Stephanie Evanovich New York Times Best-Selling Author
Our 2015 Keynote Speaker
STEPHANIE EVANOVICH is a full-fledged Jersey girl from Asbury Park who began writing fiction while waiting for her cues during countless community theater projects. She attended New York’s School of Film and Television and acted in several improvisational troupes and a few smallbudget movies, all in preparation for the greatest job she ever had, raising her two sons. Now a fulltime writer, she’s an avid sports fan who holds a black belt in tae kwon do. Visit Stephanie on: “http://www.facebook.com/ stephanieevanovichbooks”
Website:
www.facebook.com/stephanieevanovichbooks and www.stephanieevanovich.com
“BIG GIRL PANTIES has wit and heart”—People “Evanovich’s incredibly entertaining debut mesmerizes with wit, heart, and intelligence as a spirited large woman breaks out of her shell in a thinobsessed world…a marvelous gem.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Evanovich’s debut effort is a funny, clever, and well-paced read.”—Booklist “A good start by Evanovich, who presents both sides of the story in a romance with imperfect heroes.”—Kirkus Reviews
A steamy new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of BIG GIRL PANTIES! THE SWEET SPOT by Stephanie Evanovich William Morrow Hardcover; On Sale: July 8, 2014 Price: $26.99; 272 Pages; ISBN: 9780062234810; E-BOOK ISBN: 9780062234834
irectory of Speakers Marilyn Allen Jacob Appel Nora Baskin Alan Beechey Jacqueline Bishop Regina Brooks Jack Camarda Nicole Fischer Tara Gavin Beena Kamlani Lynn Levin John Marshall
Howard Mittelmark GiGi New Sandra Newman Sharon Pelletier G. D. Peters Laura Blake Peterson Katharine Sands Eddie Schneider Eliza Shallcross Wendy Corsi Staub Lee Stringer Paul Witcover
Marilyn Allen Founder and Partner Allen O’Shea Literary Agency
MARILYN ALLEN is a founder and partner in Allen O’Shea Literary Agency, which focuses on nonfiction works. Allen has previoulsy held senior sales and marketing positions for Penguin Books, Simon & Schuster and culminated as the Associate Publisher of HarperCollins. Allen and agent partner Coleen O’Shea co-authored The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Book Proposals and Query Letters (Penguin). The agency currently seeks practical nonfiction, memoir and pop culture, especially health, cooking, business, parenting, narrative nonfiction, science and blog-based books.
Website:
www.allenoshealiteraryagency.com
Jacob Appel Award-Winning Author, Scholar and Practicing Psychiatrist
JACOB M. APPEL is the author of the novels, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up, which won the 2012 Dundee International Book Award, and TheBiology of Luck (2013). His story collection, Scouting for the Reaper (2014), won the Hudson Prize. Jacob's short fiction has appeared in more than two hundred leading literary journals including Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Southwest Review, Story Quarterly, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and West Branch. His prose has won the Boston Review Short Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short Story, the Dana Award, theArts & Letters Prize for Fiction, the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s Editor’s Prize, the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, the Briar Cliff Review’s Short Fiction Prize, the Salem College Center for
Women Writers’ Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, the H. E. Francis Prize, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award on four separate occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant. His stories have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award (2001), Best American Short Stories (2007,2008), Best American Nonrequired Reading( 2007,2008), and the Pushcart Prize anthology (2005, 2006, 2011). Jacob holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Brown, an M.S. in bioethics from the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany Medical College, an M.A. and an M.Phil. from Columbia, an M.D. from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, an M.F.A. in fiction from N.Y.U., and MFA in playwriting from CUNY-Queens, an MPH from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He practices psychiatry in New York City.
Website:
www.jacobmappel.com
Nora Raleigh Baskin Author & Teacher
NORA RALEIGH BASKIN is the author of the middle grade novels "http://www.writingclasses.com index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/ isbn/0440418526 "What Every Girl (except me) Knows, "http://www.writingclasses.com/index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/isbn/0316010286 "Almost Home (Little, Brown and Company), "http://www.writingclasses.com/index-yii.php/ redirect/bnIsbn/isbn/0060596120"Basketball (or Something Like It), "http://www.writingclasses.com/index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/ isbn/0060596074"In the Company of Crazies (HarperCollins), and "http://www.writingclasses.com/index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/ isbn/9781416935582"TheTruth About My Bat Mitzvah and "http://www.idie-bound.org/ book/9781442458086"Runt (Simon & Schuster), as well as the YA novels "http://www.indiebound.orgbook/9780763668457"Subway Love, "http:!%20%20//www.idiebound.org/ book/9780763649081"Surfacing, "http://www. writing classes.com/index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/isbn/
9780763636234 "All We Know Of Love (Candlewick), "http://www.writingclasses.com/index-yii.php/redirect/bnIsbn/isbn/9781416963783
Website:
www.norabaskin.com/Home.html
Alan Beechey Mystery Writer
ALAN BEECHEY is the author of a series of
mysteries featuring children’s author and
amateur detective Oliver Swithin. His latest novel, This Private Plot, will be published last year by Poisoned Pen Press, along with new paperback editions of his earlier titles An Embarrassment of Corpses – which made The Bookshop Blog’s list of the “Best 100 Mysteries of All Time” -- and Murdering Ministers. Alan is also the co-author of a recent non-fiction book on American culture and values.
Website:
www.beechey.com
Jacqueline Bishop Author, Artist & Professor
JACQUELINE BISHOP “http://www. peepaltreepress.com/single_book_display. asp?isbn=9781845230388”The River’s Song is Jacqueline Bishop’s first novel. She is also the author of two collections of poems, “http:// www.peepaltreepress.com/single_book_display. asp?isbn=9781845230326”Fauna and Snapshots from Istanbul. Her non-fiction books are: My Mother Who Is Me: Life Stories from Jamaican Women in New York and Writers Who Paint/Painters Who Write: Three Jamaican Artists. An accomplished visual artist with exhibitions in Belgium, Morocco, USA and Italy, Ms. Bishop was a 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellow to Morocco; the 2009-2010 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow; and is a full time Master Teacher in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University.
Website:
www.jacqueline-bishop.com/
Regina Brooks Founder and President Serendipity Literary Agency LLC
REGINA BROOKS is the founder and president of Serendipity Literary Agency LLC, based in Brooklyn, New York. She represents a diverse base of award-winning clients in adult and young adult fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature, including: -three-time National Book Award finalist,Newberry Honor Winner and the Coretta Scott KingHonor and the 2006 Michael Printz Honor Award winning author Marilyn Nelson; winner of the Coretta Scott King/ John Step toe New Talent Award, Al Roker’s Book Club for Kids author Sundee Frazier; Stonewall Book Award Winner, Bil Wright. Brooks is a former Executive Editor at John Wiley and Sons and McGraw-Hill. She is the author of several books including, NEVER FINISHED NEVER DONE (Scholastic), WRITING GREAT BOOKS FOR YOUNG ADULTS (Source Books), YOU SHOULD (REALLY) WRITE A BOOK: How to Write, Sell and Market YOUR MEMOIR (St. Martin’s Press) and a well received blogger for the Huffington Post. Brooks is also on the faculty of the
Writer’s Digest University, Harvard University publishing course, Discovery Channels Media Boot Camp for Doctors, the Whidbey lsland Writers MFA program and teaches annually at more than twenty worldwide conferences. She has been highlighted in several national and international magazines and periodicals, including Forbes, Media Bistro, Writers and Poets, Essence Magazine, Ebony, Jet, Women on Writing, Writers Digest Magazine, and The Writer. She is the owner of Possibiliteas.com a tea company of master blended teas developed for creative minds. She is always interested in new and emerging writers.
Website:
www.serendipitylit.com
Jack Camarda Media Trainer & Presentation Coach
JACK CAMARDA is a 30-year broadcasting veteran having worked for ABC, Cox Communications and ESPN as well as serving as a university professor for more than 20 years. He created the, “Mayor of Fogarea,” character while the morning host at KC101. He’s also written and introduced a number of the broadcasting courses to the curriculum of Fairfield University, and was faculty at Sacred Heart University and the University of New Haven. A media consultant and presentation coach since 1995, he has tutored well over 200 clients, many of them CEOs, COOs and CFOs of Fortune 500 companies as well as many published authors and several television and media personalities. He’s a published author himself, having written a political satire entitled, “Corruptus Politicus: A Shallow Man’s Quest For Wealth, Cheap Celebrity and Self Importance In A Politically Correct World.”
Tara Gavin Sr. Executive Editor Harlequin
TARA GAVIN is the senior executive editor
in charge of the Kimani imprint (Kimani Press, Romance, Arabesque and Tru), Harlequin Special Edition, Nocturne, and Nocturne Cravings. She has worked on almost all of the Harlequin/Silhouette lines at one time or another, and has worked with many of the authors. She has worked with Diana Palmer for 26 years, and on well over 100 titles with this New York Times bestseller. Tara was instrumental in building Special Edition into the home & family line it is today, was part of the team that wrote the bible and launched Montana Mavericks, the continuity, and it was under her leadership that Montana Mavericks first went into Special Edition. She was the Senior Editor who launched Love Inspired and she also worked on the Silhouette Single title program.
Website:
www.harlequin.com
Beena Kamlani Senior Editor Viking Penguin
BEENA KAMLANI is senior editor at Viking Penguin and has worked closely with many writers, foremost among them Saul Bellow and Robert Fagles. She taught book editing at New York University and was awarded the “Excellence in Teaching” award from NYU in 2002. She now teaches writing and editing at The Writing Center at Hunter College. A speaker at many writers’ conferences across the country, she gives talks on writing, editing, reading and the development of craft. She is an award-winning fiction writer whose work has been published in many magazines and anthologies. She lives in New York.
Website:
www.penguin.com
Lynn Levin Poet, Writer, Translator & Professor
LYNN LEVIN is a poet, writer, and translator. She is the author of six books, most recently: Miss Plastique (Ragged Sky Press, 2013), a 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; as co-author, Poems for the Writing: Prompts for Poets (Texture Press, 2013), a 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in education/academic books; and a translation from the Spanish, Birds on the Kiswar Tree (2Leaf Press, 2014), a collection of poems by the Peruvian Andean poet Odi Gonzales. Her other books include: Fair Creatures of an Hour (Loon-feather Press, 2009), a 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in poetry; Imaginarium (LoonfeatherPress,(2005) a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award; and A Few Questions about Paradise (Loonfeather Press, 2000). Lynn Levin’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Boulevard, Washington Square Review, The Hopkins Review, Cimarron Review, 5 A.M.,
Kerem, Verse Daily and on Garrison Keillor’s radio show The Writer’s Almanac. She has published essays in Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Contemporary Poetry Review, Alimentum, Review, Wild
River Review, and other places. Her short fiction appears in Cleaver, The Rag, Rathalla Review, and YARN. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.
Links:
http://raggedsky.com/miss-plastique www.amazon.com/Poems-Writing-PromptsValerie-Fox/dp/0615782833 http://2leafpress.org/online/birds-kiswartree/ https://www.english.upenn.edu/People/ LynnLevin
Website: www.english.upenn.edu/.../LynnLevin
John Marshall TV and Magazine Comedy Writer
JOHN MARSHALL is an Emmy-nominated writer who has written for The Chris Rock Show, Politically Incorrect, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, The Electric Company and many other shows. He has also written for MAD Magazine and Bazooka Joe Comics. He is the executive producer and head writer for the 2015 Writers Guild of America, East Awards.
Howard Mittlemark Author & Editor
HOWARD MITTELMARK is the author of the novel Age of Consent, and co-author with Sandra Newman of Read This Next and UKbestseller How Not To Write A Novel. He has reviewed books for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Kirkus Reviews. His articles and essays have appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, The San Francisco Chronicle, The International Herald Tribune, The Village Voice, Mystery Scene, Writer’s Digest, and The New York Review of Science Fiction, and more recently, websites including: The Awl, Splitsider, and cnn.com. He has worked as an editor for over twenty-five years. More information at: howardmittelmark.com.
Website:
www.howardmittelmark.com
GiGi New Film and TV Writer
GIGI NEW is a film and television writer. A finalist for The Disney Fellowship, she began her career as an assistant on Everybody Loves Raymond, and moved on to writing for the award winning Nickelodeon family series The Brothers Garcia. She has since worked for Gavin Polone (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gilmore Girls), Wally Wallodarsky, and Maya Forbes (The Larry Sanders Show) on the FOX series The Ortega’s. GiGi recently wrote and developed an original TV show, Start Me Up, that is being shopped to networks. She has developed numerous features for several studios and independent producers, among them: Aqua Entertainment, Gunn Films, The Walt Disney Company, Maya Entertainment, Avalanche Entertainment, and Underground Films. Currently she has a screenplay, Charmed and Dangerous, that is slated to be shot in spring of 2015 as well as a screenplay, Public Emily, that is slated to be shot in early summer of 2015. Website: www.newwaywriter.com
Sandra Newman Author
SANDRA NEWMAN is the author of three novels: The Country of Ice Cream Star, Cake, and The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done. She is also co-author with Howard Mittelmark of How Not to Write a Novel and Read This Next, and she wrote a humorous guide to the Western canon entitled The Western Lit Survival Kit.
Website:
www.sandranewman.org
Sharon Pelletier Social Media Dystel & Goderich Literary Management
SHARON PELLETIER joined Dystel & Goderich Literary Management after working for small independent publishers Europa Editions and Vantage Press. She previously worked as a Barnes & Noble bookseller for a few years before and after moving to New York City from the Detroit suburbs where she grew up. At DGLM Sharon oversees the agency’s digital program and social media.
Website:
www.dystel.com
G. D. Peters Associate Editor for the literary magazine “Fiction�
G. D. PETERS’ fiction has been published in numerous literary journals. He received his J.D. from the University of Buffalo, his MFA from the City College of New York, and teaches literature and creative writing at City College, Lehman College, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities. He is the associate editor of the literary magazine FICTION.
Laura Blake Peterson Vice President Curtis Brown, Ltd.
LAURA BLAKE PETERSON is Vice President of Curtis Brown, Ltd., one of the oldest, largest and most prominent literary agencies in the publishing industry. She represents numerous NYT bestselling authors of romance, romantic suspense, thrillers and mysteries. She represents a wide variety of literary and mainstream fiction as well, including fiction for young adults. Her award-winning nonfiction clients also publish in a variety of categories, most notably natural history, biography, narrative nonfiction and journalism.
Website:
www.curtisbrown.com
Jennifer Prost President Jennifer Prost Public Relations
JENNIFER PROST is a literary publicist who has worked in-house for major publishing houses including Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and independently as President of Jennifer Prost Public Relations. She has promoted major bestselling authors, midlist titles, and self-published authors. Her clients include novelists, lawyers, professors, journalists, and writers from all walks of life.
Website:
www.jenniferprost.com
Katharine Sands Literary Agent Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency
KATHARINE SANDS A literary agent with the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, Katharine Sands has worked with a varied list of authors who publish a diverse array of books. Highlights include: Spiritual Pregnancy: Nine Months that Change Your Life Before You Give Birth by Dr. Shawn Tassone and Dr. Kathryn Landherr; Talk to Strangers: How Everyday Random Encounters Can Expand Your Business, Career, Income and Life by David Topus; The New Rules of Attraction: How to Get Him, Keep Him and Make Him Beg for More by Arden Leigh; Stand Up for Yourself: Resolve Workplace Crises Before You Quit, Get Axed or Sue the Bastards by Donna Ballman; Making Healthy EZ with Dr. Oz guest, Dr. Julie Chen;Dating the Devil (producer: Vast Entertainment) by Lia Romeo; XTC: SongStories; Chasing Zebras: THE Unofficial Guide to House, MD by Barbara Barnett of Let’s Talk TV; City Tripping: a Guide for Foodies, Fashionistas and the Generally Style-Obsessed; Writers on Directors; Ford model Helen Lee’s The Tao
of Beauty; Elvis and You: Your Guide to the Pleasures of Being an Elvis Fan; New York: Songs of the City; Taxpertise: Dirty Little Secrets the IRS Doesn’t Want You to Know; The SAT Word Slam, Divorce After 50; Trust Your Gut; Make Up, Don’t Break Up with Oprah guest Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil to name a few. She is the agent provocateur of Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent’s Eye, a collection of pitching wisdom from leading literary agents. Recently contributed “Grey is the New Black” to Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey, a nonfiction look at the cultural phenom of the bestselling novel. Actively building her client list, she likes books that have a clear benefit for readers’ lives in categories of food, travel, lifestyle, home arts, beauty, wisdom, relationships, parenting, and fresh looks, which might be at issues, life challenges or popular culture. When reading
fiction she wants to be compelled and propelled by urgent storytelling, and hooked by characters. For memoir and femoir, she likes to be transported to a world rarely or newly
Website:
www.sarahjanefreymann.com
Eddy Schneider Vice President JABberwocky Literary Agency
EDDIE SCHNEIDER is the Vice President of JABberwocky Literary Agency, which he joined in 2008 (Twitter: @eddieschneider). JABberwocky is best known for representing many New York Times bestselling authors of fantasy and science fiction, including Brandon Sanderson (Steelheart) and graphic novelist Alison Wilgus. In addition to these genres, Eddie is especially interested in YA and middle-grade, both realistic and fantastic, in literary fiction, and nonfiction including science, nature, history, and social science. He is an Iowa graduate, holds an M.S. in Publishing from New York University, and when he isn’t reading or editing, runs ultramarathons. You can also read a lot more about his agenting style and opinions in this Reddit AMA from June 2012http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/uzmf7/im_literary_agent_eddie_schneider_query_me/
Website:
www.awfulagent.com
Eliza Shallcross Senior Copywriter Pocket and Gallery Imprints of Simon & Schuster
ELIZA SHALLCROSS is a thirty-year veteran of the publishing industry and a Senior Copy-writer for the Pocket and Gallery imprints of Simon & Schuster. She writes copy for a wide range of fiction genres—including romance, mystery, suspense, and young adult—and a variety of nonfiction such as health, history, and autobiography. Her career in publishing began in editorial in the early 1980s at Berkley Books (now a part of the Penguin Group) and continued at Harlequin Enterprises—initially with Harlequin Historicals and subsequently with Silhouette Books. During those years, she was closely involved in all stages of the cover copy process. After pursuing a freelance career that encompassed copywriting, editing, and writing her own novels, she returned to a full time office career at Simon & Schuster in 2006. She is author of two Regency romances—The Marquis of Carabas and The Countess and the Butler—using the name Elizabeth Brodnax. The proud mother of a recent college graduate, she lives in New Jersey.
LinkedIn Account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizashallcross
Wendy Corsi Staub New York Times Best-Selling Author
New York Times bestseller WENDY CORSI STAUB is the award-winning author of more than seventy-five published novels and has sold more than four million books worldwide. Under her own name, Wendy achieved New York Times bestselling status with her single title psychological suspense novels. Those novels and the women's fiction she writes under the pseudonym Wendy Markham also frequently appeared on the USA Today, Barnes and Noble Top Ten, and Bookscan bestseller lists. Wendy is a two-time finalist for the Simon and Shuster Mary Higgins Clark Award presented at the Mystery Writers of America Edgars Symposium and has won the 2008 RT Award for Career Achievement in Suspense and the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple Award for Lifetime Achievement. A proud recipient of the RWA Rita award, she has also been honored five times with the Westchester Library Association's Washington Irving
Prize for Fiction and was recognized as one of WLA’s Millennial Authors in 2000.
Wendy’s latest suspense novels for Harper Collins are linked by a social networking theme and include THE GOOD SISTER (Harper, October 2013), Magazine’s Best Reads of 2013 list and has been optioned for television, as well as
the upcoming THE PERFECT STRANGER (July 2014) and THE BLACK WIDOW (2015). She published a Kindle Exclusive Novella Prequel to THE PERFECT STRANGER, COLD HEARTED, in May 2014. She is currently under contract to write a fourth suspense trilogy for HarperCollins. It’s set in the fictional Hudson Valley town Mundy’s Landing, with the first title scheduled to debut next year. In the past, she co-authored a mystery series with the late New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten for a number of bestselling authors and celebrities.
Wendy lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband of twenty-three years and their two children.
Website: www.wendycorsistaub.com
Lee Stringer Author, Teacher and Mentor
Forged out of twelve years of homelessness and addiction on the streets of New York City, LEE STRINGER’s landmark memoir, Grand Central Winter: Stories From the Street--which ultimately conveys the irrepressibility of hope-was one of the top ten books recommended by both the New York Times and USA Today when it debuted in 1998. It has since been translated into 20 languages on four continents and has been optioned for both film and stage productions. As a pre-teen, Stringer was consigned, for two years, to a special boarding school for kids at risk, an experience he hauntingly vivifies in his second award-winning memoir, 2004’s Sleepaway School: Stories From a Boy’s LIfe. In 2002, he collaborated with novelist Kurt Vonnegut on Like Shaking Hands With God: a Conversation About Writing, a monograph about how writing intersects with each of their lives. Currently at work on yet another memoir, entitled White People, Stringer, 59, resides in Mamaroneck, New York, serves on five non-
profit boards, and directs a local nonprofit program that provides free one-on-one homework assistance to young people whom for various reasons, do not get it in their homes.Â
Website:
http://catalog.sevenstories.com
Paul Witcover Writer, Editor, Teacher and Critic
Born in Zurich, PAUL WITCOVER is a writer, editor, teacher, and critic. He is the author of the novels Waking Beauty, Tumbling After, Dracula: Asylum, The Emperor of All Things, and the forthcoming Eternity in Love, as well as a collection of short fiction, Everland and Other Stories. With Elizabeth Hand, he created and wrote the DC comic Anima. His work has been a finalist or shortlisted for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, and James Tiptree awards. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Website: www.sff.net/people/stilskin