Arts
Join us for an informative and lively discussion with two publishing professionals: a former literary agent and a current publishing sales executive. They'll go over the ABCs (really, the 4Cs) of pitching, including some time for audience participation that will put our two presenters in the hot seat. Lance Fitzgerald heads the Penguin Random House Audio editorial team as Vice President, Content and Business Development. Under his leadership, the team has acquired audio rights for the much anticipated new novel from Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults, the international sensation How Contagion Works by Paulo Giordano, soccer legend Hristo Stoichkov’s memoir, and more. He was previously Subsidiary Rights Director for over two decades, is a member of the Frankfurt Book Fair Foreign Rights Advisory Board, and has been a featured speaker at the Writer’s League of Texas, Authors and Artists Representatives, the Columbia and NYU Summer Publishing courses, the Young-to-Publishing Group, and at the Slice Writers Conference. Becka Oliver joined the Writers' League in September 2013 as Executive Director after more than sixteen years of experience working in book publishing. She spent much of her publishing career inside two of the “big six” publishing leaders – Macmillan and Hachette Book Group -- licensing domestic and foreign rights on behalf of countless notable authors, including Sandra Brown, Brad Meltzer, Nicholas Sparks, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, and more. In 2007, she made the leap from Associate Director of Subsidiary Rights at Grand Central Publishing to Literary Agent, first at Endeavor and then at William Morris Endeavor (WME) after the two powerhouse talent agencies merged in 2009. As a literary agent, Becka represented clients working in both fiction and non-fiction, including Brunonia Barry, Sheryl Crow, Kamran Pasha, Joanna Philbin, Susan Rebecca White, and the popular blog Awkward Family Photos.