From Query to Collaboration: How to Get an Agent | 90 minutes
Need financial aid? Apply here first.
These 90 minute virtual masterclasses, available for purchase individually or as a pair, will guide students through the process of getting an agent. Separated by genre, students in these standalone sessions will learn how to identify the ideal agent, write a successful query letter and choose comp titles, and manage the query process and communications, as well as what happens after you acquire representation. Participants will get an overview of best practices, the opportunity to ask questions about the publishing industry, and helpful tools to shape their future queries.
NONFICTION: Sunday, April 27, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Elizabeth Greenspan
FICTION: Wednesday, April 30, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Eshani Surya
Instructors:
Elizabeth Greenspan is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a member of the Blue Stoop Board. Her second book, about architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton, for which she received a 2024 Silvers Grant. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Places Journal, among other outlets. She has worked with multiple literary agents over the years—the good, the brilliant, the not-so-great—and looks forward to passing on what she has learned with you.
Eshani Surya is a disabled, brown writer interested in how we love while navigating the complications, trauma, and radical self-acceptance inherent to marginalization. Her novel, RAVISHING, will be published by Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. Eshani is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient and a 2021 Semi-Finalist for Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. Her fiction and essays can be read in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Catapult, Joyland, the anthology, Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is a board member at Blue Stoop, a literary non-profit in Philadelphia, the city where she now lives. She also holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she also taught undergraduates. Previously she was a Flash Editor at Split Lip Magazine.
Read our FAQ
Need financial aid? Apply here first.
These 90 minute virtual masterclasses, available for purchase individually or as a pair, will guide students through the process of getting an agent. Separated by genre, students in these standalone sessions will learn how to identify the ideal agent, write a successful query letter and choose comp titles, and manage the query process and communications, as well as what happens after you acquire representation. Participants will get an overview of best practices, the opportunity to ask questions about the publishing industry, and helpful tools to shape their future queries.
NONFICTION: Sunday, April 27, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Elizabeth Greenspan
FICTION: Wednesday, April 30, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Eshani Surya
Instructors:
Elizabeth Greenspan is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a member of the Blue Stoop Board. Her second book, about architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton, for which she received a 2024 Silvers Grant. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Places Journal, among other outlets. She has worked with multiple literary agents over the years—the good, the brilliant, the not-so-great—and looks forward to passing on what she has learned with you.
Eshani Surya is a disabled, brown writer interested in how we love while navigating the complications, trauma, and radical self-acceptance inherent to marginalization. Her novel, RAVISHING, will be published by Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. Eshani is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient and a 2021 Semi-Finalist for Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. Her fiction and essays can be read in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Catapult, Joyland, the anthology, Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is a board member at Blue Stoop, a literary non-profit in Philadelphia, the city where she now lives. She also holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she also taught undergraduates. Previously she was a Flash Editor at Split Lip Magazine.
Read our FAQ
Need financial aid? Apply here first.
These 90 minute virtual masterclasses, available for purchase individually or as a pair, will guide students through the process of getting an agent. Separated by genre, students in these standalone sessions will learn how to identify the ideal agent, write a successful query letter and choose comp titles, and manage the query process and communications, as well as what happens after you acquire representation. Participants will get an overview of best practices, the opportunity to ask questions about the publishing industry, and helpful tools to shape their future queries.
NONFICTION: Sunday, April 27, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Elizabeth Greenspan
FICTION: Wednesday, April 30, 6:30 – 8:00 PM (ET) — Zoom. Taught by Eshani Surya
Instructors:
Elizabeth Greenspan is a writer based in Philadelphia, and a member of the Blue Stoop Board. Her second book, about architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton, for which she received a 2024 Silvers Grant. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Places Journal, among other outlets. She has worked with multiple literary agents over the years—the good, the brilliant, the not-so-great—and looks forward to passing on what she has learned with you.
Eshani Surya is a disabled, brown writer interested in how we love while navigating the complications, trauma, and radical self-acceptance inherent to marginalization. Her novel, RAVISHING, will be published by Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic. Eshani is a 2022 Asian Women Writer’s Workshop mentee, a 2022 Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop scholarship recipient, a 2021 Mae Fellowship recipient and a 2021 Semi-Finalist for Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. Her fiction and essays can be read in The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Catapult, Joyland, the anthology, Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is a board member at Blue Stoop, a literary non-profit in Philadelphia, the city where she now lives. She also holds an MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she also taught undergraduates. Previously she was a Flash Editor at Split Lip Magazine.