This page will be updated as more faculty members are
confirmed for the 2023 Carolina Writing Workshop.
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Swati Hegde is a desi adult romance and YA author. By day, she’s a mindset coach and freelance editor. She is also a self-proclaimed coffee shop enthusiast who lives in Bangalore, India, and can usually be found at the nearest café with a hot mug of tea.
At the 2023 online Carolina WW, Swati is offering add-on manuscript critiques for attendees.
Swati is represented by Rachel Beck at Liza Dawson Associates. Her debut romantic comedy novel MATCH ME IF YOU CAN is out 2024 from Ballantine Bantam Dell, Penguin Random House.
“I write funny romance novels featuring strong heroines, sweet-as-honey heroes, and happily-ever-afters that will make you tear up and laugh all at once. Oh, and did I mention they’re all desi characters? I live in Bangalore, India, and my writing always centers people like me living in my home country. Right now, I’m working on MATCH ME IF YOU CAN, my desi romantic comedy out 2024 from Random House, ft. an aspiring matchmaker heroine, a pub owner hero, and tons of mis-matchmaking and misunderstandings.” See her website here.
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Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers ROCK PAPER SCISSORS, SNAKES AND LADDERS, and THE IRON RING; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels THE SENSE OF DEATH, THE SENSE OF RECKONING, THE FALCON AND THE OWL, A FURNACE FOR YOUR FOE, A SERPENT’S TOOTH, and BE WITH THE DEAD; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts, including CLOSE THESE EYES and WRITE IN WATER.
Matty lives with her husband, Wade Walton, and their dogs in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and enjoys vacationing on Mount Desert Island, Maine, and Sedona, Arizona, and these locations provide the settings for her work. Matty is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers.
At the 2023 online CWW, Matty is teaching a speech.
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Amanda Sun is a published YA author and proud Nerdfighter. She is an Associate Editor at Scholastic Canada.
At the 2023 online Carolina workshop, Amanda is offering add-on virtual manuscript critiques for attendees.
Amanda is the author of the Paper Gods series, a YA Fantasy set in Japan about dangerous drawings coming to life. She also wrote HEIR TO THE SKY, which was nominated for the Aurora Award for Best YA Novel of 2016. She has contributed to several award-winning anthologies, including the Asian SF/F anthology WHERE THE STARS RISE, STRANGERS AMONG US, THE SUM OF US, TESSERACTS FIFTEEN, and SHADES WITHIN US.
Many of her novels and short fiction have been Aurora Award nominees and Junior Library Guild selections, as well as Indigo Top Teen Picks and USA Today features. When not reading or writing, Sun is an avid cosplayer and crafter. She has a degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, and will happily write your name for you in Egyptian hieroglyphs if you ask.
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USA Today bestselling author A.S. Green lives in chilly Minnesota and spends the all-too-short summers on Lake Superior, which is the muse for her paranormal and contemporary romances. She writes complex characters, action-packed plots, and snarky in-your-face banter. And, of course, loads of steamy love scenes.
At the 2023 online CWW, Anne will be giving a speech and also offering attendees add-on manuscript critiques.
When she’s not writing romance, she’s probably watching Outlander or pleading (unsuccessfully) with her husband to don the kilt she bought him last summer.
You can find her on most social platforms at @asgreenbooks.
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Eric Smith is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, with a love for young adult books, literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction.
At the 2023 online CWW, Eric is teaching a class. He is also meeting with attendees for one-on-one pitch meetings.
He’s worked on award-winning and New York Times bestselling titles, and began his publishing career at Quirk Books. A frequent blogger, his ramblings about books and the publishing industry regularly appear on Book Riot, Paste Magazine, and Publishing Crawl. He also occasionally writes books when he finds the time, like his latest, Don’t Read the Comments (Inkyard Press).
Eric is eagerly acquiring fiction and nonfiction projects. He’s actively seeking out new, diverse voices in young adult (particularly sci-fi and fantasy), middle grade, and literary and commercial fiction (again, loves sci-fi and fantasy, but also thrillers and mysteries). In terms of non-fiction, he’s interested in cookbooks, pop culture, humor, middle grade, essay collections, and blog-to-book ideas.
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Lindsay Flanagan of Tobias Literary Agency is an agent assistant, editor, and author living in Utah. As of 2023, she is now taking on her own clients.
At the 2023 virtual CWW, Lindsay is teaching a speech. She is also meeting with attendees one-on-one for pitches.
Lindsay earned her Master of Arts degree in English and Creative Writing and has spent the last decade reading, writing, and editing–basically, living her dream. Her debut novel, a young adult fantasy titled ANNAGREY AND THE CONSTELLATION, comes out in August 2023.
She’s personally looking for adult work only in fantasy (all categories), mystery, thriller, romance, women’s fiction, upmarket, and maybe even a thriller. Her dream acquisition would have been The Night Circus. She likes work that has hints of magic and a bit of darkness. She is open to all voices and is seeking a diverse list of authors to represent with a particular interest in seeing work from Indigenous creators.
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Reiko Davis is a literary agent with DeFiore & Company.
At the 2023 online CWW, Reiko is teaching a class, and also meeting with attendees for one-on-one virtual pitches.
Before joining DeFiore in 2016, Reiko Davis was at Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency for four years. She grew up in Kansas City, received her BA in Comparative Literature and Art History from Brown University, and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course.
Reiko’s interests are varied, but on the adult side she’s primarily seeking literary and book club fiction. She loves historical, contemporary, or multigenerational novels both in the U.S. and internationally; family sagas; voice-driven coming-of-age stories; the occasional rom-com; and fierce, compassionately written works that grapple with identity and belonging and portray diverse lived experiences. She’d love to connect with promising writers of short fiction who are at work on a debut story collection and/or novel.
She also represents select narrative non-fiction projects that explore social justice, issues of race and gender, and the history and experiences of women and people of color. She loves compelling journalistic narratives that read like fiction or that use an intimate personal story as a lens for a larger issue or analysis. She consumes a lot of true crime in her free time so is open to seeing projects in the vein of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, The Fact of a Body, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil if a project like that were to cross her desk.
On the children’s side, Reiko is actively looking for middle grade projects that aren’t afraid to tackle big questions or important emotional truths, and do so through remarkable storytelling, humor, and heart. Right now she’s especially on the lookout for middle grade non-fiction in the areas of mental health, science, political activism, environmentalism, and narrative history. She has a real soft spot for middle grade novels that empower kids to make a difference in their communities.
She’s not looking for adult genre category fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, horror) or adult nonfiction with a highly prescriptive bent.
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Gabrielle Prendergast is a writer, teacher and designer. She is the author of many books for kids (young adult, middle grade, and picture books). She is represented by Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency. In 2018 she won the BC Book Prizes Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and toured the province as part of the BC Book Prizes Tour. In 2017 Gabrielle took part in the TD Canada Children’s Book Week Tour. In 2015 she was nominated for the BC Book Prizes and chosen to tour the province to promote BC Books. In 2014 she was the Writer in Residence at Vancouver Public Library. She has also been nominated for the White Pine Award and the CLA Award.
Gabrielle won the Westchester Award for Audacious. Audacious was included in CBC’s list of 100 YA Books That Make You Proud to be Canadian. A poem from Capricious was chosen for the 2014 Poetry in Transit Program. Pandas on the East Side was chosen as an Ontario Library Association Best Bet for Junior Fiction in 2016. It was also nominated/shortlisted for the Chocolate Lily Award, The Red Cedar Award, the Diamond Willow Award, the Myrca Award and the Vancouver Book Award. Her most recent book is the YA sci-fi Zero Repeat Forever, which won the 2018 BC Book Prizes’ Sheila A Egoff Award.
At the 2023 online CWW event, she is teaching.
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Claire Draper is a literary agent with The Bent Agency.
“I fell in love with books later than some, when my high school best friend dragged me to the theater to see Twilight. I became a book fanatic after that. There was not a time you could catch me without a book on my person or fanfiction open on my phone. I read every YA novel available and quickly moved on to the adult romance section, which was decently larger at the local Borders. I decided I wanted to be involved in books any way I could. I ended up moving from California to New York to try and get a degree and weasel my way into book publishing.
At the 2023 online CWW, Claire is teaching a speech, and meeting with attendees for one-on-one virtual pitches. Learn more about Claire here on her Agent Page.
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Shelli R. Johannes is the author of 18 books (out and forthcoming). She is the coauthor (with Kimberly Derting) of the popular CECE LOVES SCIENCE series and PENNY (An Engineering Tale of the Fourth Pig). In addition to her tween and teen novels, she is also the author of the THEO THESAURUS series and SHINE LIKE A UNICORN. Her new chapter book in Chelsea Clinton’s “She Persisted” series on FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE comes out in March 2023. See all her kids books here and all her teen novels here.
At the 2023 CWW, Shelli is teaching a class.
Shelli can often be found on highways and country roads saving strays and other jaywalking critters or volunteering with animal conservation groups. After earning a master’s to follow her passion of writing.
She lives in Atlanta with her own pack of unicorns: a British husband, two teens, two Goldendoodles, one sassy bird, and the many loud characters that “live” in her head. Shelli is addicted to exclamation points, puns, unicorns, and anything sciencey. You can always count on her to laugh at her own jokes, at least once.
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Brian A. Klems (@BrianKlems) is the former online editor of WritersDigest.com. He is current the director of Writing Day Workshops.
He is the coordinator of the 2023 online Chesapeake Writing Workshop. At the event, he is offering add-on query critiques for attendees.
His blog during his tenure there, The Writer’s Dig—which covered everything writing and publishing—was one of the largest blogs in the writing community.
Brian’s first book, Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Guide to Raising Daughters (Adams Media) was released in 2013. It received high-level buzz and praise from some of the funniest writers alive, including Dave Barry and Bruce Cameron. Brian is also a proud graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, a husband, softball infielder, perennial fantasy sports underachiever, and father of three lovely little girls.