If there is one milestone in a writing career capable of launching a thousand daydreams and anxieties at once, it’s when a literary agent calls to discuss representation. Known among writers as simply “the call,” this phone conversation could potentially change a writer’s life by leading to representation and, if all goes well and the stars align, a book deal.
The call has attained such mythic importance that authors who have experienced it can often recount, with perfect clarity, where and when it all went down. I fielded my first agent call for my novel, Body of Stars, published in March by Dutton, during my lunch break at work, where I reserved an entire eighty-person conference room to ensure I’d have privacy. Vera Kurian, whose debut novel, Never Saw Me Coming, will be published in September by Park Row Books, invited two writing friends to her apartment so they could listen in on her end of the conversation. “Like we were in middle school and I was talking to a boy,” she recalls. And when Julie Carrick Dalton, author of Waiting for the Night Song (Forge Books, 2021), received her agent call on Halloween, she fixed her gaze on a bowl of Kit Kats to ground herself. “It felt like the earth was moving under my feet for a few seconds,” she says. “It felt like all my dreams might really come true.”a
This story is from the July - August 2021 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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This story is from the July - August 2021 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
Bringing the Joy
LUIS ALBERTO URREA ALWAYS KNEW HIS MOTHER HAD A STORY; HE JUST DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO TELL IT. BUT IN RESEARCHING AND WRITING HIS NEW NOVEL, GOOD NIGHT, IRENE, WHICH FICTIONALIZES HER EXPERIENCES AS A MEMBER OF THE RED CROSS'S LITTLE-KNOWN CLUBMOBILE SERVICE IN WORLD WAR II, HE GAINED A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF THE PERSON SHE WAS-AND ATLAST GAVE HER THE HAPPY ENDING SHE DESERVED.
Radiant Fog
ONE WRITER'S LIFE IN RURAL AMERICA
Major Jackson of The Slowdown
In January, Major Jackson became host of The Slowdown, a popular podcast that each weekday presents a poem and reflection in a five- to ten-minute segment.
Best Wishes
Stories from the front of the book-signing line
Annie Hwang - Agents & Editors
Annie Hwang of Ayesha Pande Literary talks about community building, professional burnout, the questions writers should ask when querying agents, and the demanding work of advocating for diversity in publishing.
Reviewers & Critics
A CONTRIBUTOR to the Boston Globe since 2007, Kate Tuttle became the newspaper's books editor in 2020. Over the past year and a half at the Globe she has interviewed an array of writers, including Kaveh Akbar, Rabih Alameddine, Lan Samantha Chang, Bernardine Evaristo, Gish Jen, Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, and Lisa Taddeo.
Reclaiming My Book
TRANSLATING AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE TO TEXT AND SOUND
