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Thursday, July 2, 2020

A ninth agent at Canadian-based Transatlantic Literary is looking for authors

From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
represented by Transatlantic
Transatlantic Agency
2 Bloor Street East
Suite 3500
Toronto, Ontario, Canada 

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Chelene Knight has just joined Transatlantic Literary as an Associate Agent and is actively building a list of fiction writers and memoirists.
Chelene has worked on the editorial side of publishing and in the magazine industry for years. She is the author of the poetry collection Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American literary journals, plus the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, and the Toronto Star. Her work is anthologized in Making RoomLove Me TrueSustenanceThe Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book award.
Chelene has worked as a substantive editor for manuscripts in literary fiction, historical fiction, hybrid and traditional memoir, and most recently, children’s books. She has juried for many literary prizes, including the Amazon First Novel Award. She’s also been on many arts boards’ granting juries, including the Canada Council for the Arts, and participated in numerous literary festivals across Canada.
Chelene was the previous managing editor at Room magazine and festival director for the Growing Room Literary Festival in Vancouver. She is now founder and CEO of Breathing Space Creative Literary Management. She often gives talks about home, belonging and belief, inclusivity, and community building through authentic storytelling. She teaches poetry at the University of Toronto online.
Chelene is primarily interested in literary fiction and memoir. For fiction, she is drawn to character-driven narratives with rich language that push boundaries (think Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye). She also looks for books that encourage the setting to be a living character (think Amber Dawn’s Sub Rosa).
For memoir, beyond a compelling story, she needs an unconventional structure that amplifies the narrator’s experiences and contributes to the reflective voice in a unique way (think Lidia Yuknavitch’s Chronology of Water).
“I have a soft spot for gritty stories where human nature, resilience, and experience take centre stage,” says Chelene. “The ‘grit’ lends its qualities to books where the story and its characters have some of the roughness, imperfection and complexity of the real world.”
She especially encourages BIPOC writers to submit.
Please include a 20-page sample of your work.

Eight other agents at Transatlantic are also looking for authors. See here and here.

Evan Brown
If you’re interested in meeting an agent and in getting published, don’t miss our upcoming  How to Get Published  workshops Saturday, Oct 3, in Toronto with Evan Brown of Transatlantic Literary Agency (see here) and Saturday, Oct 24, in Guelph with Paige Sisley of the CookeMcdermid agency  (see here).

In the meanwhile, the best way of upping your game as a writer may be with a weekly course. This summer, Brian’s offering several courses online and accessible everywhere:
Online:  Writing Personal Stories, Tuesday evenings, July 7 – Aug 18. Details here.                          
Online: Welcome to Creative Writing, Wednesday afternoons, July 8 – Aug 19. Details here
Online: Intensive Creative Writing, Tuesday afternoons, July 7 – Aug 25 and Wednesday evenings, July 8 – Aug 26. Details here. – Both Intensive classes are currently full, waiting list only. 

Beyond that, Brian’s post-lockdown workshop schedule continues to take shape:

Diving tower at Arowhon Pines in Algonquin Park
July and August
Algonquin Park Writing RetreatsJoin me for a magical weekend at Arowhon Pines Resort, an outpost of luxury in the middle of the wilderness,  for a writing retreat. Two sessions: Thursday, July 9  – Sunday, July 12 (see here) and Friday, Aug 28 – Monday, Aug 31 (see here).
Burlington: Raising the Stakes: How to increase your story's tension, Saturday, July 18. Details here.
Southampton Art School: Head out to this lovely beach town on Lake Huron for two workshops: How to Build Your Story, Saturday, July 25 (see here) and  How to Write Great Characters, Sunday, July 26 (see here).
Oakville: "You can write great dialogue," Saturday, Aug 8. Details here.  
Collingwood: "You can write great dialogue," Saturday, Aug 15.  Details here.
St. Catharines: How to Make Yourself Write," Saturday, Aug 22.  Details here.

September
Mississauga: Writing for Children and for Young Adults with Anne Shone, Executive Editor, Scholastic Books, Saturday, September 12. Details here.

Fall Classes
Online: Welcome to Creative Writing, Thursday afternoons, Sept 24 – Dec 3. Details here.
Online: Writing Kid Lit, Thursday evenings, Sept 24 – Nov 26. Details here.
Burlington: Intensive Creative Writing, Tuesday mornings, Sept 15 – Dec 15
Online: Intensive Creative Writing, Wednesday evenings, Sept 16 to Dec 9 – this class is almost full. Details here.
Online: Intensive Creative Writing, Friday mornings. Sept 18 – Dec 11 – this class is almost full. Details here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule hereincluding writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.


Navigation tips: Always check out the Labels underneath a post; they’ll lead you to various distinct collections of postings. If you're searching for more interviews with literary agents or a literary agent who represents a particular type of book, check out this post.

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