PB & MG Agent Critique Roundtables

Date/Time
Date(s) - 12/11/2022
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

SOLD OUT

After registration, please send up to 1,500 words for the critique event (or entire PB text) before Dec 6 to nevada-ra at scbwi dot org as an attachment.

Each roundtable will have 3 participants per agent. We’ll try to group with similar genre/age group of manuscripts. The tickets were made to give us an idea as to how many PB and MG participants. To make it easier, I added a ticket that is PB or MG. Please use that ticket.

The fee to attend is $50.

The agent in the group will decide how each critique is run, but generally, everyone will read their manuscript and the group will give feedback especially from the agent or editor leading the group.

Faculty:

Agent Jennifer Chen Tran from Folio Jr.

Jennifer Chen Tran is a literary agent at Folio Literary Management. With over a decade of experience in publishing, Jennifer is passionate about nurturing and championing authors and their creative lives. She represents a wide range of talent, including journalists, physicians, entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, chefs, and graphic novelists, among others.

Prior to joining Folio, Jennifer was a literary agent at several west-coast literary agencies and served as Of Counsel at The New Press. She obtained her Juris Doctor from Northeastern School of Law in Boston, MA, and a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. She is an attorney in good standing in New York and California.

Recent fiction titles Jennifer represented include author Kristen Kiesling’s The Harrowing, a YA graphic novel about a psychic teen girl who is forced to use her powers to track down killers, until she discovers her boyfriend is her next target; Lily Quan’s middle-grade novelization of Disney-Pixar movie Turning Red; and Rebecca Kelley’s contemporary novel No One Knows Us Here.

Jennifer is an editorial agent who believes in the art of collaboration and works closely with her authors from concept, to proposal, to publication, and beyond. As a person of color and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Jennifer is committed to amplifying voices from underrepresented and marginalized communities. Her ultimate goal is to work in concert with authors to shape books that will have a lasting positive social impact on the world – books that illuminate, entertain, and inspire.

What I’m looking for: For fiction: middle-grade and Young Adult with heart and humor or visually-driven elements (see Remy Lai’s Pie in the Sky), contemporary fiction that braids together issues of social significance and identity (see Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek).

Agent Erin Casey from Galt & Zacker

Erin has been at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency since 2015 when it was still Nancy Gallt Literary Agency, working her way up from intern to associate agent. She represents children’s literature and is particularly drawn to genre fiction – fantasy, magical realism, fabulism, and speculative specifically. She loves work that shows the author’s world- and character-building ability and wants to see authentic, thoughtful representations of all people so that every kid can find a book that speaks to them. If she’s going to read a contemporary story, it will probably have sports or animals or a mystery element, and it should reflect the diversity of our world. Erin loves dogs, ultimate frisbee, and Cheerios.

Mabel Hsu, Editor, Katherine Tegen Books

Mabel Hsu is an executive editor at Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books. She acquires picture books through young adult, including chapter books and graphic novels. Her list of acclaimed and bestselling authors include Monica Arnaldo, Mac Barnett, Kelly DiPucchio, Antwan Eady, C.G. Esperanza, Raissa Figueroa, Shawn Harris, Janae Marks, Marc Majewski, and Gracey Zhang. She also serves on the Brooklyn Book Festival Committee and mentors through POC in Publishing and Representation Matters. Mabel is drawn to poignant or humorous picture books with unexpected endings, as well as novels with voice-driven narratives that explore character drama, feature intersectional representation, and transform genre tropes.

Mona Kanin, The Great Dog Literary

Inspired by imagination and content creation, Mona spent 25 years designing, writing and making non-fiction media for broadcast, non-broadcast, print, and the web.

Before she was a producer, Mona was a children’s librarian at the Boston Public Library & for several years managed a small book shop in DC. She’s always sought to forge connections—between visuals and words, trust and the collaborative process, and content and authenticity/emotion. She believes in the power of books to create more empathic beings and is seeking projects that are smart and resonate deeply — with a focus on PBs and MGs (fiction & non-fiction) for kids, and, literary fiction and non-fiction that speaks to the cultural currents for adults.

Authenticity/diverse voices always essential.

A note on how I make selections: Everyone’s judgements are subjective, for us at Great Dog Literary, the book must resonate on some unconscious level—that judgement comes down to a gut feeling. So, someone can be talented, their work excellent, but it needs to be ‘a fit’. We also have to be sure that the work offers the potential for an editor to fall in love with it without question.