Online | Open-Genre | Independent Study

Publishing Independent Study: Writing the Query Letter & Landing Your Dream Literary Agent

What is a literary agent? How do you get one, and why do you need one, anyway? This publishing seminar is for any writer interested in learning more about the path from first draft to publication. In a series of short videos, literary agent (and former book editor) Sarah Bowlin will walk you through the agenting and editing process, demystifying everything from how to query to what happens on the editorial side after you sign. By the end of the seminar, writers will have a clear understanding of what to do—and what not to do—when looking for agent, and what the agent/writer/editor working relationship looks like through the submission process and over the course of a writer’s career. Writers will also receive a tutorial on how to write a query letter.*

Please note: this class will be most useful for writers interested in representation for literary fiction, nonfiction, and memoir. 

*This is an independent study, and there is no feedback included.

Sarah Bowlin

Sarah Bowlin joined Aevitas in early 2017 after a decade as an editor of literary fiction and nonfiction. She has worked on the international breakout novel How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti; the New York Times Notable Book, The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips; and the National Book Award-nominated The End by Salvatore Scibona. She got her start in publishing at Riverhead Books and was most recently a senior editor at Henry Holt & Company.

Testimonials

"Sarah's offerings, as an insider, were so crisply presented and in a generous spirit–as though she was earnestly on the writer's side. I binge-watched in one sitting, and took away insights I've never gotten elsewhere."

former student