Authors Lunch

Pamela Dorman is senior vice president and publisher of Pamela Dorman Books/Viking. In her more than thirty years at Viking Penguin, Dorman has published multimillion-copy, #1 New York Times bestsellers by Kim Edwards, Helen Fielding, Gail Honeyman, Sue Monk Kidd, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and Jojo Moyes. She began her publishing career at St. Martin’s Press and is a summa cum laude graduate of Wesleyan University. Is there one problem you see in books that you wish writers knew before their manuscripts made it to your desk? There are many! A couple off the top of my head: Try reading some of your […]

Entitlement (Riverhead, September 17, 2024. Editor: Sarah McGrath. Agent: Julie Barer at The Book Group.) Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times-bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and became a major motion picture, as well as two other novels. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn. How did you find your agent? I have a long working relationship with the superb Julie Barer. A friend suggested I contact her when I was about to enter a […]

Retha Powers is VP, executive editor at Holt, acquiring fiction and nonfiction. She is passionate about books by authors—especially people of color and LGBTQIA—who write inventively about the intersections of race, identity, gender, history, and current events. She is particularly interested in working with writers who challenge the status quo, build community, and create compulsively readable works that connect readers from varying backgrounds and experiences. Her acquisitions include Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s award-winning debut, My Monticello; José Olivarez’s Promises of Gold, which was longlisted for a National Book Award for Poetry; The Talk, an award-winning graphic memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist […]

This Great Hemisphere (Dutton, July 9, 2024. Editor: Pilar Garcia-Brown. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.) New York Times-bestselling author Mateo Askaripour‘s was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars to make waves,” and his first novel, Black Buck, was a Read with Jenna Today Show book club pick. Most recently, he was named as a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” prize. This Great Hemisphere is his second novel. How did you find your agent? I found my first agent through scanning Publishers Marketplace and cold querying her. I’d received an offer from another agent, […]

Gail Hochman is the president of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. For 20 years, she was the head of the AALA, the Association of American Literary Agents. She represents authors in numerous genres, including literary fiction, mystery, children’s middle grade, and serious nonfiction. Do you have any advice on how many agents to query at a time? If they are personalized, perhaps a rolling query with a limit? I would say get your core group of favorites first, and send to them—maybe five or six. Realize that many people these days do not answer queries when they are not […]

Long After We Are Gone (Sourcebooks Landmark, May 14, 2024. Editor: Erin McClary. Agent: Abby Saul at The Lark Group.) Terah Shelton Harris is a librarian and freelance writer, who now writes upmarket fiction with bittersweet endings. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in consumer and trade magazines including Catapult, Women’s Health, Backpacker, and more. How did you find your agent? I love this question because it gives me an opportunity to tell my unique story. My editor, Erin McClary, responded to my query and first 50 pages, asking for the full manuscript. It was a miracle that I […]