BIO Workshop: Agents Discuss the State of the Publishing Industry

You can see a video of this workshop here.

Three agents discuss the state of the publishing industry during the pandemic, particularly for biography and related nonfiction, as well as the agent-author relationship.

  • Faith Childs is President of Faith Childs Literary Agency in New York and represents novelists and nonfiction writers, including biographers, historians, critics and journalists. For three decades she has been actively engaged in efforts to increase the representation of people of color in the publishing industry. In the decade before becoming a literary agent, she was a lawyer. Among her authors are: Eric K. Washington, Annette Gordon-Reed, Anne C. Bailey, Elizabeth Alexander, and Kerri K. Greenidge.
  • Katherine Flynn is a partner at Kneerim & Williams (https://kwlit.com/) in Boston and represents history, biography, politics, current affairs, narrative nonfiction, and more. She is on the board of the Boston Book Festival and her authors include Heath Lee, Tom Sancton, and Christopher Klein.
  • Gail Ross is President of the Ross Yoon Agency (https://www.rossyoon.com/) in Washington, D.C. and represents a variety of serious commercial nonfiction, including biography, history, and memoirs. She says that each of her new projects must meet two criteria: it must make her daughters proud and offset their college educations. Her authors include Kai Bird, E. J. Dionne, and Lynne Olson.
  • Anne Boyd Rioux will moderate the discussion. She is on the BIO Board of Directors and is the author of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters and Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist.

REGISTRATION: The workshop requires pre-registration and is free and open to the public. A recording will be available for BIO members on the BIO website in the Members’ Area. Attendees are encouraged to submit questions once they have registered or during the event via the chat function.

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