Wednesday, September 16, 5:30-7:30 p.m. ET
Penguin Random House, 1745 Broadway (between 55th & 56th Streets), Cerf-Lane Room, NYC
$20 for WMG members and partner organizations; $25 for non-members; $10 for active Scholars
Some books don't need a rewrite. They need a different shelf.
Many successful literary projects began as something else entirely: a memoir became narrative nonfiction, a magazine article turned into a biography, or an adult novel found its audience as young adult fiction. Sometimes the fastest path to publication is rethinking where your story belongs.
In this conversation, editors Lee Oglesby and Kristine Puopolo, agent Kiele Raymond, and authors Katie Gee Salisbury, Stacy Kim, and Amy Klein will discuss how their own genre shifts happened, what prompted agents and editors to suggest them, and how writers can recognize when a different category may unlock their manuscript's potential. It’s moderated by Susan Shapiro, the bestselling author of 18 books in eight different genres, several that started out something else.
Meet the speakers:
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of Not Your China Doll, a biography of Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Asian American movie star. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” She also writes the Substack Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, Katie now lives in Brooklyn.
Stacy S. Kim, Ph.D. is a social scientist, writer, and coach who helps caring high-achievers untangle the internal knots that keep them stuck—the tension between ambition and caregiving, perfectionism and resentment, status and self-doubt. Stacy founded her coaching practice, Life Junctions®, in 2008. Since then, she’s worked with hundreds of smart, caring women who didn’t need conventional advice, makeovers, or yet another plan; they needed a fresh perspective on the knots and curated action steps to move forward. From those early coaching conversations, The Untangling Practice™ was born: an evidence-based four-phase framework to help women move forward with focus, confidence, and ease. It’s now the foundation of her courses, keynotes, and forthcoming book from Hachette.
Amy Klein has always written about whatever she was going through, from jumping out of a plane to the scary world of dating. From 2013 to 2015, she was the wit and heart behind the taboo-busting New York Times Fertility Diary. Her work has also been featured in The Washington Post, The Forward, and Insider. In 2020, Amy published her first book, The Trying Game, which offers a wealth of information from the fertility trenches. Now she wants to help everyone get and stay pregnant and avoid many of the pitfalls and mistakes she made.
Lee Oglesby is a freelance editor who works closely with authors to nurture books that have the power to shape lives and communities. She is interested in science, the environment, food and agriculture, health and wellbeing, and transformational justice. She believes all stories should be told with a deep level of literacy around race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability. Lee was previously a Senior Editor with Flatiron Books, and has worked at Milkweed Editions, Oxford University Press, and some of New York City’s most respected literary agencies. She is a graduate of Amherst College and the Columbia Publishing Course.
Kristine Puopolo is a WMG President Emerita and Vice President, Editorial Director, Nonfiction at Doubleday Books. She has worked at either Penguin or Random House for most of her publishing career. Her list includes many journalists, historians, and experts. Kristine has edited bestselling and prize-winning nonfiction at Penguin Random House since 2001, including three books that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: Gulag (2003) by Anne Applebaum, The Dead Hand (2009) by David Hoffman, and Black Flags (2015) by Joby Warrick.
Kiele Raymond is a Senior Agent at Thompson Literary Agency. She pursued her studies in Literature and Anthropology with a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. from the University of Chicago before launching her publishing career at Simon & Schuster in 2011. She joined Thompson Literary Agency in 2017 to seek out bold new voices in literary fiction and narrative nonfiction. Her clients include critically-acclaimed and award-winning writers such as Peace Adzo Medie, Ari Braverman, and Janice Obuchowski. Books on Kiele's list have been named New York Times 100 Notable Books, Time's 100 Must-Read Books, NPR's Best Books of the Year, and selected for Reese's Book Club and GMA Buzz Picks, as well as longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Diverse Book Awards.
Meet the moderator:
Susan Shapiro is the bestselling author/coauthor of books her family hates, like The Bosnia List, Lighting Up, and Five Men Who Broke My Heart (from PRH), which was recently optioned for a movie. She writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, Newsweek, The Cut, Wired, Oprah Daily, and The New Yorker. She lives with her husband in Greenwich Village and has taught writing at NYU, The New School, and Columbia University’s MFA program, using her practical guides, Byline Bible and Book Bible, to help students of all ages publish. Follow Susan on Instagram @profsue123 or email Profsue123@gmail.com.
Refunds available up to 48 hours before the event. No refunds for cancellations made within 48 hours of the event.
