Killer Nashville Agents / Editors Info
General Information
Our agents and editors are an invaluable resource and, without them, Killer Nashville wouldn’t have the reputation it does for helping emerging writers to find a foothold in the publishing world. Since we began our agent/editor roundtables in 2007, hundreds of conference attendees have found representation for themselves and their work at the Killer Nashville Writers’ Conference. Each year, we hear dozens of success stories that list our roundtables as one of the most valuable resources that we offer, but things weren’t always so easy.
In previous conference years, Killer Nashville offered agent and editor pitches. Although the offering was popular, and many capitalized on the opportunity with much success, we knew that Killer Nashville could offer more. After conducting painstaking research and engaging in discussion with agents/other conference organizers, we implemented our round-table format. These roundtable pitches not only offered the writers a chance to pitch their work by letting their pages speak for themselves, but they also made it possible for the writers to receive feedback from established agents and editors.
Past publishers and agencies represented include Alice Speilburg Literary Agency, Andrea Brown Literary Agency, BookEnds Literary Agency, Brower Literary Agency, China Grove Press, Corvisiero Literary Agency, Diversion Books, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret, Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency, Exhibit A Books, Fiery Seas Publishing, Fine Literary Agency, Fine Print Literary Agency, Five Star Mysteries, Folio Literary Management, Foundry Literary + Media, Holloway Literary, Inklings Literary Agency, Keller Media, Kensington Publishing, L. Perkins Agency, Liza Dawn Literary Agency, Lowenstein Associates, Maria Carvainis Agency, McIntoch & Otis, Nancy Yost Literary Agency, Regal Hoffman & Associates, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, Sheree Bykofsky Associates, St. Martin’s Press, Stonesong Literary Agency, Storm Literary Agency, Talcott Notch Literary Agency, The Seymour Agency, Trident Media Group, and Writer House.
The Killer Nashville 2022 Lineup
Joëlle Delbourgo / Joëlle Delbourgo Associates Literary Agency
Joëlle Delbourgo represents a broad range of adult nonfiction and fiction. Her authors include New York Times bestselling fiction writer Ben H. Winters, winner of both the Edgar Award and the Philip K. Dick Award; Jim Obergefell, named plaintiff in the Supreme Court marriage equality case (Obergefell v. Hodges), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Debbie Cenziper and Dale Russakoff; Dr. Michele Borba, award-winning educator and parenting contributor to The Today Show; New York Times bestselling authors Dale Russakoff, the late Dr. Susan Forward, memoirists Ariel Burger, Ashley Rhodes-Courter, and Israel Meir Lau (former Chief Rabbi of Israel); classicist and historian Philip Freeman; novelists Marilyn Simon Rothstein, Julie Valerie, Marj Charlier and Lindsey J. Palmer, among many others.
Prior to founding the agency, Delbourgo was a senior editorial executive at HarperCollins and Ballantine Books, a division of Random House for more than two decades. Among the authors she worked with are Ken Davis, Abraham Verghese, Lee Smith, Barbara Tuchman, Carl Sagan, Robert Massie, James P. McPherson, Jim Davis, Sophy Burnham, Delia Ephron and Margaret George. She began her editorial career at Bantam Books, where she discovered and launched the Choose Your Own Adventure series for kids, which sold millions of copies worldwide.
She holds a Master of the Arts in English and Comparative Literature with Honors from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of the Arts from Williams College, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a double concentration in History and English Literature. Joëlle is as sought-after speaker, panelist, workshop leader and instructor at writing conferences. She has taught publishing and editing at Rutgers University to graduate students. She has lived on three continents, is fluent in French, and considers herself to be a citizen of the world. The proud mother of two, she is an ardent student of Latin and ballroom dance and a dedicated home baker.
Learn more about Joëlle here.
Priya Doraswamy/ Lotus Lane Literary
Priya Doraswamy’s love for books, people, and background in law makes her career as a literary agent the perfect fit for her passions and talents. Priya enjoys working with publishers and writers from around the world. Although physically in New Jersey, her work hours are zone-free. She does admit to occasionally losing track of time zones and waking a writer with an early morning phone call.
Priya is drawn to all genre of fiction and nonfiction. Prior to her agency career, she was a practicing lawyer in New Jersey. Originally from Bangalore, India, Priya immigrated to the New York area many moons ago. For a period of time she relocated with her family to Singapore, and there, began her career as a literary agent. She founded Lotus Lane Literary in May 2013 and continues her journey with writers and publishers.
Learn more about Priya here
Steven Hutson / WordWise Media Services
Steven Hutson is a native of Los Angeles, a child of the 1960s, and a storyteller almost from birth. After several years of freelance editing and directing a writers’ conference, he branched out as a literary agent in early 2011. He has placed his clients’ works with HarperCollins, Dutton, Potomac Books, Harlequin, Thomas Nelson, Hachette, Baker Books, Writer’s Digest Books, and others. Several clients have won prestigious awards, in both the Christian and general markets.
Learn more about Steven here
Dean Krystek / WordLink Incorporated
After retiring from a long military career, Dean put away his uniform and decided to follow his passion for books. He is an alumnus of the University of Maryland and the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in English. He’s a published novelist and short story writer. He currently resides in Pennsylvania with his wife Lynda.
Dean is looking for authors with distinctive voices whose narratives invoke a strong sense of time and place and whose stories create a memorable reading experience. He’d like to see paranormal; crime (police procedural); mysteries (whodunit, cozy); sci-fi (space opera, dystopian, alternate history, time travel); psychological suspense; thrillers (looking for small town America setting vs international in scale); military fiction (character-driven pieces; favoring post-WWII. **Vietnam**). In YA and middle-grade fiction he would like to see mysteries, paranormal, sci-fi, coming of age, and suspense with writing that stirs the imagination and caters to the young reader’s sense of wonder and adventure. Dean is also looking for film & television projects to develop in his areas of interest either as original works or adaptations of an author’s work (published or unpublished).
Learn more about Dean here
Marcy Posner / Folio Literary Management
Marcy attended the University at Buffalo and has a master’s degree from Columbia University. Marcy started out with a brief career as a children’s librarian before she transitioned to publishing. From there, she worked for Pinnacle Books, Rodale Press, Salem House, as Pantheon’s Associate Publisher, during which time she worked with Noam Chomsky, Matt Groening, Art Spiegelman, and Studs Terkel.
For eleven years Marcy worked as a Vice President of The William Morris Agency where she represented bestselling writers as well as selling Foreign Rights. She then moved to Sterling Lord Literistic before landing at Folio Literary Management in 2010.
Learn more about Marcy here
Victoria Skurnick / Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency
Victoria Skurnick came to LGR after being at The Book-of-the Month Club for almost twenty years. As Editor-in-Chief, she relished the opportunity to devour every kind of book, from the finest literary fiction to Yiddish for Dogs. Anne Tyler, John LeCarre, Amy Tan, Tom Wolfe, Stephen King, Michael Lewis, Lee Child, Roddy Doyle, Alice Sebold, Tracy Kidder, Julia Child and Susan Elizabeth Phillips are just a few of the authors that make her deaf and blind to anyone around her when she’s reading.
Victoria’s other addiction besides reading is music. She has sung in many choirs in New York City and spent a few ostensibly happy years singing rock in groups like Big and the Evolution. No, you haven’t heard of it-if you had, she wouldn’t be an agent. She also is the co-author (with Cynthia Katz) of seven novels written by “Cynthia Victor.”
Raised in New Rochelle, NY, Victoria went to the University of Wisconsin where she studied political science with an emphasis on constitutional law, a subject that still fascinates her. Neither adventurous nor peripatetic, she has remained within a 20-mile radius of home since her day of birth.
Learn more about Victoria here
Carly Watters / P.S. Literary
Carly Watters is a SVP and Senior Literary Agent at P.S. Literary. She has a BA in English Literature from Queen’s University and a MA in Publishing Studies from City University London. She began her publishing career in London as an assistant at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency. Carly joined Toronto-based P.S. Literary Agency in 2010 and has sold over 100 books during her career. She represents award-winning and bestselling authors in the adult fiction and non-fiction categories, and select children’s books.
She is known for her long-term vision for her authors and being an excellent collaborator with a nose for commercial success. She has close ties to publishers in the major markets and works directly with film agents to option film and TV rights to leading networks and production companies. Her clients’ books have been translated into 40 languages, optioned for TV and film, adapted into podcasts, and have been on every bestseller list from coast to coast, including the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail.
The popular writing podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, for which Carly is the co-host, has over 500,000 downloads.
Learn more about Carly here
Agent / Editor Roundtables
Each roundtable will consist of 5 writers, 1 agent or editor, and a volunteer to read submissions. When submitting your offering, please remember the following:
- We ask writers to provide a minimum of 7 copies of the first two pages of their manuscript for each member of the group to bring the day of their editor roundtable.
- Please use double spacing with reasonable font sizing, such as 12 pt New Times Roman, with one-inch margins.
- In the header area of the first page, include your name, book title, genre or subgenre, email address and/or phone number, and a one-sentence logline/description of the book to give the reader context. (Note: You may start the text at the top of the first page, rather than dropping down a number of lines to begin a chapter in standard manuscript format.)
After each manuscript is read, the agents and/or editors will give constructive feedback on the pages. Each agent and editor has been asked to keep comments instructional, helping writers see both their strengths and where they need to improve. Agents and editors may request partial or full manuscripts if they think a manuscript has promise.
Since it is understood that these sessions are educational in nature, in practice, each session serves as a pitch without penalizing a writer whose work is not yet ready for representation or publication. In addition, each writer can learn from what is said to the others.
Authors may register for as many sessions as they wish to, however, multiple sessions with the same agent or editor are discouraged. You may sign up for sessions during your conference registration process. Each session is $10.
Manuscript Critiques
Killer Nashville offers manuscript critiques to its registered attendees for the low additional charge of $55 per critique. To learn more about critiques, click here.