2024 Retreat Faculty!
SESSION 1: April 3rd-7th, 2024
Author-in-Residence
received her MFA in creative writing from The New School and her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her debut novel, The Other Black Girl, was an instant New York Times bestseller. It has been translated into more than five languages, and a Hulu Original Series based on the novel premieres in September 2023. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in Cosmopolitan, the Guardian, the New York Times, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.
Author photo: Nicole Mondestin Photography.
Guest Agents for Session 1
Stephanie Delman
cofounded Trellis Literary Management in the fall of 2021 after 10 years at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. She represents upmarket and genre-tinged fiction with high-concept plotting and literary prose, and a bit of narrative nonfiction. Her clients include Zakiya Dalila Harris, Julia Fine, Serena Burdick, Jenny Tinghui Zhang, and many more. Stephanie grew up in Northern California, studied Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and now lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Jill Marr
is a senior agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency where she started as Sandy Dijkstra's assistant the week after 9/11. Jill is looking for adult non-fiction (across the board) and fiction (with an emphasis in romance, suspense, horror, and historical) with a solid commercial hook, a stand-out voice and tight pacing. She is especially hoping to find irresistible stories from unrepresented voices.
Session 2: April 17th-21st, 2024
Author-in-Residence
is the author of The Immortalists, a New York Times bestseller, and The Anatomy of Dreams. A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband and two Maine Coon cats in Madison, WI, where she is at work on a third novel.
Author photo by Nathan Jandl.
Guest Agents for Session 2
Felice Laverne
is the founder and Senior Agent at ArtHouse Literary Agency. Her publishing career has always been rooted in championing bold voices and writers from marginalized communities. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree in English, Creative Writing, from Georgia State University, she started her career at About Words Agency directly after college where she worked as an agent until leaving to complete her master’s degree in Publishing at Kingston University in London, England. There, Felice specialized in Diversity & Inclusion in Publishing, which drove her career-long passion for marginalized voices the world had never heard before. After years of then partnering with major houses as a book editor and ghostwriter,she is now back to her roots as a literary agent with a growing list of bold titles.
Amanda Orozco
is a literary agent at Transatlantic Agency. She graduated from NYU with her Masters of Science in Publishing: Digital and Print Media. Before joining Transatlantic, she worked in Subsidiary Rights at Little, Brown and at Park & Fine Literary and Media. While at NYU, she interned at the National Book Foundation, Shreve Williams Public Relations, and The Gernert Company. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
