Authors Lunch

Evil Eye. (Harper, September 5, 2023. Editor: Emily Griffin. Agent: Julia Kardon, Hannigan Getzler Literary.) Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY by Palestinian immigrants. She lives in North Carolina with her two children and owns a coffee shop and bookstore called Books and Beans. Her first novel, A Woman Is No Man, was a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick. How did you find your agent? Julia Kardon was kind enough to respond to my Twitter message telling her how much I loved Brit Bennett’s The Mothers and whether […]

Kristin van Ogtrop is a literary agent at InkWell Management, which she joined in 2018 after a decade as an InkWell client. Prior to becoming an agent, van Ogtrop was a magazine editor, working at Vogue, Premiere, Travel & Leisure, and Glamour before becoming the editor in chief of Real Simple, a job she held from 2003-2016. She was a columnist for Time, a contributor to The Bitch in the House and is the author of Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for a Half-Insane Working Mom (Little, Brown, 2010) and the essay collection Did I Say That Out Loud: Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them (Little, Brown, 2020). As […]

The Woman in the Castello (Kensington, July 25, 2023. Editor: John Scognamiglio. Agent: Danielle Egan-Miller, Browne & Miller Literary Associates.) Kelsey James is a historical fiction author and content marketer whose work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Insider, ABC News, and The Huffington Post, among other outlets. Her debut novel, The Woman in the Castello, is an Indie Next and LibraryReads pick. A graduate of Dartmouth College with a degree in Creative Writing and Classical Studies, she lives with her family outside New York City. How did you find your agent? It took many years and countless rejections before […]

Julie Trelstad started her career as an acquisitions editor of architecture books at Van Nostrand Reinhold. Over several decades as an editor, marketer, publisher, and book production manager, she’s touched every aspect of creating and selling books. As director of digital rights at Writers House, a literary agency, Julie began working directly with authors, helping them navigate the publishing world and build their digital platforms. Julie is currently the principal of Paperbacks & Pixels, an author support and services agency, and head of U.S. Publishing for StreetLib.com, a global digital book distribution company. How do I find an appropriate agent for […]

The Book Of Charlie: Wisdom From The Remarkable American Life Of A 109-Year-Old Man, (Simon & Schuster, May 23, 2023. Editor: Priscilla Painton. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.) David Von Drehle is a columnist for The Washington Post, where he writes about national affairs and politics from a home base in the Midwest. He joined The Washington Post in 2017 after a decade at Time, where he wrote more than sixty cover stories as editor-at-large. He is the author of a number of books, including the award-winning bestseller Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. How did you find your agent? I […]