Authors Lunch

Middle Spoon. (Viking, September 9, 2025. Editor: Ibrahim Ahmad. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic.) Alejandro Varela’s debut novel, The Town of Babylon, was a finalist for the National Book Award. His short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress, was one of Publishers Weekly’s best works of fiction in 2023, a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards, and longlisted for the Aspen Literary Prize, the Story Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Varela is an editor-at-large of Apogee Journal, holds a master’s degree in public health, and is based in New York. How did you find […]

Emily Ritter has over a decade of marketing experience working in-house at Simon & Schuster and Bloomsbury Children’s Books. Most recently she was the director of brand development for Sarah J. Maas and previously, the assistant director of digital marketing for teen books at Simon & Schuster, leading the Simon Teen brand. In 2024, she started Emily Ritter Digital Marketing to help more authors find accessible ways to promote themselves and their books online. What does a good social media presence look like for an author when they’re querying or just starting out? What about later in their career? While […]

Markus Redmond is an actor, director, screenwriter, and author. Known for his roles on Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue, Murder One, Mad About You, Angel, and Fight Club, he wrote and starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Sharon Stone in the indie film If I Had Known I Was a Genius. He wrote, directed, and starred in the Amazon Prime thriller The 6th Degree, and has multiple screenplays in development. He lives in Los Angeles and Blood Slaves is his first novel. How did you find your agent? Specificity. I had been querying agents repping historical fiction without getting any bites. […]

Kate McKean is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, NY, whose clients include Alix E. Harrow, Daniel M. Lavery, and Mattie Lubchansky. She was an adjunct professor at New York University for over a decade and earned her MA in fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Catapult, and elsewhere. She writes the popular Substack newsletter, Agents & Books, at AgentsandBooks.com. When is an author ready to query their work? I think authors are ready to query when, first, they’ve addressed, edited, fixed all […]

Tanya McKinnon is the founder of McKinnon Literary, where she represents serious nonfiction, children’s books, and graphic novels. Several of her clients are New York Times bestsellers, and the prizes her clients have won include the National Book Award, The Pulitzer Prize, The Frederick Douglass Prize, The Whiting Award, The LA Times Award, The MacArthur, and many others. Tanya grew up abroad and in the US, she graduated from Tufts University, and holds an MA in cultural anthropology. What makes a query letter stand out to you? Clarity, voice, and brevity. If a writer can tell me exactly what their […]

The Girls of Good Fortune (Sourcebooks Landmark, May 20. Editor: Shana Drehs. Agent: Elisabeth Weed.) Kristina McMorris is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of two novellas and eight historical novels, including the million-copy bestseller Sold on a Monday. The recipient of more than 20 national literary awards, she previously hosted weekly TV shows for Warner Bros. and an ABC affiliate, beginning at age nine with an Emmy Award-winning program. Kristina lives near Portland, OR. How did you find your agent? When my previous agent left the industry many years ago, my dear author […]