The life of a literary agent

Meghan MacDonald will talk about her work as a literary agent at Writers Community of York Region’s March 10 meeting. She represents adult fiction and non-fiction projects at Transatlantic Agency, and is exploring innovative digital publishing opportunities for the agency’s clients.

Meghan as been with the 20-year-old, Toronto-based agency since 2009 and as part-time literary agent and publishing consultant since 2010. Previously, she was Executive Assistant to David Grossman at the David Grossman Literary Agency in the UK. Her particular interests are in literary fiction, mystery novels, well researched historical fiction, and persuasive and/or polemic non-fiction.

From what I have been able to gather, Transatlantic and Meghan are actively seeking new authors. So, if you want to know what they are looking for or to find out if you even need an agent, plan to drop in on WCYR’s meeting.

The date is Sunday, Mar. 10. Registration & networking start at 12:30. To ensure sufficient seating and food they need you to register by Mar. 7:  http://wcyork.ca/york/reserve-your-spot-for-our-next-lunch/.   Advance registration is $20 for members, $25 for non-members. Unregistered walk-ins are charged an additional $5.

Location is: Newmarket Community Centre and Lions Hall, 200 Doug Duncan Drive in Newmarket.

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I’ll have more on Transatlantic in my next post.

How to get connected

If you want to grow as a writer, and get published, I recommend that you join a writing association.

A couple of days ago I mentioned the launch of Canadian Voices an anthology in which one of my stories appears. I would not have had the opportunity to get into that book if I hadn’t belonged to Writers & Editors Network (WEN). That’s where I first heard about Dr. Jasmine D’Costa’s vision of her anthology.

Another anthology, Cleavage, was published last year by Sumach Press. Cleavage editors Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley, drew from writers across the country in part by promoting their project through writing associations. They used WEN as one of their sources for authors and several of the 15 authors published in that book belong to writing groups.

WEN is a dynamic, Mississauga based organization with more than 100 members and it meets monthly. On the other side of Toronto is a similarly large writing association, the Writers Circle of Durham Region, WCDR.  And a little bit north and east of the GTA is HHWEN, Haliburton Highlands Writers and Editors Network. These three serve an eclectic range of writers – novelists, short story writers, poets, business writers – by providing a regular meeting place, knowledgeable guest speakers and most importantly, opportunities to connect with and learn from your peers.

Within Toronto proper are dozens of smaller groups that serve the needs of writers equally well. And of course, a number of national organizations  generally have a presence in Toronto, like Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC), Editors Association of Canada (EAC) and CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers.

All of these organizations encourage you to write, write more often and provide opportunities and connections that eventually get your work published.

Case in point: CANSCAIP is running an all day workshop today (Nov. 7) called Packaging Your Imagination. This particular event has been run annually for 25 years. What can you take from it? Here is a partial list of the topics covered:  Naming and Taming Your Characters; Writing for Boys (even if you never were one); Follow the Yellow Brick Road (using screenwriting techniques to write novels for children); and Verbal to Visual: understanding the design and illustration process.

Not only do you get great learning from these sessions, you have the opportunity to connect with people who are already living the experience you want to live. What better way is there to find a model to build from?