Pitch & Publish Conference
March 22, 2025
Join us at the Westport Library for one-on-one pitch sessions with top literary agents across all genres, break out sessions, catered lunch, expert talks and panels, as well as welcome and wrap parties. Featuring keynote speaker author Amy Shearn among other publishing insiders, this event will educate, inspire and support you on your journey towards realizing your publishing goals.
Tickets on Sale January 2025. More information, including attending literary agents, forthcoming.
Best,
Julie Sarkissian & Liz Mathews,
Conference Co-Organizers
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Questions? Email: pitchandpublish@westportwritersworkshop.com or visit our FAQ page.
About the Conference
Liz Matthews & Julie Sarkissian
Conference Co-chairs
Liz Matthews is a writer and editor who received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts (2008) and MA in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Liz began her professional career in publishing, both at a literary agency and as an Editorial Assistant at Random House before teaching middle and high school English. Her work has appeared in Brain Child, The Rumpus, The Tishman Review, and Big Fiction Little Truths among other places.
Liz teaches Introductory & Intermediate Fiction, Flash Fiction, and Creative Writing at the workshop.
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Julie Sarkissian is the author of Dear Lucy, published by Simon and Schuster and nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her essays, short fiction and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Huffington Post, The New York Observer, and Flavorwire, among others. Born and raised in Southern California, she has a BA in English from Princeton and an MFA from The New School.
She worked for Sackett Street Writers in Brooklyn, NY as a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant before moving to Westport, CT with her husband and two young children.
Keynote Speaker
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.