"How to Get Published," Saturday, December 4, Mississauga

Girl Crazy by one of Martha's clients

An editor & an agent tell all
Saturday, December 4
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Chartwell Baptist Church
1880 Lakeshore Road West, Mississauga (Map here.)

If you've ever dreamed of becoming a published author, this workshop is for you. We’ll cover everything from getting started to getting an agent, from getting your short pieces published to finding a book publisher, from writing a query letter to writing what the publishers want. Bring your questions. Come and get ready to be published!

Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing teacher for more than 25 years. He has helped many of his students get their first book published and launch their careers as authors.

Guest speaker, Martha Magor Webb, is a literary agent with Anne McDermid and Associates. The McDermid agency represents literary novelists and commercial novelists of high quality and writers of non-fiction in the areas of memoir, biography, history, literary travel, narrative science, investigative journalism and true crime. The agency also represents a certain number of children's and YA writers and writers in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

The McDermid agency's clients include distinguished literary authors such as Michael Crummey, Camilla Gibb, Greg Hollingshead, Andrew Pyper, Nino Ricci, David Adams Richards, Michael Winter and Vincent Lam, who won the Giller Prize in 2006. The agency also represents writers of narrative non-fiction, such as Charles Montgomery and James MacKinnon, both of whom won the Charles Taylor prize for literary non-

fiction in their years of publication. More recently, the agency has been branching out to represent upmarket commercial fiction writers, such as Leah McLaren from the Globe and Mail, Robert Wiersema, and Peter Darbyshire. (More on the McDermid Agency here.)

Martha & son Tobias

Martha represents a growing list of writers, focusing on literary fiction, narrative non-fiction (including memoir and true crime) and ideas-driven non-fiction. Her clients include Pasha Malla (long-listed for the Giller, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, winner of the Danuta Gleed and the Trillium awards), Damian Tarnopolsky (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Amazon.ca award) Russell Smith, Jessica Grant, (winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel and the Winterset Awards) Nicholas Ruddock, and Andrew Westoll.

In 2009, Martha was named to the Quill and Quire’s “12 to Watch: The Faces of Publishing’s Future,” which the trade magazine puts out every five years.

Special Option: Participants are invited to bring a draft of a query letter you might use to interest an agent or publisher in your book. You don’t need to bring anything, but if you do, 3 copies could be helpful.

Fee: $38.94 plus hst = $44 paid in advance
or $42.48 plus hst = $48 if you wait to pay at the door

To reserve your spot, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca

For information about all of Brian's writing workshops and creative writing courses, see here.