Workshops

JANIKA OZA is the author of the novel A History of Burning, winner of the 2024 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a finalist for the 2024 Carol Shield’s Prize, the 2023 Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. She is the winner of a 2022 O. Henry Award and her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as BOMB Magazine, Apartamento, and Brick. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto.

Jemimah Wei is the author of the highly anticipated THE ORIGINAL DAUGHTER, a Good Morning America Book Club Pick, New York Times Editors’ Pick, and Indie Next pick. It debuted at #1 on the Straits Times Bestseller list, won the Country Award for the Chommanard International Women’s Literary Award, and is longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. The Original Daughter has been named a best book of Spring 2025 by TIME, Foreign Policy, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Vogue, Apple Books, and more. Published by Doubleday (US) and Weidenfeld&Nicolson (UK), it has been translated to Italian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Thai, and Dutch.

Julián Delgado Lopera is the author of The New York Times acclaimed novel Fiebre Tropical (Feminist Press 2020), the Winner of the 2021 Ferro Grumley Award and a 2021 Lambda Literary award; a finalist of the 2020 Kirkus Prize in Fiction and the 2021 Aspen Literary Prize. Julián is also the author of ¡Cuéntamelo! (Aunt Lute 2017) an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award.

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. Her debut novel, The Edge of Water (Tin House Books, 2025), is the Winner of the Westport Prize for Literature, Winner of the Ploughshares John C. Zacharis First Book Award, and a Best Book of the Year at TIME Magazine, Apple Books, Debutiful, Electric Literature, Chicago Review of Books, Well-Read Black Girl, and more. The Edge of Water was also Longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and named Finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, the New American Voices Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, and the Oregon Book Awards. It has been widely praised, including by Oprah Daily, Goodreads, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, Brittle Paper, The Root, and The Lagos Review. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Bankole's work has appeared in various publications, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, Poets & Writers, and elsewhere. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a residency-fellowship from the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.​​

Tiphanie Yanique is a novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer.

Tiphanie is the author of the novel, Monster in the Middle, which was published in 2021 and on numerous best of the year lists.  Monster in the Middle was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and is a finalist for the Townsend Prize.

Tiphanie is also the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection, the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award.  Land of Love and Drowning was also a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.  She is the author of a collection of stories, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, which won her a listing as one of the National Book Foundation's 5Under35 and the Bocas Prize in Fiction.

Farah Ali is the writer of the novels Telegraphy and The River, The Town, and the short-story collection People Want to Live. Her work has been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and has appeared in Shenandoah, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the cofounder of Lakeer.

Jared Lemus is an educator and fiction writer. His debut story collection, Guatemalan Rhapsody, was published with Ecco-HarperCollins on 03/04/2025. He is currently the Kenan Visiting Writer at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is at work on his first novel. Jared is available for book clubs, readings, festivals, panels, and invited talks.

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was nominated for more than a dozen prizes and awards internationally, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and the Southern Book Prize. If I Survive You received American Short Fiction‘s 2023 Constellation Award for a Story Collection and was named Miami New Times’ 2023 Best Book by a Local Author. It was named a ‘best’ book of 2022 by NPR, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vox, Kirkus, BookPage, Real Simple, Literary Hub, and elsewhere.

Morgan Thomas is a writer from the Gulf Coast. They are the author of the books Manywhere and Mad Eden. Their work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, and other publications.

Dr. Camille U. Adams is the author of the memoir, How To Be Unmothered: a Trinidadian memoir (August 2025, Restless Books). How To Be Unmothered is a 2025 Foreword Indies finalist in autobiography and memoir, a 2026 Firecracker Awards finalist in creative nonfiction, a 2023 Restless Books Prize in New Immigrant Writing finalist, an Electric Literature’s Best of 2025 Nonfiction List selection, a National Caribbean American Heritage Book Bankra selection, and a 2025 CLMP Most Celebrated book choice. Camille was also elected by Tantor Media to narrate the audiobook, whereby the distinct poetic prose can be aurally enjoyed. Camille earned her MFA in Poetry from City College CUNY and a Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction from Florida State University. She has been awarded 2024 Best of The Net in nonfiction and has received five Pushcart Prize nominations and three Best of the Net nominations for her writing featured in literary magazines. Her creative nonfiction has also received recognition as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2022. Among Camille’s awarded fellowships is an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellowship, an inaugural Granta nature writing workshop fellowship, an inaugural Anaphora Arts Italy Writing Retreat Fellowship, a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, a Community of Writers Fellowship, and a Roots Wounds Words Fellowship. Camille has also received support from Kenyon Writers Workshop, VONA, and others. Camille has also given back to the literary community by serving as a juried reader for Tin House for three years, as an editor and assistant editor for various literary magazines for years, and as a judge of creative writing contests. At work on new writing, Camille is happiest and most inspired when walking through the woods and when relaxing on the shores of rivers.

Matt Ortile is an associate editor at Condé Nast Traveler. He covers, among many topics: wine and spirits, LGBTQ+ travel, and—as a co-lead editor of the Bright Ideas in Travel franchise—sustainable and ethical tourism. As a writer, Ortile has reported from destinations like France, Saudi Arabia; Palau; Panama; and the Venice Simplon-Orient Express. As an editor, he published How Paris Moves, a series of features written by French journalists about living in and beyond the shadow of the 2024 Olympics. As an on-camera host, he has appeared in short films set in Sydney, Tasmania, and Kangaroo Island, produced with Tourism Australia; in Thailand, with Get Your Guide; and at the Waldorf Astoria New York, for the magazine’s social-video series First Guest. Prior to joining Traveler, Ortile was the executive editor of the literary journal Catapult and the founding editor of BuzzFeed Philippines. He has written for Esquire, Vogue, Afar, and BuzzFeed News, among others. Additionally, he is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name; and a co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves. In addition to English, Ortile speaks Filipino (Tagalog) fluently, and French proficiently; he is studying Italian. He lives in New York and has recently been spending a not-insignificant amount of time in Paris.

SARAH PERRY (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, food culture, body image, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; and Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, a memoir in 100 short essays that came out in February 2025 from Mariner/HarperCollins.

Samra Habib (they/them) is a writer, photographer, and activist. Their bestselling memoir We Have Always Been Here is an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes them to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within them all along. It’s a triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, and a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one’s truest self. As a journalist they’ve covered topics ranging from fashion trends and Muslim dating apps to the rise of Islamophobia in the US. Their writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Advocate, and their photo project, “Just Me and Allah,” has been featured in Nylon, i-D, Vanity Fair Italia, Vice, and The Washington Post. Samra works with LGBTQ organizations internationally, raising awareness of issues that impact queer Muslims around the world.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator. Gutiérrez's first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in The Best Art Books of 2022 by Hyperallergic. Brown Neon was a 2023 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize for Best Lesbian Biography/Memoir, a 2023 Finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firework Award in Creative Nonfiction and Recipient of The Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. They are a 2025 recipient of the United States Artist Fellowship and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Their first poetry collection, Southwest Reconstruction, was published December 2, 2025 on Noemi Press. Gutiérrez has lived on unceded lands of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui people since 2016.

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery and Leslie Feinberg Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace, and elsewhere. Alabi is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of Black reproductive justice writing. Their work has been supported by numerous fellowships, including from MacDowell, Northwestern University, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL

Rob Macaisa Colgate (he/she/they) is a disabled bakla poet and playwright. He is the author of the poetry collection HARDLY CREATURES (Tin House, 2025), winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award and longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the verse drama MY LOVE IS WATER (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025). A 2026 Creative Capital, 2025 National Endowment for the Arts, and 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellow, his work appears in Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, and Poets.org, among others, and has received support from MacDowell, Fulbright, Lambda Literary, Sewanee, Millay, and Kenyon Review. The managing poetry editor at Foglifter, he received an MFA in poetry and critical disability studies from the New Writers Project at UT Austin.

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of the essay collection Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders (Tiny Reparations Books, 2024), longlisted for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and the poetry collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017), recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award nomination, and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, Oxford American, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, served as an Art for Justice Fellow with the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and holds a doctorate in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she lives with her son.

Zefyr Lisowski is the author of three books: the essay collection Uncanny Valley Girls (Harper Perennial 2025), shortlisted for a 2026 Lambda Literary Award in Nonfiction; and the poetry collections Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024), winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). Raised in North Carolina, she lives in New York and elsewhere.

Alyssa Ogi is an Editor at Zando & Tin House, acquiring literary fiction, poetry, and select literary nonfiction. She gravitates toward language-driven work set in lesser-known geographies and is especially drawn to writing that balances wit, tenderness, and innovation amid complex subject matter. Alyssa is committed to championing debut BIPOC and LGBTQ+ authors and writers from historically excluded communities. Her titles have been longlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Awards; finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, NAACP Image Awards, and the Carnegie Medal for Fiction; and winners of the Lambda Literary, Publishing Triangle, and Whiting Awards, among other national accolades. At Tin House and Zando, Alyssa focuses on elevating distinctive literary voices that expand the boundaries of contemporary storytelling.

Amanda is looking for stories and projects that make her feel deeply and that surprise her, whether that be in form, voice, tone, concept, ambition, or all of the above. She is particularly drawn to stories from Asian and Latinx writers, though she is always looking for stories with compelling writing featuring protagonists with a distinct voice and personality; clever, quirky, gritty, and/or twisty stories that keep her reading through the night. For fiction, she’s looking for literary and upmarket adult fiction that feature stories about love, complex relationships, messy family dynamics, folklore and mythology, ghosts, and/or magic, in whatever forms they may take. She is particularly interested in books that bend and mix genre elements, including but not limited to speculative, horror, romance, and fantasy, and books that present the full spectrum of joy and hope and explore both the lightness and darkness of the human condition. She has a soft spot for coming-of-age stories, unique settings, multi-generational family sagas, short story collections, and the occasional urban fantasy. Recent favorites include Weike Wang, Kiley Reid, Ling Ma, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Mary H.K. Choi, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Leigh Bardugo. Unless written by an author of color, she is not the right agent for thrillers, mysteries, procedurals, space operas, or historical fiction, and she is not currently looking for children’s picture books.

Annie Hwang founded Renegade Literary in 2026, where she represents voice-driven literary fiction that plays with elements of genre, alongside a list of established poets. Her authors include John Paul Brammer, Franny Choi, Lilly Dancyger, Carson Faust, Janet Hong, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Hieu Minh Nguyen, and Jihyun Yun. In particular, she is drawn to what she likes to think of as “literary fiction with teeth.” Above all, Annie is always on the hunt for gifted storytelling that stretches its genre to new heights. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she is originally from Los Angeles and now lives in New York.

Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and The Rendering (Omnidawn, 2023). He is a 2022 Whiting winner, 2021 American Book Award winner, a 2020 Poets & Writers debut poet and a 2020 Southwest Book Award winner. Borderland Apocrypha was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN America / Jean Stein Book Award, the California Book Award, the LA Times Book Award in Poetry, as well as longlisted for The Believer Magazine 2020 Editor’s Award in Poetry. A CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, California, Anthony has lineage in the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl. His work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets: Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Colorado Review, The Boiler, ctrl+v journal, among others. Anthony co-edited How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011), as well as co-edited and co-translated Juan Felipe Herrera’s Akrílica (Noemi Press, 2022). Most recently, he served as guest editor for Mānoa Journal for a special Latinx edition “Architectures of FuturoPasados.” His artwork has been exhibited at Fresno State, as well as in San Francisco at SOMArts.

Billy Lezra holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They were the winner of the 2024 Ploughshares Emerging Writers' Award in Nonfiction, and a nominee for Best American Essays. They have contributed work to Electric Literature, The Washington Post, CNN, and elsewhere. Their work has been supported by Bread Loaf, The McCormack Writing Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Publishing Workshop, and LAMBDA Literary. They are the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Rough Cut Press, a monthly magazine that publishes voices from the LGBTQIA community.

Brittany Torres Rivera is an assistant editor with Graywolf Press. Brittany is a bilingual Puerto Rican writer. She graduated from Florida International University with a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Brittany is an alumna of the Fulbright Program.

Danielle represents critically acclaimed, award-winning fiction and nonfiction. She is particularly looking for narratives from writers traditionally excluded from the publishing industry. For fiction, she likes books that balance plot with voice, have a strong sense of place, a unique hook, and are stylistically bold; for nonfiction, she’s looking for work grounded in the author’s personal interest, rigorously reported and researched, and will expand the reader’s view of the world. Recent and forthcoming books include Sea Change by Gina Chung (Vintage), A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (Mulholland), Victim by Andrew Boryga (Doubleday), Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff (Bloomsbury), People of Means by Nancy Johnson (William Morrow), Alligator Tears: A Memoir-in-Essays by Edgar Gomez (Crown 2025), I Leave it Up to You by Jinwoo Chong (Ballantine), and Mutual Interest by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith (Bloomsbury).

Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. She is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. Her short story Last Rites appears in Everyday People: The Color of Life, an anthology published by Atria Books in 2018, and her story Daddy's Boy appears in the new anthology Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction. Her fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her story Where Every Boy is Known and Loved was a finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions Prize. She is a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at The Kenyon Review Fiction Workshop. She is the former Fiction Editor for both Apogee Journal and The Rumpus, and is co-host of the critically-acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot. Her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, published by Random House, was released in April 2025.

Ess Pokornowski (she/they) is a freckled writer who lives in California and hates direct sunlight. Her essays and poetry explore how we haunt our own bodies and other personal and political issues at the intersection of trans, crip, queer life. She earned a Ph.D. in English from UC Santa Barbara and is a professional researcher, educator, and trainer, who still had to ask her partner for help writing this bio because she is an anxious over-thinker. She wants you to think she is smart, funny, and charming, without noticing how hard she tries.

Iwalani is seeking adult upmarket and literary fiction and select nonfiction. In fiction, she loves coming-of-age narratives, family dramas, and stories that challenge systems of power. She is often drawn to a strong sense of voice and/or place, whether the storytelling is grounded in realism or engages with a speculative element. She gravitates toward lush prose, wry humor, irreverent characters, and a sense of yearning. Iwalani is also looking for narrative nonfiction such as memoir, cultural histories, and cultural criticism. She would love to work with writers that are engaging with history, design and architecture, sociology, and anthropology, especially from a leftist angle. Some of her favorite authors include Raven Leilani, Ling Ma, T Kira Madden, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Samanta Schweblin, and Asali Solomon, and she would love to consider any manuscripts in a similar vein. She is passionate about championing the work of underrepresented authors and would especially love to work with Pacific Islander writers.

Jacqueline Ko grew up on Long Island, NY and received a B.A. in English from Yale. She has worked since 2007 at the Wylie Agency, where she represents literary fiction and nonfiction, poetry, and select children’s and illustrated projects.

Mariah Stovall joined Trellis Literary Management after agenting at Howland Literary and Writers House. Prior to that, she worked on the other side of things, at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and at Gallery Books. She represents adult literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction and essay collections, all by writers with strong voices and interdisciplinary perspectives. She is not currently seeking memoirs.

Across genres, she gravitates toward outsiders and stylish, inventive storytelling. She's primarily interested in how subcultures, social movements, and complex individuals intersect with pop culture and the arts, history, STEM, linguistics, sports, and philosophy. She has a hands-on, collaborative approach to editing and loves helping writers shape their projects for publication. She's especially passionate about advocating for authors from underrepresented and marginalized and minoritized groups (including writers without MFAs).

Natalie Edwards joined Trellis Literary at its founding after nearly two years at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Prior to that, she worked at Curtis Brown, Ltd. At Trellis, Natalie supports Allison Hunter while actively building a list of her own.

Natalie represents adult fiction and nonfiction across a broad range of genres. In fiction, she tends to lean more upmarket and literary, and her nonfiction tastes trend toward the narrative (memoir, history, science, cultural criticism) rather than the prescriptive (how-tos, cookbooks, craft/gift, etc.). Across her list, she loves projects that blur genre and defy easy categorization—historical with a hint of the speculative, journalistic nonfiction with a memoir throughline. Above all, she is drawn to accessible voices with a literary sensibility, guiding the reader through a compelling story with just enough plot momentum to keep them effortlessly turning the page.

Pervin Saket was a 2024 writer-in-residence at the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and a 2025 Obermann International Fellow. She is the Editor-at-Large at The Bombay Literary Magazine, and has served as the Literature Curator of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in India. Pervin was the inaugural Fellow for the Yosef Wosk Vancouver Manuscript Intensive 2021. She has been awarded or shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, the Tiferet Poetry Prize, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and the Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize. Her second poetry collection ‘A Theory of Knots’ is forthcoming from Seagull Books and University of Chicago Press (2026).

The Pulitzer Prize. The Booker Prize. The National Book Award. The MacArthur Fellowship. The Dublin Literary Award. The PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. The New York Public Library Young Lions Award. The Thurber Prize for American Humor. The Shirley Jackson Award. These are just some of the awards that authors represented by Renée Zuckerbrot, an agent at Massie McQuilkin & Altman, have been nominated for or won. But literary prowess aside, the authors have little in common: Zuckerbrot represents writers at all stages of their careers, from debut to well-established, as well as those working in a wide array of genres, including commercial and literary fiction as well as nonficti