An editor and an agent tell all

Saturday, June 9, 2012 - 10:30am

Four Corners Library
65 Queen Street East
Brampton, ON
L6W 3L6

If you've ever dreamed of becoming a published author, this workshop is for you. We’ll cover everything from getting started to getting an agent, from getting your short pieces published to finding a book publisher, from writing a query letter to writing what the publishers want. Bring your questions. Come and get ready to be published!

Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years and publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada’s most popular blog for writers. He has helped many of his students get their first book published and launch their careers as authors.

Guest speaker Monica Pacheco is a literary agent with Anne McDermid and Associates. The McDermid agency represents literary novelists and commercial novelists of high quality and writers of non-fiction in the areas of memoir, biography, history, literary travel, narrative science, investigative journalism and true crime. The agency also represents a certain number of children's and YA writers and writers in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

The McDermid agency's clients include distinguished literary authors such as Esi Edugyan, winner of the 2011 Giller Prize, Michael Crummey, Greg Hollingshead, Andrew Pyper, Nino Ricci, David Adams Richards, Michael Winter and Vincent Lam. The agency also represents writers of narrative non-fiction, such as Charles Montgomery and James MacKinnon, both of whom won the Charles Taylor prize for literary non-fiction in their years of publication.

More recently, the agency has been branching out to represent upmarket commercial fiction writers, such as Leah McLaren from the Globe and Mail, Robert Wiersema, and Peter Darbyshire.

Monica represents a growing list of writers, focusing on children's, young adult, science fiction and fantasy. Her clients include actress/writer/director Sarah Polley whose children’s picture book she sold to HarperCollins Canada, Yves Meynard whose fantasy trilogy she sold to Tor/Macmillan, Madeline Ashby whose science fiction novel she sold to Angry Robot in the UK in a two-book deal, actress Katie Boland whose short story collection she sold to Brindle & Glass , and Bram Stoker Award-winning horror writer David Nickle.

More on the McDermid Agency here.

Special Option: Participants are invited to bring a draft of a query letter you might use to interest an agent or publisher in your book. You don’t need to bring anything, but if you do, 3 copies could be helpful.

Fee: $38.94 plus hst = $44 paid in advance or $42.48 plus hst = $48 if you wait to pay at the door

To reserve your spot, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca