Your query letter is your first introduction to a potential agent–which is to say, your first introduction to a potential champion of your work, professional advocate, and friend. How do we create a query letter that has that right mix of professionalism, candor, and kindness? How can we explain the book we’ve worked so hard to finish in just a few paragraphs? Author and teacher Diane Zinna will help to demystify the process of cover letters for literary magazine submissions and agent queries! We’ll also look at how to craft a perfect third-person bio and explore the four things an agent query must do. You’ll leave with real tools to help you find the literary champions looking for you.
About Diane Zinna
Diane Zinna is the author of The All-Night Sun (Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and worked for ten years at AWP, the Association of Writers Writing Programs, which hosts the largest literary conference in North America each year. In 2014, Diane created the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons. Her new craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories, Letting Grief Speak, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press and is based on her work teaching a free class, Grief Writing Sundays, for the past five years. Meet her there or online at dianezinna.com.
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