Visitors
Editors and Publishers
Literary Agents
Theater Professionals
Editors and Publishers
Millicent Bennett (Harper)
Millicent Bennett (she/her) is an Executive Editor acquiring literary fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction at Harper. Formerly, she was Editorial Director at HMH. Her authors have won or been shortlisted for major prizes including the National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, the Whiting Award, LA Times Book Prize, the Rona Jaffe Award, and others.
Taylor Byas (The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Variant Literature)
Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the author of two chapbooks, and her debut full-length I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry.
Dorothy Chan (Honey Literary Inc.)
Dorothy Chan (she/they) is the author of five poetry collections, including Return of the Chinese Femme (Deep Vellum). They are an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, and Food and Beverage Editor of Honey Literary Inc., a 501(c)(3) BIPOC-focused literary arts organization. Visit their website at dorothypoetry.com
Leigh Anne Couch (Swing)
Leigh Anne Couch, formerly at Duke University Press and the Sewanee Review, is a freelance editor of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and miscellany. She is also the founder and editor of Swing, a print literary magazine in partnership with The Porch, a nonprofit writers’ collective in Nashville. Her books of poetry include Every Lash (2020 Vassar Miller Prize winner) and Houses Fly Away (Zone 3 Press). She lives in Sewanee, Tennessee with writer Kevin Wilson and their sons, Griff and Patch. www.leighannecouch.com
Sarah High (Ingram Content Group)
Sarah High works with authors and publishers at Ingram Content Group in NYC. Previously, she was the Senior Partnerships Manager at Bookshop.org. Sarah was one of the first members of the Bookshop team, and was with the organization from 2019 to 2023. Prior, Sarah worked at Catapult, Soft Skull, and Counterpoint Presses and was also a reader for each of the presses. Sarah attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference in 2015 as a Sewanee Scholar. She also narrated the audiobook Our Strangers by Lydia Davis, published in 2023.
Sally Kim (Little, Brown)
Sally Kim is President and Publisher of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group. She was most recently SVP, Publisher of G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin Random House), where she also acquired and edited acclaimed and bestselling fiction by Kiley Reid, Robert Jones, Jr., Chloe Benjamin, Steven Rowley, Megan Abbott, Sarah Winman, Alma Katsu, Cristina Alger, and Susan Barker. She’s held senior editorial positions at Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, the Crown Publishing Group, and St. Martin’s Press, after getting her start at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency almost 30 years ago. In 2022, Poets & Writers honored her with The Editor’s Award.
Gerald Maa (The Georgia Review)
Gerald Maa began as editor and director of the Georgia Review in 2019. Since then, the Review has won, among other things, National Magazine Awards (fiction and profile writing) as well as the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, reserved for debut publications. In 2010, he founded the arts anti-profit the Asian American Literary Review with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, where he served as editor-in-chief until he joined the Georgia Review.
Kristen Renee Miller (Sarabande Books)
Kristen Renee Miller is the director and editor-in-chief at Sarabande Books. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She lives in Louisville, KY. website: kristenreneemiller.com, social: @kristenmiller
Misha Rai (The Kenyon Review)
Misha Rai is Contributing Editor of The Kenyon Review and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Sewanee: The University of the South. Her prose has been supported by the Kenyon Review Fellowship Program, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, MacDowell, Ucross, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Dana Award in the Novel Category. Her short story, “Twenty Years Ago” is a Distinguished story in the 2021 Best American Short Story anthology. In 2022 her fiction was longlisted for the Disquiet Prize.
Eric Smith (The Sewanee Review)
Eric Smith is the author of Black Hole Factory, which won the 2017 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and currently lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he works as the managing editor for the Sewanee Review.
Jessica Q. Stark (AGNI)
Jessica Q. Stark is the author of Buffalo Girl (BOA Editions, 2023), winner of a Florida Book Award and finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, and Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020). She is a Poetry Editor for AGNI and is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida.
Ginny Smith Younce (The Penguin Press)
Ginny Smith Younce is an Executive Editor at Penguin Press/Penguin Random House. A native of Macon, GA, she lives with her family in Nashville. Ginny is a graduate of Yale and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), and she has also worked at Ecco/HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. She has worked with authors including Celeste Ng, Nate Silver, Clarissa Ward, Sanjena Sathian, Emily Oster, Jonathan Haidt, and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock.
Literary Agents
Jin Auh (The Wylie Agency)
Jin Auh is a literary agent at The Wylie Agency, which has offices in New York and London. She serves on the Board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Born in Seoul, she lives in Brooklyn.
Sarah Bowlin (Aevitas Creative Management)
Sarah Bowlin joined Aevitas Creative Management in 2017. Before becoming an agent, she spent a decade as an editor of literary fiction and nonfiction, first at Riverhead Books and most recently at Henry Holt & Company. In her time as an agent, she has worked with both emerging and established voices including the Giller Prize-winning writer Souvankham Thammavongsa, National Book award long-listed novelist Vanessa Veselka, as well as acclaimed writers Aysegul Savas, Lynn Steger Strong, Gene Kwak, Ashley Nelson Levy, Jasmin Hakes, R.K. Russell, Sabrina Orah Mark, Elisa Albert, Ismail Muhammad and Janika Oza. She is interested in bold voices and experiments in form—specifically stories of strong or difficult women and unexpected narratives of place, identity, and the shifting ways we see ourselves and each other. Originally from the South, she now lives in Los Angeles.
Sarah Burnes (The Gernert Company)
Sarah Burnes became a literary agent in 2001 after stints in the editorial departments of Houghton Mifflin, the Knopf group, and Little, Brown. Joining The Gernert Company in 2005, she now represents adult fiction writers (Sewanee’s Alice McDermott and Tony Earley among them); children’s fiction writers (New York Times bestsellers Pseudonymous Bosch and Margaret Stohl); and journalists and critics (The Ice At the End of the World’s Jon Gertner and Freeman's editor John Freeman). Her writers have either won or been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Story Prize, the Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, the Whiting Writer’s Award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and they have received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Sarah sits on the board of the non-profit progressive publisher The New Press. She lives with her husband and three children in Brooklyn, NY.
Sophie Cudd (The Book Group)
Sophie Cudd is a literary agent at The Book Group, where she represents all areas of fiction, and various narrative nonfiction. In particular, Sophie gravitates towards compelling, high-stakes stories; accessible and deeply resonant characters; and plot-driven stories with a strong sense of time and place. Sophie has an English Degree from Southern Methodist University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Stephanie Delman (Trellis Literary Management)
Stephanie Delman is a partner at Trellis Literary Management, which she co-founded in fall 2021 after a decade at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Stephanie represents adult fiction and select nonfiction, including literary thrillers, underrepresented historical fiction, high-concept and psychological suspense, and books that play with genre. Her clients include Zakiya Dalila Harris, Jenny Tinghui Zhang, Julia Fine, Vanessa Chan, and many more. Stephanie studied Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and considers herself a hands-on agent, both editorially and as an advocate.
Jenni Ferrari-Adler (Verve Talent and Literary Agency)
Jenni Ferrari-Adler is a literary agent at Verve Talent & Literary Agency, with twenty years of experience in book publishing. She specializes in literary fiction and represents a range of work including recent New York Times Bestsellers, and Book Club Picks by Reese Witherspoon, The Today Show’s Read with Jenna, Barnes & Noble, and Belletrist. She’s looking for exciting new clients. She graduated from Oberlin, worked as a bookseller for Housing Works Bookstore, a reader at The Paris Review, and an assistant at Sobel Weber Associates. She earned an MFA in fiction from Michigan, where she also taught creative writing, edited the anthology Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, which was published by Riverhead, and had a long career as an agent at Union Literary before moving to Verve.
Mina Hamedi (Janklow & Nesbit Associates)
Mina Hamedi grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, and is of Turkish/Iranian descent. She received a BA from NYU’s Gallatin School and an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia University's School of the Arts. She joined Janklow & Nesbit in 2018. Mina represents adult literary fiction and nonfiction and is interested in stories from around the world—particularly her native Turkey and Iran. She also seeks voices in translation and writers from underrepresented backgrounds. Mina is a member of the American Association of Literary Agents (AALA) and the co-chair of the Governance Committee.
Erin Harris (Folio Literary Management)
Erin Harris is a Senior Vice President at Folio Literary Management, where she represents literary and upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction. Her clients include NYT bestsellers, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalists, winners of the Lambda Literary Award, Indie Next Pick authors, Barnes & Noble Discover Picks, and Reese Witherspoon’s “Hello Sunshine,” Good Morning America, Read with Jenna, and Target Book Club selections. Some of her authors include: Emiko Jean, Michelle Min Sterling, John Manuel Arias, Allegra Hyde, SJ Sindu, Dionne Irving, Daniel Peña, Curtis Chin, and Allie Rowbottom.
Annie Hwang (Ayesha Pande Literary)
Annie Hwang is a literary agent at Ayesha Pande Literary where she primarily represents voice-driven literary fiction that plays with genre. In particular, she is drawn to what she likes to think of as “literary fiction with teeth.” Above all, Annie is always on the hunt for gifted storytelling that stretches its genre to new heights.
Emma Patterson (Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents)
Emma Patterson is a literary agent at Brandt & Hochman, where she has been since 2013. She represents fiction ranging from dark, voice-driven literary novels to historical and upmarket fiction to feminist fiction with a speculative bent; narrative non-fiction that includes memoir, investigative journalism, and history; and select children's titles. Her authors are NYT bestsellers as well as finalists or winners of awards such as the Pulitzer, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, PEN Awards, O. Henry Awards, and others. She represents emerging voices, established writers, and ongoing series. She has a particular soft spot for fiction that grapples with relationships (of all kinds), international or otherwise transporting settings, and writing with a sly sense of humor that also has emotional heft.
Margaret Riley King (William Morris Endeavor)
Margaret Riley King is a partner and literary agent in WME’s global book division both emerging and established writers in all areas of fiction and nonfiction. Her clients include Glennon Doyle, Sue Monk Kidd, Dani Shapiro, Jeannette Walls, Chloe Benjamin, Austin Channing Brown, Sarah Pekkanen, Greer Hendricks, Jen Hatmaker, Ann Leary, Meg Waite Clayton, Jenna Kutcher, Nadia Bolz Weber and Valarie Kaur, among others. She splits her time between her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, and New York City.
Anjali Singh (The Anjali Singh Agency)
Anjali Singh founded her agency in 2024. Most recently, she was an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary for nine years; she has also worked as an editor at Vintage Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon + Schuster, and as Editorial Director of Other Press. She is best known for having championed Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis after stumbling across it on a visit to Paris. She has always been drawn to the thrill of discovering new writers and among the literary novelists whose careers she helped launch are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Samantha Hunt, Saleem Haddad and Nawaaz Ahmed. She focuses on literary fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction as well as representing graphic novel writers and illustrators across all age ranges.
Theater Professionals
Estefanía Fadul (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Estefanía Fadul is a Colombian-American theatre director, and co-Artistic Director of NYC’s Ensemble Studio Theatre. She has developed new work off-Broadway and regionally at the Public Theater, NYTW, Chautauqua, Audible, Juilliard, and more. She serves on the Drama League’s Board of Directors, leadership circle of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice, and Latinx Theatre Commons advisory committee.
Sonia Fernandez (Woolly Mammoth Theater Company)
Sonia Fernandez (she/her) is a dramaturg, administrator and producer specializing in new work. She serves as Director of New Work at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Sonia was previously interim Artistic Director and prior to that Associate Artistic Director of Magic Theatre in San Francisco. She is a longtime Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theatre and serves on the board of the National New Play Network.
Omalolu Fiki (Actor)
Omalolu Fiki is an actor, voice over artist, writer and comedian. You can catch her at LA's Comedy Store. She graduated with her MFA from UCSD in 2019. Some of her recent work is writing and starring in Milwaukee Rep’s Stay At Home Series “__Told Me.” Regional credits include: An Octoroon (Chautauqua), Into the Breeches (Chautauqua). UCSD credits include: UC San Diego credits: Everybody Black, (w)holeness (Wagner New Play Festival), Mothers (Wagner New Play Festival), Duchess! Duchess! Duchess! (Wagner New Play Festival), A Raisin in the Sun, What of the Night?, Eurydice, Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika, Taming of the Shrew(d), and Mother Courage and her Children.
Katie Gamelli (Paladin Artists)
Katie Gamelli is a Literary Agent at Paladin Artists representing playwrights, composers, lyricists, directors, and designers. Named by the Broadway Women’s Fund as one of the 2020 Women to Watch on Broadway, she spent the first decade of her career at A3 Artists Agency (formerly Abrams), where she became known for her diverse roster of multi-hyphenate clients. A passionate advocate for new play and musical development, she has worked for The Kleban Foundation, served on the Encores! Off-Center Artist's Board (led by Jeanine Tesori and the late Michael Friedman) and the Musical Theatre Factory Advisory Board. She is a CT native and graduate of Marymount Manhattan College.
Graeme Gillis (Ensemble Studio Theatre)
Graeme Gillis is the co-artistic director for Ensemble Studio Theatre with Estefanía Fadul. Gillis previously co-led EST/Youngblood for early-career playwrights (Obie Award) and the EST/Sloan Project for plays exploring science (over $3 million awarded). As a Canadian he proudly bears a US green card for playwriting. Member: the Actors Studio and EST, teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Ben Izzo (Michael Moore Agency)
Ben Izzo is currently a Literary Agent specializing in the representation of playwrights, directors, composers, and theatrical designers. He previously held positions at Roundabout Theatre Company and New York Theatre Workshop and served as an associate producer for the inaugural season of Fulcrum Theatre Company in New York City. In his eleven years at A3 Artists/Abrams Artists Agency, his over 60 clients' work has appeared on stages all over the world and have been nominated or won every major award including the Tony, Drama Desk, Lortel and Whiting. He has been a past judge for the New York Musical Theatre Festival and Kleban Award in addition to being a lecturer at New York University and Hunter College.
Sean McIntyre (Actor)
Sean McIntyre is a New York based actor and educator. His recent work as a performer includes film, international television, Broadway and Off-Broadway stages, commercial and theatrical voiceover, and video games. He has done developmental work with renowned NYC houses such as The Public, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theater Club, Roundabout, Atlantic, Irish Rep, New Dramatists, The Flea, and Ensemble Studio Theatre (where he is a proud Lifetime Member) amongst many others. He is a teaching artist with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, where he works with incarcerated individuals on developing critical life skills through an artistic approach, and recently co-directed a production of Keenan Scott II's Thoughts of a Colored Man at Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He is also a Professor of Acting at Adelphi University, and co-founder and instructor of Performing Prose.
Naysan Mojgani (Round House Theatre)
Naysan Mojgani is the Associate Artistic Director at Round House Theatre in the Washington, DC area. As a theatre scholar, director, and dramaturg, Naysan has worked on new and classic work with theatres around the country, including Arena Stage (where he served as Literary Manager), La Jolla Playhouse, MOXIE, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, TheatreSquared, Malashock Dance, and Signature Theatre, and has taught at UC San Diego and George Mason University. Naysan holds a PhD in Theatre & Drama from UC San Diego and a BA from Carleton College.
Jack Moore (The Public Theater)
Jack Phillips Moore is a dramaturg, story consultant and theater administrator with a focus on new play development. He works as the Director of New Artists at The Public Theater, where he has overseen the development of dozens of new plays and musicals. Projects Jack has dramaturged have premiered at The Public Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, American Repertory Theater, Baltimore Center Stage, The Flea, Ars Nova, Long Wharf, The Alley and South Coast Rep and have won numerous honors including the Princess Grace Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Jack has taught theater courses at NYU and Syracuse University and has served as a facilitator and jurist for Playwrights Realm, SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Leah Ryan Prize, the Kilroys, and the Orchard Project among many others. He is a graduate of New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
Emily Shain (Actor)
Emily Shain is a New York based theatermaker and coach. As an actor she has worked at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, San Diego Rep, JACK, La Jolla Playhouse, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Guthrie Theater, amongst others. As a teacher, Emily has taught and directed at Adelphi University, NYU, UCSD, New York Film Academy and the New Mexico State University Las Cruces. Emily is a partner with the Back Room Shakespeare Project and a co-founder and instructor of Performing Prose.
Jesús I. Valles (Actor)
Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, writer-performer from Cd. Juarez/El Paso. Jesús is the winner of the 2023 Yale Drama Series selected by Jeremy O. Harris (Bathhouse.pptx), the winner of the 2022 Kernodle Playwriting Prize (a river, its mouths), and was named the 2022 Emerging Theatre Professional by the National Theatre Conference. As a playwright, Jesús received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Kennedy Center, The Flea, Teatro Vivo, and Outsider Festival. For their work as a poet, Jesús’ received fellowships from CantoMundo, Lambda Literary, Community of Writers, Idyllwild Arts, Undocupoets, and Tin House.
Alexis Williams (The Playwrights Realm)
Alexis Williams is the Associate Artistic Director of The Playwrights Realm in NY where her focus is providing support and mentorship to early career playwrights. Previously, she was an agent with Bret Adams Artists’ Agency where she represented playwrights, directors, composers, designers and choreographers. Before joining the Bret Adams Team, Alexis worked at McCarter Theatre Center, Contemporary Stage Company, and served as Literary Manager for Detroit’s Planet Ant Theatre. In her time in the theatre she has worked as a director, a producer, a dramaturg, a teaching artist, and has assumed multiple other roles in the industry. She has appeared on panels for the National New Play Network, the League Of Professional Theatre Women, the NUEA, and the Musical Theatre Factory; has conducted roundtable discussions with the New School for Drama, InterAct's Core Writer's Group and Paragraph NY. In Fall of 2017 Alexis was named one of the Interval's "Women To Watch." Alexis is on the advisory board of SPACE on Ryder Farm, is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
