Agent and Editor Biographies

As confirmations are received, agents, editors and their biographies will be listed. Please check back regularly for updates and additions.

Lewis Chambers, Agent, Bethel Agency
Representing writers for nearly 40 years, the Bethel Agency is headed by Lewis Chambers. Lewis accepts screenplays and writing for theater, but also reads fiction and nonfiction, works of interest to women, and won’t shy away from “gritty” or controversial materials, as evidenced in some of his recent titles: The Truth About Vasectomy, by Marvin Grosswirth; Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO Abductees, by Judith and Alan Gansberg. Lewis represents Edgar Award-nominated Dean Feldmeyer (Viper Quarry).

Sara Crowe, Agent, Harvey Kinger, Inc.
Sara was previously a foreign rights agent at Trident Media Group where she worked with Russell Banks, Michael Ondaatje and Louis Sachar, among others, and worked as an agent at the Wylie Agency in New York and in Wylie's London office. She seeks adult fiction and non-fiction, and young adult and middle-grade fiction and non-fiction for children. Recent sales include: Benjamin Dolnick's debut novel Zoology to Vintage in the US and to Harper Press in the UK; humorist Brian Sack's debut In the Event of My Untimely Demise to Harper San Francisco; Ghost Road Blues author Jonathan Maberry's non-fiction book Zombie CSI to Citadel; Kristen Tracy's young adult debut Lost It to Simon Pulse; Elizabeth Holmes's middle-grade debut Pretty Is to Dutton; former fit model and fashion entrepreneur Paige Adams-Geller and celebrity fitness consultant and Nike fitness professional Ashley Borden's fitness and lifestyle book Do These Jeans Make Me Look Fat? to McGraw-Hill; Jacqueline Kolosov's young adult debut The Red Queen's Daughter to Hyperion; Deputy Editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education Peter Schmidt's Color and Money: How Rich White Kids are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action to Palgrave Macmillan; and Yuko Taniguchi's debut novel The Ocean in the Closet to Coffee House Press.

Jeff Gerecke, Agent, Gina Maccoby Literary Agency
Jeff Gerecke was with the JCA Literary Agency from 1987 until 2004, when he left JCA to work as an independent, affiliated with the Gina Maccoby Literary Agency. Before that he worked as foreign scout (representing such publishers as Hodder & Stoughton, Rizzoli, and Heyne), and as a publicist for the University of California Press. At JCA he has worked with the best-selling authors W.E.B. Griffin and Ernest J. Gaines. His client David Ellis was the winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Jeff is an active member of the Association of Authors Representatives where he has chaired and worked on the Royalty Statements Committee since its inception. His interests include literary and historical fiction, mystery/suspense, and several areas of nonfiction: current events/politics, history, business, pop culture, movies.

Kathleen Gilligan, Editor, St. Martin’s Press
Katie Gilligan is an Associate Editor at Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, where she’s worked with a wide variety of authors whose material ranges from commercial women’s fiction to political non-fiction. Recently, she’s published McSweeney’s alumna Diane Vadino (Smart Girls Like Me), T. Lynn Ocean (Southern Fatality), and Sirius Satellite Radio’s Susan Konig (I Wear the Maternity Pants in This Family). Katie has also worked with the New York Times bestselling authors John Hart (King of Lies, Down River), Thomas Oliphant (Praying for Gil Hodges, Utter Incompetents), and Newt Gingrich (Pearl Harbor). A graduate of Smith College with dual degrees in English and Italian Language & Literature, Katie has been with Thomas Dunne Books for 3 years. She is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course.

Jerry Gross, Editor, Gerald Gross Associates
A fiction and nonfiction generalist editor for over forty years, Jerry does in-depth, problem-solving editorial critiques. Other editorial services include cutting, restructuring, rewriting, and line editing. He also develops, critiques and edits fiction and nonfiction proposals. His goals are to help the author write to the best of his or her ability, teach writing skills valuable not only for the current manuscript but for those to come, and to make the manuscript as effective and salable as possible. He edits and critiques all areas of mainstream fiction except category romances, westerns, Science Fiction and Fantasy and children’s and Young Adult books, and all areas of nonfiction except finance, sports, religion and inspiration. Jerry edited what has become the standard work on trade book editing in the U.S., Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do. During the SMU Seminar, Jerry will deliver a lecture entitled Understanding the Editorial Mind: How to Have a Happy, Creative Relationship With an Editor.

Rachel Kahan, Editor, Putnam
Rachel Kahan has been a Senior Editor at G.P. Putnam’s Sons since 2005. At Putnam she has edited authors such as Kate Mosse, Stuart Woods and Jack Whyte. Current successes include the novels Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin and The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs, both of which have appeared on the New York Times list and sold in over 12 territories. Before coming to Putnam, Ms. Kahan spent eight years at Crown Publishers, where she published non-fiction bestsellers like The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love by Jill Conner Browne and Tulipomania by Mike Dash. At Crown, she created and ran a specialized program of historical fiction that published many internationally known authors. She has been a guest lecturer on publishing topics at Columbia University, New York University, and the City College of New York and speaks frequently at writers conferences both in the US and abroad. Born and raised near Washington, D.C., Ms. Kahan holds degrees in English and Spanish literature from the College of William and Mary and did graduate study at Harvard’s Radcliffe Publishing Course.

Beena Kamlani, Editor, Viking Press
Senior development editor at Viking Penguin, Beena has worked in book publishing for over two decades, editing many well-known writers, including Saul Bellow. Kamlani's own fiction has appeared in Identity Lessons and Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin). Kamlani has received fellowships from Yaddo and Ledig House, and won a Tennessee Williams Scholarship at Sewanee and a fiction grant from the Connecticut Arts Commission. She has also taught editing classes for twelve years at New York University, where she received an award for excellence in teaching. Kamlani lives in New York and is working on completing her first novel. During the SMU Seminar, Beena will deliver a lecture entitled The Publishing World: An Editor's Point of View.

Sally Kim, Editor, Shaye Areheart Books
Sally Kim is a senior editor at Shaye Areheart Books, the literary fiction imprint at The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., where her authors include Gillian Flynn (Sharp Objects, Edgar nominee), Lisa Unger (Beautiful Lies, New York Times bestseller), Lee Martin (The Bright Forever, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Justin Evans (A Good and Happy Child), and Leah Stewart (The Myth of You and Me). Previously an editor at St. Martin's Press and at HarperCollins, she has worked in book publishing for 12 years. She is on the board of directors for the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a member of the Women's Media Group. She was a Frankfurt Fellow in 2006, and in 2007, participated in the Visiting International Publishers Program in Sydney, Australia.

Miriam Kriss, Agent, Irene Goodman Agency
Miriam Kriss joined the Irene Goodman Literary Agency just as she was finishing her master’s degree in Fine Arts at New York University, and quickly became one of the hottest young agents in town. Going from Michelangelo to Nora Roberts was not as great a leap as it might seem, as Miriam had been obsessively reading commercial fiction since she found a copy of Judith McNaught’s classic Whitney, My Love in a rented lakeside cabin when she was thirteen. A few pages in, not only were some gaps in her Catholic school education filled, but she was hooked. She reads fast: one hundred pages an hour, a novel a day, and well, that adds up to a lot of books a year. Miriam likes to say Irene knows the market because she’s been doing this for over twenty-five years and is savvy as all get out, but Miriam herself knows the market because she is the market. And that knowledge has paid off for both her and her clients in a big way. Sales to major publishers include several six-figure deals for first-time authors, and her client list continues to grow. Her first solo sale, also from a first-time author, hit several bestseller lists in its first week out. She has since had numerous clients appear on the USA Today list, as well as two clients who have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, at one point during the same memorable week. What’s more, now that reading is legitimately “work”, she devours two or three novels and manuscripts a day.

Dan Lazar, Senior Agent, Writers House Literary Agency
Dan has been with Writers House for five years, representing fiction, narrative non-fiction, parenting, pop-culture, young adult and middle grade fiction. Some recent books include: Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon (Harper), How to Tell if Your Boyfriend is the Antichrist by Pat Carlin (Quirk) and The Chicken Dance by Jacques Couvillon (Bloomsbury Children's Books). During the SMU Writer’s Seminar, Dan will deliver a lecture entitled The Publishing World: An Agent’s Point of View.

Pat LoBrutto, Editor, Pat LoBrutto Editorial Services
Patrick LoBrutto has been an editor, author and anthologist for over 30 years. He has worked in all areas of Fiction and Nonfiction specializing in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Westerns, Military History and Mysteries. He has worked for Ace Books, Doubleday, M. Evans, Random House, Kensington, Stealth Press (an Internet Publisher) and Bantam. He has held the position of Editor, Senior Editor and Editor-in-Chief, working with authors like Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, Eric Van Lustbader, Walter Tevis, the Louis L’Amour Estate, the Star Wars novelizations, Don Coldsmith, F. Paul Wilson, Joe R. Lansdale, the Dune Novels of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson and Loren Estleman. He has received the World Fantasy Award for editing. He currently lectures at writer’s conferences and works as an Editorial Consultant and Master Class Instructor for authors, an Acquiring Editor for Tor/Forge and Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press and as a scout for the Trident Media Group. He is on the National Advisory Board of the Writer's Hall of Fame of America and the Board of Advisors of Literate Nation Atlanta.

Donald Maass, Agent, Donald Maass Literary Agency
Donald Maass is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York, which he founded in 1980. He represents more than 100 fiction writers and sells more than 100 novels per year to top publishers in America and overseas. Recently he has obtained six- and seven-figure advances from publishers such as Warner, Ballantine, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Harcourt Brace, Penguin Canada and others for authors like mystery writer Anne Perry, thriller writer Gregg Keizer, historical novelist Jack Whyte and science fiction writers Diane Duane and Todd McCaffrey. He is himself the author of fourteen pseudonymous novels and of the books The Career Novelist (Heineman, 1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (Writers Digest Press, 2001) and the forthcoming Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (Writers Digest Press, 2004). He is a past president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives, Inc. (AAR).

Michael Seidman, Editor, Michael Seidman Editorial Consultations
Called by Publishers Weekly "one of the business’ more wry and quotable editors," has spent more than forty years in the publishing industry; he turned to the editorial side in 1968, after spending time in a literary agency, on the staff of a book review, and as an editorial assistant to Theodore Solotaroff on New American Review. Best known for his work as a mystery editor (PW credited him with "building [at Walker & Company] a line of accessible but intelligent hardcovers that is rare for a publisher of any real size"), he received the first American Mystery Award as Best Book Editor in 1987; he was a nominee for the same award in the Horror Category in 1990. In 1993, the Southwest Mystery and Suspense Convention honored him as Editor of the Year. He has edited books of every kind and in every category, working at several publishing houses including Fawcett/Crest, New American Library, Ace/Charter and TOR. He was the editor in chief of The Mysterious Press and editorial director of Zebra/Pinnacle. Seidman is now a consulting editor with several publishers as well as working with individual writers.

Rebecca Strauss, Agent, McIntosh & Otis, Inc
Prior to joining McIntosh & Otis, Inc., Rebecca worked for Sony Pictures as a book scout and development assistant and at Trident Media Group as a foreign rights assistant. She earned her degree in English Literature from Duke University. She oversees the sale of translation and subsidiary rights for M&O. Rebecca's primary interests are non-fiction, literary and commercial fiction, women's fiction, memoirs, and pop culture.

Carrie Thornton, Editor, Crown Publishing
Carrie Thornton is an Editor at The Crown Publishing Group where she acquires for the Crown hardcover imprint and the Three Rivers Press trade paperback imprint. Her areas of interest include narrative nonfiction, popular culture, music, film, humor, travel writing, dating and relationships, quirky nonfiction and trade paperback original fiction. She does not acquire category fiction in the areas of romance, mystery, science fiction, thriller or horror. Some of her recent books include Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem, How Soon is Never? by Marc Spitz, Esquire Presents: What it Feels like… edited by A.J. Jacobs and The Dictionary of Failed Relationships edited by Meredith Broussard.

Rachel Vater, Agent, Folio Literary Management
Rachel joined Folio Literary Management in June, 2007 and is actively growing her client list. Prior to joining Folio, she worked as an agent with Lowenstein-Yost Associates and the Donald Maass Literary Agency. This year, Rachel has had the honor of selling debut books for six first-time authors who she discovered via query mail. She looks for writers who aren't afraid of revisions, and will give as many editorial notes as needed to get a book or proposal completely polished prior to submitting to editors. Rachel looks for writers who are passionate and committed to building a long-term career. She is especially interested in books appealing to younger readers, from young teens to women in their early 30s, and edgy or funny young adult or middle grade books with a lyrical writing style or zingy tone. Rachel reads mainstream and literary fiction for all ages, as well as fantasy novels. In nonfiction Rachel reads narrative nonfiction, witty pop culture books, and smart women's prescriptive nonfiction

Past participants include:

Barbara Braun, Ph.D., Agent, Barbara Braun Associates

John Baker, Agent, Barbara Braun Associates

Jeff Gerecke, Agent, Gina Maccoby Literary Agency

Jerry Gross, Editor, Gerald Gross Associates

Becki Heller, Editor, St. Martin’s Press

Juris Jurjevics, Editor, Publisher, Soho Books

Sally Kim, Editor, Shaye Areheart Books

Dan Lazar, Agent, Writers House Literary Agency

Pat LoBrutto, Editor, Pat LoBrutto Editorial Services

Cameron McClure, Agent, Donald Maass Literary Agency

Jessica Mae Pavlas, Trident Media Group

Emily Saladino, Writers House

Michael Seidman, Editor, Michael Seidman Editorial Consultations

Carrie Thornton, Editor, Crown Publishing

Elizabeth Winick, Agent, McIntosh and Otis, Inc,

Susan Zeckendorf, Agent, Susan Zeckendorf Associates, Inc.

Questions?
Call 214-SMU-WRITE or send an email to smuthink@smu.edu.