The Westport Writers’ Workshop Fourth Annual Pitch & Publish Conference 2025 will take place at the Westport Library on Saturday, March 22nd, 2025, from 10:00am – 4:15pm.
The full-conference offers a day of dynamic talks and panels on writing and publishing, the rare opportunity to pitch your book (including the submission of five pages of your work) to two agents, and features author Amy Shearn as the keynote speaker. Also included are a Friday night welcome party, book signings, catered lunch, and a Saturday evening wrap party. We have confirmed agents from Curtis Brown, Prospect Agency, George Borchardt, Next Level, Donald Maass, The Linda Chester Literary Agency, and Lowenstein Associates, as well as an editor from Woodhall Press.
New This Year: Crowd Source your Comps on Zoom with conference organizers Julie & Liz & programming on Adaptation.
Questions?
Email: pitchandpublish@westportwritersworkshop.com
Visit: FAQ page
Join: Our free Pitch & Publish Informational Zoom – Registration
Best,
Julie Sarkissian & Liz Mathews,
Conference Co-Organizers.
Early Bird Ticket Savings of $75 through the end of January
Conference with Pitches: Includes all day-of talks, panels, activities, catered lunch, Friday night welcome party, wrap party & pitch session with two agents. Following registration, we will contact you to match you with your agents.
Conference Only Ticket: Includes all day-of talks, panels, activities, catered lunch, Friday night welcome party, wrap party. Pitching to agents not included.
Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here, as well as the forthcoming Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, the Yale Writers’ Workshop, and Writing Co-Lab, an experimental cooperative she helped found. Amy’s work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. You can find her at amyshearnwrites.com or @amyshearn.
Novelist, screenwriter Sharbari Ahmed will give a 30 minute talk & Q&A elucidating the process of how to turn your prose into a screenplay.
Sharbari is an award-winning writer of film and fiction. She was on the writing team of the TV Series, Quantico on ABC. She has developed projects for wiip, AMC, and Voot (India).
She adapted the middle grade novel, Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Bose Perkins for the screen, the adaptation of which has won several awards. The screen adaptation of her stage play, Raisins not Virgins: A Romantic Comedy about Jihad (Workshop Theater Co.) was part of the Tribeca All Access program at the Tribeca Film Festival and nominated for best original screenplay.
She is the author of a novel, Dust Under Her Feet, 2019 (Westland) and a short story collection, The Ocean of Mrs. Nagai: Stories, 2013 (DS Books). Another collection, The Strangest of Fruit is forthcoming by Cheek Press.
Her short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Asian Pacific American Journal, Catamaran, Caravan Magazine, Inroads, Wasafiri, Painted Bride Quarterly, Roanoke Review, New England Review and CT Anthology of Writers.She presented a TedX talk: Between the Kabah Sharif and A Hard Place in April of 2018.
Yes! We have a slate of new agents taking pitches and sitting on our Ask the Agent panel.
Yes! This event is certainly still for you. We have a conference-only ticket price that does not include pitching to agents. You will have access to all other elements of the conference; a full day of talks about how to find an agent, the publishing process, how to level up your writing game, and more! We know the conference will educate, motivate, and inspire you, and you’ll meet new fellow literary citizens.
Westport is about an hour away from Grand Central on the Metro North train service.
**Scholarships available for conference and conference-only ticket prices.
Please email pitchandpublish@westportwritersworkshop.com with a sample of your writing (no more than 500 words)
and a personal statement detailing your interest and your financial need (max. 250 words).
