M.F.A. Publishing Advisers
Esmond Harmsworth, educated in England before graduating from Brown University and Harvard Law School, is a founding partner of Zachary Schuster Harmsworth Literary Agency of New York and Boston. His fiction clients include Sabina Murray, George Harrar, Laura Dietz, Sarah Stewart Taylor, Alicia Metcalf Miller and Donald Hays. His nonfiction clients include Jonathan Haidt, Keith Sawyer, Dave Balter, John Butman Gerry O’Neill and Dick Lehr. He has been a featured panelist or speaker at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Bouchercon and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a board member of PEN/ New England and on the Advisory Council of Grub Street Inc.
Joseph Kanon, educated at Harvard and at Cambridge University in England, has served in a number of editorial and executive positions, including president and CEO of E.P. Dutton and executive vice president and director of Trade and Reference Publishing at Houghton Mifflin. He also is the author of four novels, among them the international best-seller “Los Alamos.”
Lorin Rees, of the Helen Rees Literary Agency, is a native of Boston who attended Bard College and earned an M.B.A. from Boston University. Some of his books and authors include “Words That Work” by Frank Luntz, “Leading From the Front” by Captains Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch, “The Mortician Diaries” by June Nadle, “BrandSimple” by Allen Adamson, “Girl Most Likely To” by Poonam Sharma and “Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green” by Johnny Rico.
Jack Scovil, educated at Stanford University and the University of Utah, has been an agent for more than 30 years. He formerly was vice president and editorial director of the Scott Meredith Agency, where he represented such clients as Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan and Morris West. He is now president of Scovil-Chichak-Galen Literary Agency, which represents Edward Klein, Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Anderson, Margaret Truman, James Brady, Thomas Fleming, Merle Drown and Robert Begiebing.
Janet Silver, educated at Brown University and the University of Chicago, was vice president and publisher of adult trade books at Houghton Mifflin Company, and is now at Random House imprint Nan A. Talese as editor-at-large,continuing her reputation for editing strong literary fiction. She oversees the publishing of general interest fiction and nonfiction, as well as the Best American series, the poetry program, cookbooks and field guides. She has edited works by such prominent novelists as Philip Roth, Tim O’Brien, Cynthia Ozick, Robert Stone, Jonathan Safran Foer, Edna O’Brien, John Edgar Wideman and Jhumpa Lahri.
Lissa Warren is vice president, senior director of publicity and acquiring editor at Da Capo Press/ Perseus Publishing. She previously worked at David Godine and Houghton Mifflin. The author of “The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity”(Carroll & Graf, 2004), she has spoken at numerous book festivals, universities and associations, and since 2003 has been an adjunct professor at Emerson College in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing Program. She also teaches at Boston University’s publishing certificate program. She holds a B.S. from Miami University and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. She is a published poet and poetry editor for the literary magazine Post Road.
Sarah Leslie Welsch, educated at Smith, Northwestern and Radcliffe, has worked in publishing (editorial and marketing/ sales) for 30 years. She worked at Vintage and Ballantine Books in New York and at Academy Chicago Press, the University of Chicago Press and Northwestern University Press. She is now director of marketing and sales at the University Press of New England, a publisher and distributor of scholarly and trade books (nonfiction, fiction and poetry).
Kathy Wurtz, executive director of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, previously served as managing director of the New Hampshire Theatre Project and development coordinator for the Seacoast Science Center. A published children’s book author, she also has been an artist in residence and acted in several plays.