Jennifer Alton is an editor at Counterpoint Press, where her projects have included books by Sands Hall, Nell Irvin Painter, Alton Logan with Berl Falbaum, and Ismail Kadare. She holds an MFA from San Francisco State University, where she was Assistant Fiction Editor of Fourteen Hills, co-curator of the Velvet Revolution Reading Series, and taught undergraduate creative writing. A returned Peace Corps volunteer, (Ukraine 2011-2013) she lives in the Bay Area. She will be joining us as a Special Guest.
2018 Agents & Editor
Reagan Arthur is Executive Vice President, Publisher of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, which she joined in February of 2020, after nearly 20 years at Little, Brown. Writers she’s worked with include Kate Atkinson, Ian McEwan, Tina Fey, Ian Rankin, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Joshua Ferris, Nathan Hill, and Bono. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers.
Photo credit: Brett Hall Jones
Michael Carlisle began his career as a secretary in the literary department at William Morris Agency. Eighteen years later he left as a vice-president to start Carlisle & Company. Born in Paris, of Russian heritage, he graduated with honors from Yale College and holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School. The son of two writers, he brings a background of international law to his career. His best-selling authors have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pulitzer Prizes, The Man Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (fiction and non-fiction), the Templeton Prize, the British Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the PEN Award for first non-fiction, the NAACP Image Award for Literary Fiction, and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; one even has an asteroid named for her. A former director of the AAR, a not-for-profit organization of independent literary and dramatic agents, and a member of PEN, and the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael headed the non-fiction program at the Community of Writers until 2023, and serves on its Board of Directors.
Lucy Carson joined The Friedrich Agency in early 2008, where she has since built a list of fiction and non-fiction. In addition to brokering domestic publishing deals for her own clients, Lucy also oversees all Film, Television & Dramatic business for the agency list. During her ten years with The Friedrich Agency, Lucy has worked with such authors as Sue Grafton, Elizabeth Strout, Ruth Ozeki, Terry McMillan, and Karen Joy Fowler, while launching many debut careers as well. Her list is focused on Fiction & (mostly narrative) Non-Fiction for the adult trade audience.
Joy Harris established her own literary agency in 1990. She works primarily with literary fiction, strongly-written commercial fiction, narrative nonfiction across a broad range of topics, memoir and biography, and is drawn to a clear, original voice, an engaging point of view, and strong characters. She takes great pleasure in finding new literary voices, and over the course of her career has had the joy of representing many bestselling and acclaimed authors from the time of their first published work. www.joyharrisliterary.com.
Joy Johannessen has been an editor at Chelsea House, Grove Press, and Oxford University Press; a senior editor at HarperCollins Publishers; and the executive editor of Delphinium Books. She has worked with hundreds of writers, among them Rabih Alameddine, Dorothy Allison, Amy Bloom, Harold Bloom, Michael Cunningham, Larry Kramer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur Miller, Ralph Nader, and Héctor Tobar. She is the co-editor, with Roxanne Coady, of The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them. She currently freelances.
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Cal Morgan is an executive editor at Riverhead Books. His authors include Akwaeke Emezi, Eula Biss, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristen Arnett, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Edward Carey. Previously with HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press, he also serves on the board of the Center for Fiction, the only organization in the country devoted exclusively to the promotion of fiction.
Photo credit: Cassie Jones Morgan
BJ Robbins established her Los Angeles-based agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing, from publicity at Simon & Schuster to Marketing Director and later Senior Editor at Harcourt. She represents commercial and literary fiction, as well as a wide array of nonfiction, including memoir, history, pop culture, and science. Her client list includes award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, Renee Swindle, Nafisa Haji, Max Byrd, J. Maarten Troost, James Donovan, John Hough, Via Bleidner,, Mary Volmer, Mel Watkins, Adam Nimoy, and the late James D. Houston.
Andrew Tonkovich is the longtime editor of the Santa Monica Review and founding editor of Citric Acid: An Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination. His writing has appeared widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Orange County Register, ZYZZYVA, Ecotone, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Los Angeles Times, Faultline, and Juked. He was for many years a contributing writer to the OC Weekly on books and politics. He is the author of two fiction collections, The Dairy of Anne Frank and More Wish Fulfillment in the Noughties and Keeping Tahoe Blue and Other Provocations. With Lisa Alvarez, he co-edited the landmark anthology Orange County: A Literary Field Guide. He taught at UC Irvine for twenty-five years, serving as president and grievance steward of the union representing adjunct faculty. Tonkovich hosts a weekly books show and podcast, Bibliocracy Radio, which airs on Pacifica Radio KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California, and edits the Community of Writers’ OGQ. [Fiction]
Photo Credit: Brett Hall Jones
Oscar Villalon is the editor of the award-winning literary journal ZYZZYVA, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2025. His writing has been published in The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, Alta, Lit Hub, and other publications. He lives in San Francisco with his family.