Pitch & Publish
Conference 2025

About
The Event

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 on January 28th at 10-11 Am EST- Registration

Best,
Julie Sarkissian & Liz Mathews,
Conference Co-Organizers.

Liz
Matthews

Conference Co-chair

Julie
Sarkissian

Conference Co-chair

Conference with Pitches Tickets

Conference with Pitches Ticket: 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 Tickets

Conference Only Ticket: Includes all day-of talks, panels, activities, catered lunch, Friday night welcome party, wrap party. Pitching to agents not included.

Keynote Speaker:
Amy Shearn

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.

Making
Your Pitch!

Writers who buy a Conference With Pitches ticket, will have the opportunity to discuss their work in person at the library or via Zoom with two agents for 10 minutes each (included in the cost of registration). New this year: Agents will read five pages of each writers work, in addition to a query letter, in advance of the conference.

Pitch
Takers

Amaryah Orenstein

Commercial Fiction, Literary Fiction, Upmarket, Suspense, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Narrative Non-Fiction

Danielle Bukowski 

Upmarket Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Speculative, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Narrative-Nonfiction

Elizabeth Pratt

Upmarket, Literary, Historical, Speculative, Fantasy

Coco Freeman

Commercial Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Suspense, Mystery, Speculative, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Middle Grade, YA, Picture Book – No Illustrator Attached, Picture Book – Illustrator Attached, YA and Middle Grade Horror TAKING PITCHES REMOTELY ON CONFERENCE DAY

JL Stermer

Commercial Fiction, Upmarket Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Suspense, Narrative-Nonfiction, Biography, Self-help, YA, Adult and YA nonfiction: health & wellness, pop culture, social justice, women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights, BIPOC stories

Ronald Gerber

Commercial Fiction, Upmarket Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Suspense, Mystery, Narrative-Nonfiction, Biography, Middle Grade

Ask the Agent Panel

Literary Agent Sarah Landis will discuss with literary agents everything you need to know about finding and working with a literary agent.

MODERATOR

Sarah Landis

Sterling Lord Literistic

Samantha Shea

Georges Borchardt, Inc.

Colin Hosten

Woodhall Press

Alexandra Franklin

Curtis Brown Ltd.

Charlotte Wenger

Prospect Agency

Ronald Gerber

Lowenstein

How to Keep Going, How to be Done Panel

As E.L. Doctorow famously said, “writing a book is like driving a car at night, you can’t see past the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” But what happens when your headlights go out, your car runs out of gas, or the driver falls asleep at the wheel? How do you get work back up and running? This panel will bring together writers, industry professionals and writing instructors to discuss how to overcome roadblocks, both common and unusual, on the journey to a completed manuscript. We will discuss ways to get unstuck, get re-inspired, problem solve in our work, and explore the question that confounds so many writers … how do you know when your work is done?

Iain Haley Pollock

Moderator

Iain Haley Pollock

Moderator

Iain Haley Pollock is the author of three poetry collections, Spit Back a Boy (2011), Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James, 2018), and the forthcoming All the Possible Bodies (Alice James, September 2025). His poems have appeared in numerous other publications, ranging ManhattanvillePoetry Review and The Kenyon Review to The New York Times Magazine and The Progressive. Pollock has received several honors for his work including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the Bim Ramke Prize for Poetry from Denver Quarterly, and a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. He serves as Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville University in Purchase, NY, where he also edits the literary journal Inkwell.

Diane Parrish

Author

Diane Parrish

Author

Originally from the Midwest, Diane Parrish now lives with her husband in Connecticut, where they raised their two children. She has worked as a dental hygienist, a litigation attorney, and a volunteer leader in non-profit organizations. Over years in those positions Diane wrote more briefs, memos, vision statements, and other documents than she could count. In her spare time she also took creative writing classes and experimented with fiction she kept more or less to herself. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The American Gardener, Calla Press Literary Journal,Vita Brevis, The Wild Word, and The Ravens Perch. Diane’s column about books, Lit Garden, is a monthly feature in BookTrib.com. Her debut novel, Something Better, was released in October 2024.

JL Stermer

Agent

JL Stermer

Agent

JL Stermer is the CEO of NEXT LEVEL LIT and a third-generation New Yorker.
When not at her desk, JL can be found strolling the around city noticing her favoriteher team are uniformly dedicated to securing book publishing deals that build careers in both fiction and nonfiction categories.

Her client’s books have been featured on NPR, Late Night with Seth Meyers, TODAY, ESPN, E News, and CBS This Morning as well as in The New York Times, USA Today, Oprah Daily, Refinery 29, The Root, ESSENCE, and more.

After exploring careers in theater, fashion, network TV, and hospitality, JL eventually found her way to book publishing. She attended Temple University, FIT, and earned her BA from Columbia University in English Literature.

When not at her desk, JL can be found strolling the around city noticing her favorite things: street style, architecture, nature, construction sites, and the diversity of humans who create the chaos and beauty of NYC.

Adam Wilson

Author

Adam Wilson

Author

Adam Wilson is the author of three books including, most recently, the novel Sensation Machines. A National Jewish Book Award finalist, and a recipient of The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize for Humor, his fiction and criticism have appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Tin House, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories, among many other publications. He is the co-writer, along with Justin Taylor, of the forthcoming feature film The Last Days of Basic Cable. Wilson has taught in the creative writing programs at NYU and Columbia. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two sons.

Mike Levine

Freelance editor, former acquiring editor

Mike Levine

Freelance editor, former acquiring editor

Mike Levine is an independent editor. He was previously an acquisitions editor at Northwestern University Press. Among the authors he published were Jen Beagin (Whiting Award winner), A. E. Stallings (National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, finalist), and Stephen Karam (Pulitzer Prize in Drama, finalist). He has also been a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation. Since 2000, he has taught literature and film seminars in several continuing education programs. He has a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in English from Rice University.

On Adaptation:
Sharbari Ahmed​

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. 

Putting Yourself Out There Panel

You’ve done the hard work to finish a manuscript, a story, complete your MFA or develop a writing related skill. What comes next? How to connect yourself and your work to the larger world? Whether you are a published writer, a writer seeking representation, or looking to use your writing skills in creative ways, this panel will explore ways to connect with readers, clients, and community. Bringing together writers, editors, PR experts, this panel will explore practical and creative ways to create opportunity for yourself and your work.

Brianna Avenia-Tapper

Author

Brianna Avenia-Tapper

Author

Brianna Avenia-Tapper’s essay Fertility Awareness was named a notable essay in Best American Essays, and her essay Virgin Lands was a Memoir Monday pick. She has published book reviews and author interviews in Riverteeth Blog, Literary Mama, The Rumpus, Brevity Blog, Chicago Review of Books, and elsewhere. She is the producer and host of the podcast Writing Stories, where she interviews authors to explore how a book goes from an idea to an object. She holds a BA from Bard College, an MA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from NYU. She lives in CT with her family.

Chris Steib

Writer & entrepreneur

Chris Steib

Writer & entrepreneur

Chris Steib is a bookshop owner, web designer, startup consultant, teacher, and entrepreneur. He has been building websites both large (e.g. theknot.com) and small (e.g. transombookshop.com) for 20-ish years. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the School of Design Strategies and Management at Parsons, and the L.A. Unified School District. He owns and operates Transom Bookshop in Tarrytown, NY, and is the creator of a free iPhone app (also called Transom) designed to help writers get inspired and stay organized. An amateur ukuleleist, one-time karaoke champion, and pretty bad chess player, Chris’s info can be found at chrissteib.com.

Kathy Satterfield

Amherst Writers & Artists

Kathy Satterfield

Amherst Writers & Artists

Kathy Satterfield is an affiliate of Amherst Writers & Artists. Kathy worked for many years in kids’ educational publishing, as a writer and editor for React magazine and TIME Magazine for Kids. She is currently working on a memoir on raising a son with an extremely rare chromosome abnormality, and is an MFA candidate at Bennington Writing Seminars.

Suzanne Farrell Smith

Author

Suzanne Farrell Smith

Author

Suzanne Farrell Smith is the author of three books: Small Off Things: Meditations from an Anxious Mind, an essay collection; The Memory Sessions, a memoir about searching for lost childhood memory; and The Writing Shop, a teaching guidebook. She is widely published, has been Notable in Best American, and won a Pushcart. Suzanne is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the state of Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and three sons.

Will Alison

Freelance Editor

Will Alison

Freelance Editor

Before joining One Story as a contributing editor in 2011, Will served as executive editor of Story and editor-at-large of Zoetrope: All-Story. He has taught creative writing at Columbia University, The Ohio State University, and elsewhere. He is the author of two novels, What You Have Left, named a notable book by the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times bestseller Long Drive Home, which is currently being adapted for the stage. As a freelance editor specializing in fiction and creative nonfiction, he works one-on-one with both new and established authors. For more information please visit willallison.com.

Kathy Daneman

Book Publicist

Kathy Daneman

Book Publicist

Kathy Daneman has 25+ years of publishing and publicity experience, most notably at Beacon Press and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She founded Kathy Daneman Public Relations in 2014 and since then she has worked with Carina Chocano, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Melissa Febos, Isle McElroy and Tony Tulathimutte.

Agenda

Saturday Morning

March 22, 2025

09:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST

Doors Open, Check In, Coffee – ARRIVAL

Westport Library

10:00 AM - 10:15 AM EST

Seats & Opening Remarks

Westport Library

10:15 AM - 11:00 AM EST

PANEL 1: Ask the Agent

Westport Library

11:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Q&A Ask the Agent, Invitation to Practice Pitch, Warm Up

Westport Library

11:30 AM - 12:15 AM EST

Lunch - Keep Practicing Your Pitch with Each Other

Westport Library

Saturday Afternoon

March 22, 2025

12:15 PM - 02:15 PM EST

PItch Bracket One

Westport Library

12:15 PM - 02:15 PM EST

PANEL 2: How to Keep Going, How to be Done

Westport Library

01:00 PM - 01:15 PM EST

Q&A

Westport Library

01:20 PM - 01:50 PM EST

On Adaption: Sharbari Ahmed

Westport Library

02:15 PM - 04:15 PM EST

Break - Pitch Bracket Two

Westport Library

02:00 PM - 02:45 PM EST

Panel 3: Putting Yourself Out There

Westport Library

02:45 PM - 02:55 PM EST

Q&A

Westport Library

03:00 PM - 04:00 PM EST

Keynote Speaker

Westport Library

04:00 PM - 04:30 PM EST

Q&A, Book Signing, Clear Out & Clean Up

Westport Library

4:45 PM EST

After Party, Basso

Westport Library

Pitch & Publish
Testimonials

I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the opportunity to be part of the conference this weekend. There was so much to appreciate: the honest, kind, and informed esteemed panelists, the range of topics, the encouragement and humor, the comradeship between volunteers, writers, agents—everyone. I walked away inspired and happy, as did so many. I loved the chance to root for my fellow writers and classmates on their pitch, and I loved the partnership between two of my favorite intellectual and community hubs—WWW and the WESTPORT library!

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! We have a slate of new agents taking pitches and sitting on our Ask the Agent panel.

There are two time blocks for pitching to agents: 12:15 – 2:15 and 2:15 – 4:15. Please note, these are sequential sessions. Be prepared for an all-day event.
Three weeks before the event, you will receive an email asking for your top choices for agents with whom to meet. Though we can’t make guarantees, we will do our best to meet your requests and ensure you are matched with agents who represent the genre of your work.
For Conferences With Pitches, partial refunds (50% of the ticket price) will be given if requested before February 27th. No refunds will be issued for Conference Only tickets after this date.
The entire conference takes place at The Westport Library. The panels and talks are on the main stage, and the agents will be taking pitches in breakout rooms. Volunteers will be on site to help you find where you need to go.

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.

 

Hotel recommendations:
  • Hotel Zero Degrees in Norwalk
  • The Circle Hotel in Fairfield
  • The Delamar in Southport

Interested in
a Scholarship?

**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).