Miriam Altshuler began her career at Russell & Volkening and in 1994 established her own agency, which she ran for twenty-one years until she joined DeFiore in 2016. She focuses primarily on literary and book club fiction, narrative nonfiction, and children’s literature. Among the novelists she represents are Jill Santopolo, (bestselling author of The Light We Lost), Elizabeth Rosner, Jenny Fran Davis (Dykette), Donna Freitas (The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano and memoir, Consent), Jennifer Murphy, and the late Robb Forman Dew. Her nonfiction authors include Leila Philip (author of Beaverland), Maya Lang (author of the New York Times Editors’ Pick What We Carry: A Memoir), Andrew Carroll (bestselling author of War Letters), Adina Hoffman (winner of an inaugural Windham Campbell prize), Dr. Sue Johnson (clinical psychologist and bestselling author of Hold Me Tight and Love Sense), Harriet Brown, and Phil Zuckerman. Miriam also represents authors of middle grade and young adult literature, including National Book Award Finalist Leslie Connor, Lambda Award winner Alex Sanchez, and the late Walter Dean Myers, who served as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Miriam is particularly interested in finding emerging and underrepresented voices, and she loves reading and representing books that focus on diversity and explore the experiences of people of color.
2023 Agents and Editors
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.
Betsy Gleick, VP, Publisher and Editorial Director at Algonquin Books, joined Algonquin in 2016 after working as a magazine writer and editor at Time and People and a stint at Audible; she was named publisher in 2019. She oversees the acquisition and curation of Algonquin’s prize-winning and highly curated list of fiction and narrative nonfiction. As an editor, her projects range from memoirs and journalistic nonfiction to award-winning debut stories and literary fiction, including the recent true crime work TRAILED, by Kathryn Miles, FORAGER, by Michelle Dowd, THE MOUNTAINS SING and DUST CHILD by Nguyen Phan Que Mai, BIG GIRL SMALL TOWN and FACTORY GIRLS by Michelle Gallen, JACKIE & ME by Louis Bayard, and many others. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
Photo by Elizabeth Niles
Susan Golomb has been an agent of literary and upmarket fiction and non-fiction for over 30 years both with her own agency and now with Writers House. Her clients include National Book Award Winners Jonathan Franzen and William T. Vollmann; New York Times bestsellers Rachel Kushner (also a NBA and Booker nominee), Imbolo Mbue (winner of the Penn Faulkner award), Edgar Award winning author Angie Kim, Danielle Trussoni, Brando Skyhorse (winner of the Penn Hemingway Award), Noah Hawley, Janelle Brown and Harry S. Dent Jr., among others. She also represents Community of Writers alums Glen David Gold, Krys Lee and Wayétu Moore. Susan graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania and is always looking for excellent literary or commercial fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction.
Mary Melton is an award-winning writer, editor, and podcaster based in Los Angeles who runs an editorial consultancy firm, Smakdab. She is Editor-at-Large for Alta Journal, the quarterly publication about California and the West, and she serves as Editorial Director at the design-strategy firm Godfrey Dadich Partners. During her long tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Los Angeles magazine, she led the team to 12 National Magazine Award nominations and three wins. She also served as Vice President/Editorial Director for the company’s publishing group, overseeing the editorial direction, redesigns, and digital relaunches of Texas Monthly, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Orange Coast magazines.
Photo: Bryan Derballa
Maceo Montoya is an author, visual artist, and educator who has published books in a variety of genres, including four works of fiction: The Scoundrel and the Optimist, The Deportation of Wopper Barraza, You Must Fight Them: A Novella and Stories, and Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces. Montoya has also published two works of nonfiction: Letters to the Poet from His Brother, a hybrid book combining images, prose poems, and essays, and Chicano Movement for Beginners, which he both wrote and illustrated. Montoya is a professor of Chicana/o Studies and English at the University of California, Davis where he teaches courses on Chicanx culture, literature, and creative writing. He is the editor of the literary magazine Huizache and lives in Woodland, CA. [Fiction/Nonfiction]
Tara Parsons is the Vice President, Deputy Publisher for the East Coast imprints of the HarperOne Group at HarperCollins Publishers. She is responsible for overseeing the marketing departments for four of the HarperOne Group’s imprints: Amistad, HarperCollins Español, HarperVia, and Martin Luther King Jr. Library. In addition, Tara acquires and edits her own list of titles. Her recent books include Jenna Book Club Pick Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding, Indies Introduce Pick and Andrew Carnegie shortlisted Greenland by David Santos Donaldson, and Indie Next and Amerie Book Club Pick Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. She currently serves on the Board of Words Without Borders and works as an Adjunct Professor at NYU. Prior to HarperCollins, Tara worked as Editor-in-Chief of Touchstone Books at Simon & Schuster and Editorial Director of Fiction at Amazon Publishing.
Geoff Shandler is the former editor in chief of Little, Brown and a former editorial director at HarperCollins. A stay-at-home dad since Covid hit, he has been independently editing books published by Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and W.W. Norton. He began his publishing life in 1993 at Random House, and among the authors he has edited since are John le Carré, Sarah Perry, Jonathan Safran Foer, Malcolm Gladwell, Mary Gabriel, Karina Longworth, Luis Alberto Urrea, William Least Heat-Moon, Bob Spitz, J. Wallace Nichols, Wendy Pearlman, David W. Brown, Brian Castleberry, Nathan Englander and John Markoff. He still edits on paper. (Hermitage 510 tipped pencils and Tombow Sand 510A erasers, if you’re curious.) He was a judge for the 2022 Whiting Awards and has served as a grant evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in New Mexico, he went to school in New Haven, worked in New Hampshire, lived in New York, and now resides in New Jersey. 2023 will be his third time participating in the Community of Writers Summer Writing Workshops.
Peter Steinberg is a literary agent now at United Talent Agency (UTA) after he joined Fletcher & Company in 2021 from Foundry Literary + Media. He’s represented numerous New York Times bestsellers (including three #1 New York Times bestsellers) and clients have been nominated for or awarded Edgars, Pulitzer Prize, Story Prize, The Paris Review Discovery Prize, PEN/Faulkner and National Book Awards. Most recently, The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont was selected for Reese’s Book Club, and The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was a finalist for the National Book Award. His list includes commercial and literary fiction, sci-fi and fantasy, narrative non-fiction, memoir, self-help, history, true crime, pop culture, humor, and sports. Steinberg is a graduate of NYU film school and worked briefly in the film business prior to becoming a literary agent.
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.