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Practice Your Pitch!

Going to PNWA? Planning on Pitching? Have you practiced yet? If you want representation for your projects, you're going to want to practice your pitch! Come get your feet wet with fellow authors who have done this before and have been successful!

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Practice Your Pitch!

Practice Your Pitch!

Going to PNWA? Planning on Pitching? Have you practiced yet? If you want representation for your projects, you're going to want to practice your pitch! Come get your feet wet with fellow authors who have done this before and have been successful!

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About

You'll be doing some agent/editor pitching if you're hoping to traditionally publish your novel, short story collection, or poetry. 

This meetup is less of a class and more of a chance to learn about pitching and a chance to practice your pitch. A pitch is a two- to three-minute synopsis of your book/project. The standard pitch formula is hook (something to grab the agent) plus book (word count, comparables, and a short catchy blurb about your book) plus cook (a very short author bio). 

You should leave this event with a renewed confidence in getting an agent as excited about your book as you are.

Details

Come prepared with a 100-word pitch for your book. It should be short, and contain the necessary conflict of your story. We'll help you hone it as you go!

Class Policies

Ages 14 and up are welcome.

Instructor
Emily Smiley

Emily, a writer from South Carolina who now calls Seattle home, crafts stories that reflect the world back to her readers, inviting them to explore deeper truths within themselves. Her novel, Treading Water, came in first in the horror category of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Writers' Association (PNWA) unpublished competition. She’s the programming coordinator for the Writer’s Studio at BARN. She’s also a member of the PNWA and the Seattle Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. Emily is a co-founder of Content Hospital, a speculative fiction writers marketing collective, and is represented by A.J. Van Belle at the Booker Albert Literary Agency. When she’s not giving her readers nightmares, she’s running, traveling, reading, or playing video games.

Instructor
Molly Tallon

Molly is a Puget Sound-based, California-born writer. After earning a bachelors of arts degree in creative writing from San Francisco State, she went on to bartend for several years before meeting her beloved partner and becoming a parent. Experiencing the horrific state of perinatal care in America drew her to birth work and reproductive rights advocacy and then eventually back to writing. She is a member of BARN Writer’s Studio, and an editor for its Annual Collection. She is a founding member of Content Hospital, a rowdy critique group of speculative fiction writers. Her stories are populated by characters that aren’t always heroes, often reckoning with systems of power and control, with echoes of, and reverberations into, our own world. When she is not inviting readers to think acutely about the future of humanity, she is parenting her three children, or throwing a stick for her two dogs.

Instructor
Kassia Sing

Kassia has been creating stories her whole life. As a child, her family told her she had an “overactive imagination and she actively fosters it today. After trading the corporate ladder for small-town life, Kassia joined BARN's Writers Studio and it changed her life. She’s had three short stories published in a digital publication, Context Journal. In 2023, she won third place in short story in the annual Pacific Northwest Writers Association contest. She is a member of Sound Writers, hosts weekly writing sessions for the Writers Studio, and serves as a volunteer for several nonprofits including BARN. Kassia has one terrible novel that she will bury in her backyard, one novel that needs serious re-writing, and one good novel that she hopes to finish editing soon. She enjoys sharing the love and support offered by BARN’s writing community.

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