Agent Contest! Elevator Pitches with Mollie Glick

Exciting news, my little QT's! I'm delighted to announce the details of our June Agent Contest!

The contest will be judged by Mollie Glick of Foundry Literary + Media.

Mollie Glick

After graduating from Brown University, Mollie began her publishing career as a literary scout, advising foreign publishers regarding the acquisition of rights to American books. She then worked as an editor at the Crown imprint of Random House, before switching over to "the other side" and becoming an agent at JVNLA (The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency) in 2003. Mollie's list includes literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and a bit of practical non- fiction. She's particularly interested in fiction that bridges the literary/commercial divide, combining strong writing with a great plot, and non-fiction dealing with popular science, medicine, psychology, cultural history, memoir and current events. She's very hands-on, working collaboratively with her authors to refine their projects, then focusing on identifying just the right editors for the submissions. In addition to her work as a literary agent, Mollie also teaches classes on non-fiction proposal writing at Media Bistro, and a copy of her instructional article on non-fiction proposal writing will be featured in this year's edition of the Writers Digest guide to literary agents.

Ms. Glick will be judging your elevator pitches!

An "elevator pitch" is a brief pitch (1 - 3 sentences) in 30 seconds or so. These short pitches get their name from imagining you might deliver these lines to an agent while sharing an elevator.

My elevator pitch for The Edge of Memory goes like this:

Maybe if Beatrice Greyson knew someone faked her death as a child, she wouldn't wish so desperately to remember the first decade of her life.

When the search for her birth parents reveals the brutal details of her mother’s murder, Beatrice thinks she’s found the reason she can’t remember her childhood, but her past holds other dark secrets and someone else is just as desperate for Beatrice to remember. Uncovering the truth will force her to confront a violent murderer— and maybe miss out on the love of her life.

If you need help working out your own elevator pitch, check out Mary Lindsey's post on the Elevator Pitch.

Here are the contest details:

* Entries will be accepted by entry form on the main QueryTracker.net site.
* You may submit your entries during the 24-hour window beginning at midnight tonight MST and ending at 11:59 Tuesday night.
* Acceptable genres are adult fiction, YA fiction, and narrative non-fiction.
* Entries should be brief 1 - 3 sentence pitches and take less than a minute.
* Ms. Glick will select the top ten winning entries. Winners will be invited to submit a partial manuscript to Ms. Glick!

So let's get those pitches shined up! The contest starts tonight!