Workshop Leaders
Leaders will be drawn from the following:
June Clark
June Rifkin Clark is a partner in Get There Media, Inc., a promotion and brand development company, providing strategic guidance to writers, experts, and businesses, by building platforms, creating awareness, and providing PR outreach to consumers and the media.
For over 20 years, June worked in marketing and promotion, retained by numerous agencies to write and develop promotional materials for companies like Food Network, Bravo, A&E, NBC, AOL, eBay and Kraft Foods, many of which won PMA and Reggie Awards. June also worked in cable TV at Showtime, Group W Cable, and as head of her own agency, Concepts. She is the recipient of a Cable ACE/Emmy award.
After receiving her MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College, June became a literary agent at the Peter Rubie Literary Agency in New York (now FinePrint Literary Management), specializing in nonfiction books. Clients include floral designer Michael George, Forbidden Broadway creator Gerard Alessandrini, Cosmopolitan’s “Bedside Astrologer” Hazel Dixon-Cooper, I Love Lucy writer Madelyn Pugh Davis, Soupy Sales, and The Friars Club. She is still an Agent-at-Large at FinePrint to serve her long-term clients.
A published author and playwright, June wrote (and co-wrote) four books, several plays, and has given workshops on topical issues on writing and publishing.
For more information, visit www.juneclark.com.
Richard Goodman
Richard Goodman is the author of The Soul of Creative Writing and French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. He has written on a variety of subjects for many national publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Saveur, Ascent, French Review and The Michigan Quarterly Review. He wrote the introduction for Travelers' Tales Provence and is featured in Best Travel Writing 2008 from Travelers’ Tales. He created, wrote and narrated a six-part series about New York City for Public Radio in Virginia. He teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University's Brief Residency MFA in Writing program in Louisville, Kentucky. For more information, and an extensive sampling of Richard Goodman's writing, please go to his homepage.
Laurence Klavan
LAURENCE KLAVAN wrote the mystery novels, The Cutting Room and The Shooting Script, which were published over the past few years by Ballantine Books. He won the Edgar Award for the novel, Mrs. White, written under a pseudonym. His graphic novels, Germantown and The Fielding Course, co-written with Susan Kim, will soon be published by First Second Books. His work has been published or is forthcoming in such print and online journals as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Playgirl, The Alaska Quarterly, The Literary Review, Conjunctions, Louisville Review, Cafe Irreal, SN Review, Foliate Oak, Brink, Conte, Sliptongue, and Killing the Buddha. He received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics to Bed and Sofa, the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York. His one-act, The Summer Sublet, produced in the Ensemble Studio Theater Marathon in New York, is included in Best American Short Plays 2000-2001.
Sally Koslow
Sally Koslow, former editor-in-chief of McCall’s and Lifetime, is the author of three novels: The Late, Lamented Molly Marx (currently a bestseller in Germany), Little Pink Slips (about the magazine industry) and the forthcoming With Friends like These. Her articles and essays appear frequently in magazines and online venues including More, Real Simple, O the Oprah Magazine, wowOwow.com, Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Readers’ Digest and others. She has also taught at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College. For more on Sally, please visit www.sallykoslow.com.
Charles Salzberg
Charles Salzberg is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Esquire, New York Magazine, GQ, Elle, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Arts and Leisure, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review and various other publications. He is the author of From Set Shot to Slam Dunk, An Oral History of the NBA, and On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place, Baseball's 10 Worst Teams of the Century (with George Robinson) and co-author of My Zany Life and Times, by Soupy Sales, Missy Hyatt, The First Lady of Wrestling (with Mark Goldblatt,) and the forthcoming Catch Them Being Good by Tony DiCicco and Colleen Hacker, PhD.
He is currently a visiting professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and teaches advanced non-fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. He was cited by New York Magazine as one of New York's Great Teachers.
Check out Charles's latest books, The Mad Fisherman and Swann's Last Song, and visit his website.
Rachel Sherman
Rachel Sherman is the author of the The First Hurt (Open City Books, 2006), a book of short stories. The First Hurt was a finalist for The 2006 International Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, short-listed for the 2007 Story Award, and was chosen as one of the 25 Books to Remember from 2006 by the New York Public Library. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Open City, Post Road, Conjunctions, n+1, and Story Quarterly, and in the book Full Frontal Fiction: The Best of Nerve Anthology (Three Rivers Press, 2001), among other publications. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. Her forthcoming novel, Shooting the Gap, will be published in Spring 2009 by Macadam/Cage.
Tim Tomlinson
Tim Tomlinson's fiction has appeared in many venues, including The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, Libido, Hampton Shorts, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and The North American Review. Recent stories can be found online at Pif and Del Sol Review. He has published haiku in Black Bough, Modern Haiku, Parnassus Literary Journal, Potpourri, and Time Haiku. His articles on travel, scuba diving, and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Musician, Downtown Express and Spa Magazine.
He has taught fiction and screenwriting workshops in the Philippines and Thailand. He consults with television and screenwriters for the Media Development Authority in Singapore. He is fiction editor of the webzine ducts.org. At NYU he teaches courses on writing and contemporary culture.
Editors
Editors for each conference will be drawn from this group:
Ibrahim Ahmad
Ibrahim Ahmad has worked in various capacities for Akashic Books since 2000, where he is now senior editor. He resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Adrienne Avila
Adrienne Avila is an Editor at Berkley, a division of Penguin, where she acquires a range of nonfiction. She acquires in the areas of memoir, women's issues, lifestyle, business, wellness, self-help, how-to. Recent non-fiction titles include the New York Times Bestseller and Wall Street Journal Bestseller WILL WORK FROM HOME by Tory Johnson and Robyn Spizman, 365 NIGHTS by Charla Muller with Betsy Thorpe, and the essay anthology IT'S A WONDERFUL LIE: 26 Truths About Life in Your Twenties. She is also interested in multicultural fiction and quirky women's fiction, and acquired and edited award winning Lorraine Lopez's THE GIFTED GABALDON SISTERS, a [Border's] National Latino Book Club pick.
Molly Boyle
Molly Boyle is an assistant editor at Bantam Dell, where she works with Kate Miciak on a list of authors that include New York Times bestsellers Lee Child, Lisa Gardner and Karin Slaughter. She acquires commercial fiction and mysteries, particularly for women, as well as memoir, narrative, and pop culture nonfiction, and has a particular fondness for offbeat and dark edges. She began her publishing career at NAL/Penguin.
Kerri Buckley
Kerri Buckley is an editor with the Random House Publishing Group, acquiring both fiction and nonfiction for several imprints at this time. Recently released and forthcoming fiction includes LOOK AT THE BIRDIE: UNPUBLISHED SHORT FICTION by Kurt Vonnegut, HOW HIGH THE MOON by Sandra Kring, HOLLY AND HOMICIDE by Leslie Caine and DELTA GIRLS by Gayle Brandeis. On the nonfiction side, look for JUST LIKE SOMEONE WITHOUT MENTAL ILLNESS ONLY MORE SO, a memoir by Dr. Mark Vonnegut and YOU ARE WHAT YOU SPEAK: GRAMMAR GROUCHES AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE by Economist staffer Robert Lane Green.
Tom Colgan
Tom Colgan is an Executive Editor at the Penguin Book Group. He has been a publishing professional for 24 years and has edited both fiction and nonfiction. Authors he has worked with include Tom Clancy, Ed McBain, Clive Cussler, and Nevada Barr. He's been the editor of New York Times Bestsellers such as Tom Clancy's Airborne, and Last Man Down by FDNY Capt. Rich Picciotto.
Anna deVries
Anna deVries is an Assistant Editor at Scribner (Simon & Schuster), where she has worked with authors such as Stephen King, Don DeLillo, Frank McCourt and Jeannette Walls. She has also worked at Viking Books and several literary agencies, including the William Morris Agency.
Some of the books she has edited include Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, edited by Loren Rhoads; The Badlands Saloon by Jonathan Twingley; and Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis, which was nominated for a 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Alyse Diamond
Alyse Diamond is an editor at St. Martin's Press. She enjoys acquiring nonfiction in the areas of self-help, health/medicine, pop business, parenting, cooking, memoir, and lifestyle, and she is particularly intrigued by topics of interest to female readers. Some of her recently published and forthcoming titles include Baby Love by Emmy award-winning chief Washington correspondent for MSNBC, Norah O'Donnell and her husband, the award-winning Chef Geoff Tracy, which features fast and easy homemade baby food recipes; Rules for My Unborn Son by Walker Lamond, a collection of insightful and humorous fatherly advice for boys; The Divvies Bakery Cookbook by Lori Sandler, the owner of Divvies, New York's famous allergen-free bakery and "fun foods" company; Home Made Simple, the definitive collection of DIY projects, cleaning and organizing tips, and more, from the TLC show and Procter & Gamble brand of the same name; and Let’s Panic About Babies by Alice Bradley and Eden M. Kennedy, a hilarious spoof of traditional, panic-ridden parenting guides, which began as the authors’ website. She is nearing completion of a master's degree in publishing at New York University and received a B.A. in English Literature from Emory University in 2005.
Alexis Gargagliano
Alexis Gargagliano, an editor at Scribner, began her publishing career in the marketing department of Simon & Schuster. After working in the Knopf editorial department she joined Scribner, where she had the opportunity to work with Nan Graham on such books as The Glass Castle, Brick Lane, Eat the Document and Living History by Hillary Clinton. Her current list includes Matt Bondurant, Staceyann Chin, Adam Gollner, Mira Kamdar, Robin Romm, Joanna Smith Rakoff and Jennifer Gilmore, whose first novel, Golden Country, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Book Prize.
Sara Goodman
Sara Goodman worked as an agent at Ralph Vicinanza, Ltd. for five years. She moved to editorial at St. Martin's Press, where she's been for two years. She acquires young adult titles for the Griffin trade paperback line; she’s also looking for narrative non-fiction and up-market commercial fiction.
Dana Isaacson
Dana Edwin Isaacson is a Senior Editor with the Random House Publishing Group, where he edits both fiction and non-fiction. He has worked as an abridger, a writer and a literary agent. He has also been an editor at ReganBooks, St. Martin’s Press and Pocket Books. Recent non-fiction titles he has worked on include NOBODIES: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe, WRESTLING WITH GRAVY: A Life, with Food by Jonathan Reynolds, and THE DEVIL’S GENTLEMAN: Power, Privilege and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century by Harold Schechter.
Bronwen Hruska
Bronwen Hruska is the Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of Soho Press, an independent publisher of literary fiction. Founded twenty-four years ago, Soho has launched the careers of authors including Edwidge Danticat, Garth Stein, Stephen Fry, Dan Fesperman, Jacqueline Winspear, Cara Black and Robert Hellenga. Soho publishes between 60 and 80 titles a year under three imprints—Soho, Soho Crime and Soho Constable—and specializes in literary fiction and memoir, and mystery series set overseas.
Celia Johnson
Celia Johnson is an associate editor at Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group). She focuses on horror, suspense, mysteries, and commercial nonfiction. Her titles include legendary director George Romero’s novels inspired by the zombie universe of his classic films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, another examination of the zombie world by a Harvard professor, M.C. Beaton’s cozy mysteries, and an oral history of the Mickey Mouse Club, Why? Because We Like You! She’s currently looking for suspense novels and mysteries that have the potential to crossover successfully into the general fiction marketplace. She’s also on the lookout for quirky pop culture titles and narrative nonfiction with high commercial appeal.
David Moldawer
David Moldawer is an associate editor at St. Martin's Press, where he acquires and edits nonfiction books. His titles include RULE THE WEB by Mark Frauenfelder, THE MAD FISHERMAN by Charlie Moore with Charles Salzberg, THE INDIE BAND SURVIVAL GUIDE by Jason Feehan and Randy Chertkow of the band Beatnik Turtle, and LAWYER BOY, a memoir of law school by Rick Lax. David lives in New York City.
Leis Pederson
Leis Pederson is currently an Associate Editor with the Berkley Publishing Group. She acquires commercial fiction, including romance, erotic romance, urban fantasy, women’s fiction, mysteries, thrillers and general fiction. Her titles include AND FALLING, FLY by Skyler White, DON’T KILL THE MESSENGER by Eileen Rendahl, THE SILVER BEAR by Derek Haas, TOWN IN A BLUEBERRY JAM by B. B. Haywood and INSIDE OUT by Lauren Dane.
Brant Rumble
Brant Rumble is a Senior Editor at Scribner. His list includes Esquire columnist Chuck Klosterman, ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer, and nationally syndicated ¡Ask a Mexican! columnist Gustavo Arellano. Brant’s recent titles include Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People and Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. Brant acquires and edits a variety of narrative nonfiction, memoir, and literary fiction; usual subjects include pop culture, subcultures, music, and sports. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Denise Silvestro
A graduate of New York University, Denise has been in the publishing industry for seventeen years and is currently Executive Editor at the Berkley Publishing Group. Although she acquires both fiction and nonfiction, 90% of her list is nonfiction. She works within all genres, including narrative nonfiction, memoir, self-help/motivational, personal finance, health/well-being, and spirituality. She has worked with bestselling authors such as Don Piper, psychic-medium John Edward, minister T. D. Jakes, and financial expert Julie Stav.
Yaniv Soha
Yaniv Soha has been working in book publishing for seven years, at both literary agencies and book publishers. He is an associate editor at St. Martin’s Press, where he publishes into the areas of narrative nonfiction, pop culture, humor, pop science, sociology, and psychology. He has worked with New York Times bestselling authors such as Stephen Coonts, Alec Baldwin, and Stephen Singular. His recently published books include On the Record, written with the Scratch DJ Academy, and How to Live Dangerously, about the perils of modern life.
Hilary Teeman
Hilary Rubin Teeman joined St. Martin’s Press as an Associate Editor in May 2006. Prior to that, she spent three years at Trident Media Group, where she represented her own list of authors and handled audio rights for the company. At St. Martin’s Press, Hilary is looking to acquire commercial and literary women’s fiction, historical fiction and romantic suspense, as well as memoirs, pop-culture, sociology, and prescriptive non-fiction titles.
Julie Will
Julie Will is a Senior Editor at Rodale. She acquires and edits in the categories of health & wellness, science, psychology, self-help, mind/body, relationship, and memoir. Her authors include former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, Discovery Channel host and conservationist Jeff Corwin, journalist Julia Savacool, and Men's Health sex columnist Debby Herbenick. She also oversees the best-selling Intellectual Devotional and Biggest Loser franchises.
Agents
Participants in the Agents Panel will be drawn from this group:
William Callahan
William Callahan, an agent at Inkwell Management, attended Fordham University and the University of Iowa. He has edited and published a zine of short fiction, edited crosswords, and is the writer for, and co-founder of, the New York-based Three Sciences Productions, a theatre group whose plays have been performed at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and The Tank, among others. He is interested in a similarly wide range of fiction and non-fiction. He is also very interested in innovative presentations and formats for books. He would like to represent a cookbook of recipes you can execute in your bedroom.
Katherine Fausset
Paul Fedorko
Alex Glass
Scott Gould
Scott Gould is a literary agent at RLR Associates Ltd. in Manhattan, a boutique agency founded nearly 30 years ago, where he oversees all book development within the firm. Scott began his career in the editorial department of Playboy Magazine and later in publicity at Tor/Forge. At RLR, he represents both commercial and literary fiction, as well as general audience nonfiction. Scott is a graduate of New York University, where he received a BA in English and American Literature.