Agents often get asked about what they’d like to see in their inboxes or industry trends, but they don’t often get to talk about craft. We’re going to talk with Julie Barer from The Book Group, all about craft. Julie has one of the most jaw-dropping lists around. I guarantee one of the books she helped bring into the world is on your list of favorites. So join us!

Born and raised in New York City, Julie Barer began her career as a bookseller at Shakespeare & Company, where she discovered the joy of putting books into people’s hands. Her first job in publishing was at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, and she started her own agency, Barer Literary, in 2004. She cofounded The Book Group in 2015. Julie represents a variety of writers across a literary spectrum, with a special emphasis on fiction. Julie’s clients have been finalists and winners of numerous grants and prizes, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics' Circle Award, the Man Booker Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Los Angeles Times First Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Orange Prize. Works by several of her clients have graced the cover of The New York Times Book Review, and have appeared on national and international bestseller lists. Her clients include Celeste Ng, Madeline Miller, Ayad Akhtar, Charles Yu, Rumaan Alam, Lily King, Kevin Wilson and Paula McLain. Julie is particularly interested in representing a diversity of voices from around the world and from a wide range of backgrounds.

When I asked Amy what she wanted to talk about, she said: REVISION IS THE SPORT. Just like that. In all caps. And, well, I’ve learned I have the best time when I just do whatever Amy wants. If you missed her previous chats with me, check out “Distilling the Emotional Tour” as part of her Switch book tour, and her contribution to last year’s NaNoWriMo IG Live chats, all about the note-taking methods she uses to draft.

A.S. King writes novels, shorts, poems, creative nonfiction, and creative excuse notes for the local high school. She has won some awards, but not for the excuse notes. Check out Dig, winner of the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Switch, her 2021 title. When she's not writing, she's teaching, speaking, editing, or raising her epic kid. Find more at www.as-king.com.

Laura Taylor Namey suggests that we can learn a lot by employing the Rule of Three in our novels. We’ll dive into what it is and how to use it when we chat.

Laura Taylor Namey is the New York Times bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow, The Library of Lost Things, and When We Were Them. A proud Cuban-American, she can be found hunting for vintage treasures and wishing she was in London or Paris. She lives in San Diego with her husband and two children.

We’re sandwiched between Thanksgiving and “The End”…what a great time to take a minute to reflect. What have we learned about ourselves and our process throughout NaNo? For what are we grateful? How might we redefine “success”?

Linda Urban writes picture books, chapter books, and middle grade novels about the small things that matter to kids in a big way. Her works include A Crooked Kind of Perfect, Hound Dog True, The Center of Everything, Weekends with Max and his Dad, Mouse Was Mad, Little Red Henry, and most recently, Almost There and Almost Not. Her books have appeared on more than 25 state reading lists, as well as best books lists from The New York Public Library, Kirkus, the National Council of Teachers of English, and IndieNext. Linda has a BA in Journalism and an MA in English from Wayne State University in Detroit and pursued further graduate study in Film and Television Critical Studies at UCLA. For ten years, she served as marketing director at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California.

Enjoy your time with family and friends! We’ll see you soon!

Are you a parent trying to survive NaNoWriMo? We got you. I didn’t start writing seriously until my second child was a newborn. A very strange choice, I know. But somehow, having no time was the perfect time. Many parents feel similarly. Crystal, another mom, is here to help us make it through.

Crystal Maldonado is a YA author with a lot of feelings. Her debut, Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, was a Cosmopolitan Best New Book and a POPSUGAR Best New YA Novel. Her next novel, No Filter and Other Lies, explores teenage life on social media—and the lies we tell to ourselves and others.

And now for the best part: revision! Deb Caletti is an auto-buy author for me. I marvel at all she’s able to make happen between the covers of a book. How does she do it all? Let’s find out.

Deb Caletti is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of over seventeen books for adults and young adults, including Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award; A Heart In A Body In The World, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; and Girl, Unframed, which received seven starred reviews. Her books have also won the Josette Frank Award for Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, and numerous other state awards and honors, and she was a finalist for the PEN USA Award. Her latest book for young adult readers is One Great Lie, a compelling and atmospheric story of romance, mystery, and power about a young woman discovering her strength in lush, sultry Venice. She is also the author of the Tales of Triumph and Disaster series for middle grade readers. She lives with her family in Seattle.

Sometimes, when we’re in the thick of drafting or revising, it’s as though we’ve wandered deep into a forest, it’s suddenly dark and foreign, and we’ve lost our way. Nicole is here to help us find the heart of our story again. She’ll teach us strategies for when we’re stuck and when we’re lost.

Nicole D. Collier is a former elementary school teacher turned author, consultant and executive coach. The Georgia native writes contemporary middle grade fiction, and has been known to run, dance, and turn cartwheels on sunny days. Just Right Jillian, her debut, is out 2/1/22.

It turns out that writing nonfiction can be a lot like writing fiction. You still need structure. And a story. How do you bridge those two worlds? Luckily, Rachel Sarah is here to help.

Rachel Sarah is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area on unceded Ohlone land. Her most recent book is Girl Warriors: How 25 Young Activists Are Saving the Earth (April 2021, Chicago Review Press), which earned a Kirkus starred review. She’s currently working on her next book about women climate leaders around the world for YA readers (Chicago Review Press, 2023). You can find Rachel on Twitter and Instagram.

Are you juggling two points of view in your NaNo draft? How do you keep the voices distinct? How do you know when to switch? Which scene should be told by which character? Luckily, we’ve got the perfect person to help. Dahlia Adler is one of my heroes of the Kidlit world. She’s supportive and generous, smart and talented. She also manages to write a LOT of books.

Dahlia Adler (she/her) is an editor of mathematics by day, the overlord of LGBTQReads by night, and a Young Adult author at every spare moment in between. She is the editor of several anthologies, including His Hideous Heart, and the author of many novels, including Cool for the Summer and Home Field Advantage. She lives in New York with her family and an obscene number of books. 

Katie Henry is an auto-buy author for me. She manages to create hysterical yet authentic stories packed with dialogue that feels both real and engaging. I’m so looking forward to this chat.

Katie Henry is an author and playwright for young audiences living in New York City. Her YA novels Heretics Anonymous, Let’s Call It A Doomsday, and This Will Be Funny Someday have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly.

If you haven’t yet watched David’s IG live chat from last year, you should do that now. David is one of the smartest people I know—especially when it comes to structure and plot. What is scene structure anyway? What are the building blocks of any scene? What’s a sequel? Why do we care? We’ll dive into all this and more.

David Macinnis Gill is the award-winning author of Soul Enchilada, Uncann, and the Black Hole Sun series, all published by HarperCollins. He teaches in the Writing for Children & Young Adults MFA program at VCFA and is a professor specializing in YA literature at UNC Wilmington. His most recent publication was a story “Praise the Lord and Pass the Little Debbies” in the anthology Rural Voices: YA Stories About Growing Up In Remote Communities from Candlewick.

We’re at the midpoint. Now what? We’ll take a look at 3-act structure, how to plan your climax, and um, what’s structure again? Steven Salvatore is a writer, a teacher, and an all-around engaging unicorn of a human so this should be fun.

Steven Salvatore is a gay, genderqueer author, writing professor, Mariah Carey lamb, and Star Wars fanatic. They hold an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. They currently live in Peekskill, New York, with their amazingly patient husband, whose name is also Steve. They are the author of Can’t Take That Away and And They Lived…. They are also the co-founder of Pride Book Fest. Steven is represented by Jess Regel of Helm Literary Agency. Website: stevensalvatore.com

Laura Sibson uses the Pomodoro Method to draft a novel and push past those moments of stuck. Let’s hear how she makes it work to write a novel 25 minutes at a time.

Laura Sibson holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts (July 2012/Secret Gardeners). Formerly a career counselor at the university level, she now writes and teachers creative writing in Philadelphia where she lives with her family. Edie In Between is her most recent young adult novel. She is also author of The Art of Breaking Things.

Any writer who has tried to write a funny book knows just how complex and challenging it is. Two of my favorite craft books on the subject were written by Scott Dikkers. And yet…I want more. Luckily he’s got another book coming out soon AND he agreed to sit down and talk with us. Let’s get serious about humor.

Scott Dikkers is the founder of TheOnion.com and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over 30 books, including “How to Write Funny.” He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, a Peabody, and too many Webby Awards to count. Find out more here.

If you’ve read any Brandy Colbert novel, you know that she is an expert in creating characters that feel real and flawed and beautiful and messy and true. Let’s dive in and learn how she does it.

Brandy Colbert is the author of several critically acclaimed books for kids and teens, including Black Birds in the Sky, Pointe, The Only Black Girls in Town, and Stonewall Book Award winner Little & Lion. She is on faculty at Hamline University’s MFAC program and lives in Los Angeles.

Sara Zarr’s podcast This Creative Life was basically my MFA, before I went and got an MFA. Sara’s books are master classes in and of themselves and if you listen to just one podcast you’ll know how much she loves to think about writing. I can’t wait to talk with her about creating that elusive subtext in our work.

Sara Zarr is the author of eight novels, most recently Goodbye from Nowhere. She’s a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner, and the host and producer of the podcast This Creative Life. 

Charts, graphs, and post-its, oh my! We’ll talk all about the visual aids you can use to help you plot, plan, and revise. My Type A Virgo self is verrrry excited.

Sylvia Liu grew up with books and daydreams in Caracas, Venezuela. Once an environmental attorney protecting the oceans, she now spins stories inspired by high tech, cephalopods, and the intricacies of family and friendship. She’s the author of the middle grade books Hana Hsu and the Ghost Crab Nation (Razorbill 2022) and Manatee’s Best Friend (Scholastic 2021). Sylvia lives in Virginia with her family and a very fluffy cat.

Is your NaNo novel screaming to be told in verse? (Or, do verse novels whisper?) How does one go about writing a novel in verse? How do we help the form feed the story and vice versa? Megan E. Freeman is here to help.

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets visited her classroom every week to teach poetry and she has been a writer ever since. She writes middle grade and young adult fiction, and her debut middle grade novel-in-verse Alone is available from Simon & Schuster/Aladdin. Megan is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and her poetry collection, Lessons on Sleeping Alone, was published by Liquid Light Press. She lives in northern Colorado.

I am thrilled to chat with Yamile, the author of one of my favorite books of all time: Furia. Yamile is wise and kind and engaging and I can’t wait to hear what she has to say about finding a voice for our characters that’s distinct from our authorial voice.

Yamile Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers, including Furia, a Reese’s YA Book Club selection and the 2021 Inaugural Pura Belpré Young Adult Gold Medalist. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains with her family. An Inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she is also a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She’s a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of Latine authors. Connect with her at www.yamilesmendez.com.

I doubt there’s anyone more equipped to help us keep our momentum than Martha Brockenbrough. Martha is one of those people who seems to manage a thousand projects with ease, switches audiences and genres at will, and keeps a level-headed optimism the whole time. Plus, she’s won awards.

Martha Brockenbrough is the author of 21 books for young readers, including Into The Bloodred Woods, a YA novel that sets the patriarchy on fire, and I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story, about why Americans have birthright citizenship. She teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts, is excellent at hula hooping, and enjoys cats and dogs equally. 

On the second day of NaNoWriMo, we welcome back one of our most popular Instagram Live guests from last year: Ann Dávila Cardinal. (Watch her 2020 IG Live chat here.) We’ll get philosophical about what it is we need to dive into this first draft. What material do we need to make the art?

Ann Dávila Cardinal is a novelist and director of student recruitment for VCFA where she earned her MFA in Writing. Her young adult novels, Five Midnights and Category Five, were released by Tor Teen, and her debut adult novel, The Storyteller’s Death, is coming in October 2023. 

What are plot parties you ask? If you watched either Ann Davila Cardinal’s or Cory McCarthy and A.R. Capetta’s instagram live chats from last year, then you’ll remember that they mentioned that they sometimes get together, have a party, and plot. Which is basically my dream. So, I invited Cory back this year to explain a little more about this amazing plot party business. It’s the perfect start to our NaNoWriMo IG live festivities!

Cory McCarthy (he/they) is the acclaimed author of over half a dozen books. Highlights include genre thriller Breaking Sky and the romcom Now a Major Motion Picture, which appeared on the Amelia Bloomer List. Cory coauthored the bestselling Once & Future series, a finalist for the New England Book Award, with their spouse, A. R. Capetta. Cory's upcoming works include a picture book about fellow Arab American Kahlil Gibran, a sci-fi middle grade trilogy, and Man o' War, a personal tale about a trans swimmer. Cory studied poetry and screenwriting before falling in love with writing for young people and now teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Well, we’re at the end of the draft. What do you next? Write the next one, silly! Lakita Wilson will help us find our next story gem in the world around us.

Lakita Wilson is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts with her Master's in Writing For Children and Young Adults. She has written several children biographies for Educational Publishers like Capstone and Lerner. Next up are a few top-secret non-fiction projects with traditional publishers.

Endings are supposed to be surprising, yet inevitable. They’re supposed to wrap up loose ends but also leave us hungry. They’re supposed to be tidy but not too tidy. They’re supposed to be satisfying yet inspiring. Well, that doesn’t sound too hard does it? Before you cry in a corner, spend some time with Erin Calabio Summerill. She is wise and funny and very, very kind. So come out of the corner. Here’s a tissue. Keep writing.

Erin Calabio Summerill loves candy, her kids, and books. If she sold more books she could buy more candy for herself and her kids. Buy her books…think of the kids.

Last year, I reached out to Brendan to give me some tips on building tension because he is clearly so good at this. (Really. Read his books.) His answer surprised me. Apparently, the key is in your character’s flaws. Listen up as he explains why.

Brendan Reichs was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, and holds degrees from Wake Forest University and The George Washington University School of Law. After three years as a litigation attorney, he became a full-time writer. He co-wrote the popular six-volume Virals series, then moved on to write the New York Times Bestselling Nemesis trilogy, and recently co-wrote a middle-grade series with Ally Condie called The Darkdeep.

Alex Perry will help us learn how to make our readers—and ourselves—cry as we reach that all-important emotional climax.

Alex Perry used to teach middle schoolers in Houston, but now she writes books for kids everywhere. When she was six, she babysat a potbellied piglet and she’s been obsessed with his cuteness ever since. She just had to get that messy little guy into a book, and now she has. She lives in Arkansas with a messy little human baby, two huge dogs, and her husband. Pighearted is her debut novel.

Happy Thanksgiving! Ellen will talk to us about P.I.E., or how to Pen the Inescapable Ending. She’ll help us see how writing out of order just may be the ticket to sustain momentum in the homestretch.

Ellen Yeomans is a writer and ghostwriter for children and adults. Her published works which include picture books, novels, poetry, and nonfiction have garnered many starred reviews and appeared on many "Best of" lists. She currently lives in Prague, Czech Republic.

NOTE TIME CHANGE: 9AM

Writing with someone else sounds fun…and hard…and maybe a little nuts…and maybe exactly what we all need? AR Capetta and Cory McCarthy will talk us through exactly what it looks like when two people write a book together.

Cory McCarthy and A.R. Capetta are bestselling co-authors of the Once & Future series. They're also super married to each other. Individually, they're the authors of more than ten other titles. They live in Vermont and teach in the Writing For Children and Young Adults Program at VCFA. 

As writers, we come to love our characters. We love them so much that often, we seek to protect them. Nora Shalaway Carpenter will help us see that it’s essential to the story to know the rock bottoms of our characters…and to let them hit that rock bottom and hurt.

Nora Shalaway Carpenter is the author of the Kirkus-starred YA novel The Edge of Anything (Running Press, 2020); contributing editor of the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions about Small-Town America (Candlewick, 2020); and author of the picture book Yoga Frog (Running Press). She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.