The Muse & The Marketplace 2024

This session, co-led by literary besties Nancy Johnson, author of The Kindest Lie, and Julie Carrick Dalton, author of The Last Beekeeper and Waiting for the Night Song, will help querying writers develop a realistic action plan to best position themselves for querying success.

Nancy and Julie, who slogged their way through the query trenches together, will walk you through steps to build your own Querying Writer’s Playbook, an at-the-ready toolbox that includes a variety of polished documents such as query letters, elevator pitches, synopses, and partial manuscripts of varying lengths. You will learn important strategies for preparing to send queries, such as how to get high-quality industry feedback before you start querying, how (and why) to find contests worth entering, finding (or building) a writing community, knowing when you are ready to query, and being a good literary citizen.