2022 Killer Nashville Agents & Editors
The Killer Nashville 2022 Lineup
Sue Arroyo / CamCat Books
Sue Arroyo is the Founder and Publisher of award-winning CamCat Books, the first imprint of CamCat Publishing. An entrepreneurial visionary propelled by determination, she built CamCat at the intersection of emerging technology and authorial passion with a commitment to quality. She lives with her “ferocious” guard dog Abbie and is tolerated by her grand-cat Gandalf the Grey.
Learn more about Sue here.
John DeDakis / Independent Editor
Novelist, writing coach, and manuscript editor John DeDakis is a former editor on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” DeDakis is the author of five mystery-suspense novels. His fourth novel, Bullet in the Chamber, is the winner of Reviewers Choice, Foreword INDIES, and Feathered Quill book awards. In his most recent novel, Fake, protagonist Lark Chadwick is a White House correspondent dealing with “fake news” in the era of #MeToo. Fake earned Honorable Mention for the Reviewers Choice Award and was a Finalist for Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion, and for CIBA’s CLUE Award. DeDakis is also the host of the video podcast “One-to-One with John DeDakis” on YouTube.
Learn more about John 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
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
Leslie Zampetti / Dunham Literary
Leslie Zampetti joined Dunham Literary in 2016, having previously interned at The Bent Agency. A writer and former librarian, Leslie has perspective from both sides of the query letter. Leslie is seeking mysteries that layer character explorations with investigation for all ages, under-represented main characters and diverse voices, and narrative nonfiction for adults. @literarylesliez
Learn more about Leslie here.