Authors Lunch

Offseason. (Astra House, May 5. Editor: Emily Bell. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary.) Avigayl Sharp is a writer from Chicago. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, New England Review, and other publications, and has received support from Yaddo, the Granum Foundation, and the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize. She was the winner of the 2023 DISQUIET Literary Prize and a 2023–2024 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Avigayl received her BA from Wesleyan University and her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX, where she was the fiction editor of […]

Valentina Rice has been vp, sales and marketing at Bloomsbury Publishing overseeing sales, marketing, publicity and rights across adult, children’s and special interest since 2018. Before Bloomsbury, she spent 15 years in international sales at Penguin and left in 2012 to found an online marketplace for artisanal food. She returned to publishing in 2017 to launch Zaffre Books in the US, an imprint of Bonnier. It can be surprising for authors to realize how long the publication process takes, even when a manuscript is already completed. Can you explain what goes into that timing—selling to bookstores, planning marketing, pitching media, […]

The Complex. (Viking, March 10. Editor: Allison Lorentzen. Agent: Jin Auh, Wiley Agency.) Karan Mahajan is the author of The Association of Small Bombs, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. His debut novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, […]

Take It from Me: An Agent’s Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career from Scratch. (Pantheon, 1/20. Editor: Denise Oswald. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff.) Alia Hanna Habib is a vice president and literary agent at The Gernert Company, where she represents MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, National Book Award finalists, and numerous New York Times-bestselling authors. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. You include a lot of yourself in the book, and mention that you don’t think writers should completely erase themselves in an effort for neutrality and objectivity. Why do you think having a clear perspective is a strength? Putting […]

The Poet Empress (Bramble, January 20.) Editor: Ali Fisher. Agent: Jennifer Azantian. Shen Tao immigrated to Canada at an early age, and grew up inspired by both Chinese and Western stories. She has wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. The Poet Empress is her first book. How did you find your agent? My agent, Jennifer Azantian, found me during an online pitching event called DVPit, which I believe will be held again in October. She invited me to query her after seeing my short pitch, which I’ve attached below: “In the declining Azalea Dynasty, […]

Kindall Gant is a senior publicist at Phaidon. Prior to her current role, Kindall held a variety of positions at Hachette Book Group, Oxford University Press, Poets & Writers, and Artbook D.A.P. In addition to her full-time roles with trade, academic, and independent publishers, she has volunteered at Ugly Duckling Presse as a contributing editor and as a reader at a literary organization called The Word Works. In her free time, she writes poetry and creative nonfiction. You can find more about her writing at kindallgant.com. Her newly acquired book THE HARLEM TABLE is forthcoming from Phaidon. Tell us a […]