/Montecito Picture Co.), and The Duff (McG/Wonderland – currently in post) for CBS Films;  MOWs: Operation Married by Christmas [with LeAnn Rimes] for ABC Family, and The Choking Game for Lifetime, which Ms. Bishop also directed, and Television Series: Confessions of a Sociopath (Scott Stuber Productions) and DIVE (Doug Wick/Red Wagon).  Additionally, Ms. Bishop co-produced the feature film Assassination Games for MPCA.

Ms. Bishop is also a three-time speaker at the WGA as well as at numerous writers conferences around the country and is authoring the book Loglines: The Art of Selling Your Story in a Single Sentence, which will be published in 2015.

Ms. Bishop holds a B.A. in Literature from UC Santa Barbara and an M.F.A. in Production from USC’s School of Cinema/Television.  She is a director-member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

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Laura Biagi joined the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency Inc. (JVNLA) in 2009. She is actively seeking adult literary fiction, memoir, and young readers’ fiction (YA and middle grade). Of particular interest to her are dynamic characters, vivid and unexpected sentences, complex narrative arcs, psychological twists, magical realism, cultural themes, social issues, thrillers that break the genre mold, and elements that challenge the way we typically view the world. Laura also handles the sale of Australian rights and coordinates international submissions at JVNLA. She grew up in a small town in Kentucky and graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in creative writing and anthropology. Her writing background has honed her editorial eye and has driven her enthusiasm for discovering and developing literary talent.

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Noah Ballard joined Curtis Brown, Ltd. in 2014 after beginning his career at Emma Sweeney Agency. He represents literary fiction including mystery and thriller and popular nonfiction with an emphasis on narrative. Noah has appeared across the country speaking at MFA programs and writing conferences where he has spoken about query letters, building nonfiction platforms and submission etiquette. He graduated from the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, and he currently resides in Brooklyn.

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Porter Anderson / @Porter_Anderson, BA, MA, MFA, is a journalist, speaker, and consultant specializing in book publishing and its digital disruption.
He is programming the first-ever BookExpo America (BEA) setting for entrepreneurial authors, the uPublishU AUTHOR HUB, for the trade-show floor of #BEA14, May 29-31, 2014.

He is speaking at the Klopotek Publishers Forum 2014 in Berlin this spring, and his Porter Anderson Media consultancy is a Media Partner with the London Book Fair #LBF14. He also has spoken this year at the all-new London Author Fair and at Bath Spa University in the UK, as well as at the debut of PubSmart, a new conference for writers in his hometown, Charleston.

Anderson’s weekly “Porter Anderson Meets” newsmaker interview is read in London’s The Bookseller and conducted live on Twitter with the hashtag #PorterMeets.

His “Writing on the Ether” column is read at JaneFriedman.com.

His Issues on the Ether, a column and live discussion hashtagged #EtherIssue, is read on the international Publishing Perspectives site produced by the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Anderson’s media outlets have included CNN-USA, CNN International, CNN.com, and The Village Voice, The Dallas Times Herald, and many others.

His diplomatic posting to Rome with the United Nations made him the World Food Programme’s first Creative Advisor and Multimedia Manager. He also served as Executive Producer with INDEX: Design to Improve Life, the Danish government’s program to award international humanitarian design.

More is at PorterAnderson.com.

Miriam Altshuler established her own agency in 1994 after twelve years as an agent at Russell & Volkening. She focuses on literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction. Fiction writers she represents include  Maya Lang, Doug Trevor, Robb Forman Dew (National Book Award winner), Donna Freitas and Kevin McIlvoy. Her nonfiction authors includeNew York Times bestselling author Marja Mills, Andrew Carroll, Harriet Brown, Adina Hoffman (winner of the 2010 Wingate Literary Prize), Wednesday Martin, Janna Malamud Smith, and New York Times columnist Alina Tugend. Miriam also represents writers of middle-grade and young adult fiction, including Ted Sanders, author of the debut novel, The Box And The Dragonfly, and the late National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Walter Dean Myers. Miriam looks first and foremost at the quality of the writing and how a writer approaches their subject.

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Jessica Papin is an agent at Dystel and Goderich in New York. Prior to that, she was the Director of International Rights at the American University in Cairo Press, in Egypt, and an editor at Warner Books (now Grand Central Publishing) in New York. With a background on both sides of the desk, Papin loves working collaboratively with clients to shape and refine their work. She is interested in literary and smart commercial fiction, narrative non-fiction, history, medicine, science, economics and women’s issues. In every case, she looks for passion, erudition, and storytelling skill.

Jessica is always on the lookout for story-driven fiction that hits the sweet spot between literary and commercial–beautiful writing married to a strong plot line. She is actively seeking substantive non-fiction—history, science, economics, women’s issues, international affairs—that illuminates big ideas in engaging, accessible and surprising ways. She is also interested in memoir that uses personal story to capture some larger historical or cultural l narrative. She rarely represents genre fiction, and does not represent Christian books, children’s books, screenplays or poetry.

Writers interested in querying Papin should do so via e-mail at jpapin@dystel.com and include the first chapter of their work as a document attachment.

Sample Titles

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy
Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek and TJ Mitchell
Black Chalk by Christopher Yates

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Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts joined Writers House in 2015 and represents a diverse list of non-fiction, memoir, literary fiction, upmarket/book club fiction, and select realistic young-adult and middle-grade. Prior to joining Writers House, she was Director of Foreign Rights at the Susan Golomb Literary Agency, handling translation rights for best-selling, award-winning authors such as Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Kushner, William T. Vollmann, as well as representing her own clients. For several years she was a literary scout at Sanford Greenburg Associates, reporting on American books for the foreign market, and began her career in the editorial department at an independent literary publishing house, where she launched a lifelong commitment to shepherding quality fiction and nonfiction to publication. She is from the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and her cat Nina Simone.

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Rocking Fatherhood: How to Be a Dad–and Awesome at the Same Time by Chris Kornelis
Cannibals in Love by Mike Roberts
Finding Obeno by Keely Hutton

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Adam Schear is a graduate of Tulane University and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He began his publishing career at the William Morris Agency and joined DeFiore and Company in 2009. He is most interested in seeing inspired literary novels, hysterical comedies, smart thrillers with sharp dialogue, quirky debuts, and exceptional short story collections. Send him unlikable, unreliable narrators so magnetic that you can’t help but love them and believe their half-truths. He has a soft spot for sci-fi and fantasy, especially when it breaks the mold, and YA with an honest and compelling voice. For non-fiction, he adores popular science and big idea books. He’s always looking for a writer who can explain a complicated concept in a way that’s gripping. Across the board, he’s looking for the type of book that you’re compelled to recommend to everyone you know, and then secretly feel jealous that they get to read it for the first time.

Sample Titles

Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes
The Objects of Her Affection by Sonya Cobb
Made by Dad by Scott Bedford

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After graduating from Brown University, Mollie began her career as a literary scout, advising foreign publishers regarding the acquisition of rights to American books. She then worked as an editor at the Crown imprint of Random House, before becoming an agent in 2003. Mollie represents New York Times bestsellers Jonathan Evison (West of Here), Carol Rifka Brunt (Tell the Wolves I’m Home), Sarah McCoy (The Baker’s Daughter) and Jessica Verday (The Hollow), as well as International Bestsellers Kimberly Rae Miller (Coming Clean) and Josephine Angelini (Starcrossed), but she also takes great pride in breaking out a number of debut novelists each year. Her list includes literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, popular science, memoir and YA projects.

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Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
West of Here by Jonathan Evison
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison
The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

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Emi Ikkanda pursues a diverse list at Holt, and she most recently edited New York Times bestselling author Richard Reeves’s Infamy, about the Japanese American internment during WWII, and journalist Carla Power’s National Book Award longlisted memoir If The Oceans Were Ink, about her journey through the Quran. Her forthcoming titles include disabled comedian and TV star Zach Anner’s memoir If At Birth You Don’t Succeed, and Lijia Zhang’s novel Lotus, which centers on a love story set in Shenzhen, the “city of sins.” Emi pursues humorous or eye-opening memoirs, and journalistic or narrative nonfiction exploring various topics including current affairs, 20th century history, war, race, gender, science, adventure, food, and film. For her select fiction list, she is seeking multicultural or 20th century historical novels that focus on family, creative life, secrets, disappearances, or unusual relationships. She loves going on a journey and exploring hidden worlds, in fiction or nonfiction.

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If the Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power
If At Birth You Don’t Succeed by Zach Anner
Infamy by Richard Reeves

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Jenna Johnson, Executive Editor, concentrates on literary fiction, especially international, historical, and women’s fiction. She also publishes memoir, poetry, and narrative nonfiction, with particular interest in food, cultural history, religion, and biography. Her titles include the national bestsellers We, the Animals by Justin Torres, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell, and Chosen by a Horse by Susan Richards, as well as Booker finalist Pigeon English, National Jewish Book Award Winner The Lion Seeker, and Man Asian Prize Winner Three Sisters. She works with Angela Flournoy, Chinelo Okparanta, Alexis Smith, Samantha Hunt, Natasha Trethewey, Carlene Bauer, Young-ha Kim, Kent Meyers, Richard Wilbur, and many others.

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We, the Animals by Justin Torres
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Chinelo Okparanta

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Fiona McCrae has been publisher of Graywolf Press since 1994. During her tenure at Graywolf, the Press has expanded its lists of poetry, literary nonfiction and criticism, fiction, and works in translation. Recent authors who have enjoyed notable successes include Jeffery Renard Allen, Eula Biss, Leslie Jamison, Per Petterson, Claudia Rankine, Vijay Seshadri, and Tracy K. Smith. Graywolf won the AWP Best Small Press of the Year Award in 2015.

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I began my career as a literary scout in London, working for foreign publishers and a film company, and moved to New York and to Grove Atlantic in 2011. I am now Senior Editor, working on fiction and nonfiction, books in translation, and drama, as well as our backlist. I am particularly interested in international settings and voices in literary fiction and serious nonfiction.

Sample Titles

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Lingo by Gaston Dorren
Fobbit by David Abrams

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Ayesha Pande launched her literary agency ten years ago. Before that she held editorial positions at HarperCollins, Crown and Farrar Straus. She is a member of AAR (Association of Author’s Representatives) and PEN. She is proud to represent international bestselling author Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Pen/Bingham Prize winner Danielle Evans, YA author Sheba Karim, thriller writer Layton Green, and others. Her interests include literary and popular fiction, young adult, memoir and narrative nonfiction.

Sample Titles

The Golden Son by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Skunk Girl  by Sheba Karim
Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway

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Anjali Singh is an agent at Pande Literary. As an editor of literary fiction at several trade houses, she helped launch the careers of Marjane Satrapi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Samantha Hunt, Preeta Samarasan, and Zoe Ferraris. She has always been drawn to the thrill of discovery and is currently looking for new voices, character-driven fiction or non-fiction works that reflect an engagement with the world around us, literary thrillers, memoirs, YA literature and graphic novels.

Sample Titles

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Green Shore by Natalie Bakopoulos
The Twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer

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Since establishing Fairbank Literary Representation in 2002, Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank has had the pleasure of working with a dynamic and varied list, representing best-selling authors, Edgar recipients, award-winning journalists, and of course one of her favorite kinds of client – the debut author. Her tastes in novels tend toward literary fiction, international voices, and women’s voices and on the nonfiction side, books that tackle current events and topical and societal issues with a narrative treatment. She has a strong interest in women’s voices and class and race issues, quality lifestyle books (food, wine, design), memoirs that goes beyond the me-moir, and humor, gift books, and pop culture.

Authors and books represented by Fairbank Literary include O. Henry Prize winner Charlotte Forbes; Pulitzer nominee &LA Times Cairo Bureau Chief Jeffrey Fleishman; Edgar winner Rex Burns, Matthew Frederick and his best-selling 101 Things I Learned series;  Eudora Welty prize winner Miroslav Penkov (East of the West), Jonathan McCullough’s A Tale Of Two Subs: An Untold Story Of World War II, Two Sister Ships, And Extraordinary Heroism; Essayist Jessica Handler; New Yorker cartoonist Drew Dernavich; Sharron Kahn Luttrell, author of Weekends With Daisy. Humor and gift book clients include Chuck Sambuchino (How To Survive a Garden Gnome Attack; Red Dog, Blue Dog), Terry Border (Bent Objects empire), and Carl Warner (Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes).

For updated information on Sorche Fairbank and Fairbank Literary, their clients, and recent deals:www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SorcheFairbank

Sample Titles

Weekends with Daisy by Sharron Lutrell
101 Things I Learned series by Matthew Frederick
East of the West by Miroslav Penkov

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After 25 years as a corporate strategist and consultant, April Eberhardt joined the literary world, where she saw strategic opportunity to play a role in the changing world of publishing. A self-described “literary-change agent,” April advises and assists authors as they choose the best pathway to publication for their work, be it indie or traditional, digital or print. She serves as an industry advocate for establishing quality standards for non-traditionally published work to increase acceptance of independent publishing.

April Eberhardt joined the literary world as head reader for Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine, followed by five years as an agent with two San Francisco-based literary agencies. She holds an MBA from Boston University in Marketing and Finance, a BA from Hamilton (Kirkland) College in Anthropology and French, and a CPLF degree from the University of Paris. She currently is a reader for the Best American Short Stories series published annually by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She represents clients worldwide, and divides her time between San Francisco, New York and Paris.

Sample Titles

Teatime for the Firefly by Shona Patel
The Vintner’s Daughter by Kristen Harnisch
Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine

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