The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
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Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Friday, February 22, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.

Getting Down to Business: Publishing and You with Erin Jade Lange, Kirby Kim, Sally Ball, Katie Berta

Date(s): Friday, February 22, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Location: Carson Ballroom, Old Main (view map)
Type(s): Panel
Genre and Form(s): Agents, Business of Writing, Editing, Publishing, Submitting
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Meet our Faculty

About the Session

What are the realities of publishing in today’s creative writing market? Do you have a work or a manuscript ready for the world to see? What is your plan for submitting your work to publishers and publications? Is your query letter ready to go? Have you inquired about an agent? Are you looking to learn the details of starting the publication process? How does a writer prepare for the next step in the journey of professional writing? Take a look behind the curtain of publishing with agent, Kirby Kim, poet and editor, Sally Ball, and young adult novelist, Erin Jade Lange in a discussion focused on the business of moving your manuscript from your desk to bookstore shelves.  

Meet the Presenter(s)

Desert Nights Rising Stars Writers Conference Faculty 2019 Erin Jade Lange


Erin Jade Lange

Erin Jade Lange is the award-winning author of contemporary young adult novels, Butter, Dead Ends, and Rebel Bully Geek Pariah. She is the winner of the Friedolin Youth Book Prize in Germany and the Sakura Medal in Japan. She has also been nominated for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize (twice), the German Children’s Literature Award and multiple state book awards. Her debut novel was a 2013 Teens’ Top Ten Pick, and her books have appeared on several state reading lists. As a former journalist, Erin is inspired by current events and real-world issues and uses her writing to explore how those issues impact teenagers. She is an only child, so she spent a lot of time entertaining herself as a kid. This required her to rely heavily on her own imagination, which is probably why she became a writer. Erin grew up in the cornfields of northern Illinois, along the Mississippi River in one of the few places it flows east to west. She now lives in the sunshine of Arizona and will forever be torn between her love of rivers and her love of the desert.


Learn more about Erin Jade Lange


Kirby Kim

A native of Los Angeles, California, Kirby Kim attended Pomona College and got his JD at UC Hastings College of the Law. Kim got his first job in publishing working for Charlotte Sheedy Literary, at that time an affiliate of Sterling Lord Literistic, then moved to Vigliano Associates and WME before joining Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

Kim represents both literary and commercial authors. He’s most interested in receiving manuscripts that straddle the fence a bit, with upmarket expression combined with a genre element or plot device. When it comes to straight literary work, he’s alternatively drawn to rich, sweeping stories that try to encompass a time or a place or tightly written, narratively innovative stories or voices with award potential. His commercial interests include thrillers and mysteries, speculative fiction, and young adult. He also represents a range of nonfiction working with leaders and journalists in the areas of science, culture and current affairs.

Kim is currently a board member of the Asian American Writers Workshop. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and two kids.


Learn more about Kirby Kim

Photograph of Sally Ball


Sally Ball

Sally Ball is the author of three collections of poems, Hold Sway, Wreck Me and Annus Mirabilis. An associate professor of English at Arizona State University, Ball is also an associate director of Four Way Books. She has been with the press for 23 of its 26 years. She has received fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CAMAC Centre d’Art, and elsewhere. Her long poem “HOLD” has been made into a large-format artist’s book by the Czech printmaker Jan Vičar (2018) and will be featured at an exhibit at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Paris in December 2019.


Learn more about Sally Ball

Piper Center Staff Member Katie Berta,


Katie Berta

Katie Berta is the Supervising Editor of Hayden's Ferry Review. She graduated from the MFA program at Arizona State University in 2011 and from the Creative Writing PhD at Ohio University in 2017. She's served as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Post-Doctoral Fellow at Ohio University, as the Assistant Editor of New Ohio Review, and as an Associate Editor of Hayden's Ferry Review. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review Online, Blackbird, Sixth Finch, Salt Hill, Washington Square Review, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, The Louisville Review, Bayou, and Forklift, Ohio, among other journals, and in Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence. You can find her book reviews on the Ploughshares blog. She has presented her scholarly work at the 2018 American Literature Association conference, and in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal and the Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin. She has received support for her poetry from the Vermont Studio Center and from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, and her manuscript, Spell for the Daughter, was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry and the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award.

 


Learn more about Katie Berta