Special Guests
1. Sarah Crichton
Sarah Crichton is Publisher of Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux which began publishing titles in March 2006. An eclectic mix of smart and vervy books, fiction and nonfiction both, the imprint has already had marked success with Ishmael Beah's bestselling memoir, A LONG WAY GONE: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which reached Number One on the New York Times Bestseller list.
Other recent successes have included David Finkel's account of the surge in Iraq, THE GOOD SOLDIERS, Cathleen Schine's national bestseller, THE THREE WEISSMANNS OF WESTPORT and Michelle Huneven's BLAME. Other notable titles include Jason Goodwin's Edgar Award winning mystery, THE JANISSARY TREE; the bestselling Swedish thriller, THE HYPNOTIST; Terry Tempest Williams's WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS; and Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner's APPLES AND ORANGES.
Before coming to FSG, Crichton was Mariane Pearl's coauthor on A MIGHTY HEART: The Brave Life and Death of Danny Pearl (Scribner). She also worked with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on her memoir, MADAM SECRETARY.
From 1996 to 2001, Crichton was V.P./Publisher of Little, Brown, where she had the good fortune to sign up THE LOVELY BONES and THE TIPPING POINT. She was a top editor at Newsweek from 1988 to 1996 and before that was the Editor of Seventeen magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.
2. Julia Glass
Julia Glass is the author of the novels
Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction; The Whole World Over; and
The Widower's Tale. Her third book, I See You Everywhere, a collection of linked stories, won the 2009 SUNY John Gardner Fiction Award. She has also won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Other awards for her fiction include the Sense of Place Award, the Tobias Wolff Award, and the Pirate's Alley Medal for Best Novella. Her essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in
Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book, edited by Sean Manning. Julia lives with her two sons and their father in Massachusetts.
3. Barney Karpfinger
Barney Karpfinger founded the Karpfinger Agency in 1985. The agency's fiction list ranges from some of today's best mysteries to fine literary fiction. The non-fiction list includes narrative non-fiction, as well as memoirs, biographies and cultural and political analysis. Before establishing the agency, Karpfinger ran the contracts department of a major New York publishing house. Karpfinger studied English at Columbia University while supporting himself by working as a paralegal.
4. Bill Loehfelm
Bill Loehfelm is the author of three novels, most recently
THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS, from Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, as well as
FRESH KILLS (2008) and BLOODROOT (2009). Bill's work has garnered praise from such authors as Elizabeth Gilbert, John Sanford, Laura Lippman, John Lescroart, and Colin Harrison and such publications as People, Entertainment Weekly, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Daily News. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in several anthologies. Born in Brooklyn and raised on Staten Island, Bill moved to New Orleans in 1997, where he currently lives with his wife, AC Lambeth, a writer and yoga instructor, and their two dogs. When not writing, Bill practices yoga, plays the drums, cheers the Saints, eats oysters and gets tattoos, all with varying frequency and success. Look for
THE DEVIL IN HER WAY, the second in the Maureen Coughlin series, in 2013 from Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
www.billloehfelm.tumblr.com
5. Eric Marcus
Eric Marcus is the author of
Why Suicide? Questions & Answers About Suicide, Suicide Prevention, and
Coping with the Suicide of Someone You Know. In addition to Why Suicide?, Eric is the author of several other books, including Is It A Choice?, Making Gay History, and What If Someone I Know Is Gay? He is also co-author of Breaking the Surface, the #1 NY Times best-selling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis. In addition, Eric has written articles and columns for the NY Times, NY Daily News, NY Post, Newsweek, and the NJ Star-Ledger.
Eric is a former associate producer for both "Good Morning America" and CBS Morning News. He is a graduate of Vassar College and earned his master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. For more information, please visit www.ericmarcus.com and www.whysuicidebook.com.
6. Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of eight books, including My Kind of Place; The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup; Saturday Night; and Lazy Little Loafers. In 1999, she published The Orchid Thief, a narrative about orchid poachers in Florida, which was made into the Oscar-wining movie, "Adaptation," written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, a sweeping account of Rin Tin Tin's journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon published in 2011, was a New York Times bestseller and a Notable book of 2011.
Orlean has written for Vogue, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian, and has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992. She has covered a wide range of subjects - from umbrella inventors to origami artists to skater Tonya Harding - and she has often written about animals, including show dogs, racing pigeons, animal actors, oxen, donkeys, mules, and backyard chickens. She graduated with honors from the University of Michigan and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003. In 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Michigan. She lives in Los Angeles and in upstate New York with one dog, three cats, eight chickens, four turkeys, four guinea fowl, twelve Black Angus cattle, three ducks, and her husband and son.
Current publication list:
Red Sox and Bluefish
Saturday Night
The Orchid Thief
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup
My Kind of Place
Lazy Little Loafers
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
7. Beth Rashbaum
Beth Rashbaum is a freelance editor, who started her career in publishing at Macmillan, and then worked as an acquiring editor at Avon Books, Clarkson N. Potter, Little, Brown and Co., and, most recently, for eleven years, at Bantam Dell/Random House. She has been responsible for a number of New York Times bestsellers, including: The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (edited);The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Alice Schroeder (edited); Little Heathens, Mildred Kalish, named to TBR's Ten Best of 2007 (acquired and edited); Mother-Daughter Wisdom, Christiane Northrup, M.D. (edited); Peace, Love & Healing, Bernie Siegel, M.D. (ghosted); Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem (edited);The Trial of Socrates, I.F. Stone (acquired).
She also co-authored, with Olga Silverstein, The Courage to Raise Good Men.
Other authors she has worked with include Alex Stone, Katie Hafner, David Willman, Richard Cohen, Jerald Walker, Daniel Coyle, Kate Moses, Nancy Jenkins, Elizabeth Hess, William Ury, Peggy Brill, Timothy McCall, M.D., Masha Gessen, Eileen Welsome, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., Yaffa Eliach, John Edgar Wideman, Ethel Spector Person, M.D., and many others.
8. Frank Rose
Frank Rose is the author of The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, recently published in the U.S. and the U.K. by W.W. Norton and hailed by the International Journal of Advertising as "an essential overview" of how media is evolving. He has spoken on the future of storytelling at such conferences as ad:tech Sydney, the Festival of Media in Montreux, and the
Guardian's Changing Media Summit in London. He wrote extensively about the intersection of media and technology for more than a decade as a contributing editor at
Wired and a contributing writer at Fortune before that, covering such topics as the making of
Avatar, Sony's enormous gamble on the PlayStation 3, and the posthumous career of Philip K. Dick in Hollywood. His 1989 best-seller
West of Eden, about the ouster of Steve Jobs from Apple, was named one of the ten best books of the year by
BusinessWeek and was recently republished in an updated edition. He is also the author of
The Agency, an unauthorized history of the oldest and at one time most successful talent agency in Hollywood. He lives in the East Village of Manhattan, where he got his start covering the punk scene at CBGB for
The Village Voice.
www.frankrose.com
www.artofimmersion.com
9. Toni Sciarra
Toni Sciarra Poynter is an independent editorial consultant and published author and collaborator with more than 25 years' experience in nonfiction book publishing, holding senior positions at HarperCollins, William Morrow, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan. Known for her hands-on editorial skill and her rapport with authors, she worked with bestselling authors, respected brands, and prominent professionals ranging from bestselling trainer Jack Canfield to noted neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., among numerous others.
Since becoming an independent editor and writer in 2008, Toni has collaborated on three books, including The Freelancer's Bible, a comprehensive career and consciousness-raising guide for today's growing independent workforce, which will be published by Workman in October 2012. Authors she has edited or collaborated with are under contract at HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon and Schuster, and more.
Toni has appeared on TV and radio and has been an invited speaker at a variety of conferences, including the recently launched Self-Publishing Book Expo. She is also a reviewer for BlueInk Reviews, a review website for self-published books, established to recognize and promote best practices in self-publishing.
PublishersMarketplace.com
10. Natalie Standiford
Photo credit:
Tobias Everke
11. Marian Young
A graduate of Swarthmore College, Marian Young has been working in publishing her entire career. Her first job, with a publishers' advertising agency, led to a position with Harper & Row (now HarperCollins) as advertising director. Preferring to work directly with writers, she decided to become an agent and worked at two literary agencies before going out on her own in 1986.
Over the years, she has had the privilege of working with a diverse group of writers in many fields: art, history, fiction, cookbooks, and general non-fiction. She represents Bret Lott, author of one of the highest-selling Oprah's Book Club picks, JEWEL; the PEN/Bingham Award-winner WE'RE IN TROUBLE, by Christopher Coake; historian Maury Klein; and the mystery/thriller writers Carolyn Haines, Thomas Lakeman, and newcomer Jeannie Holmes. Two of her cookbooks, ALL ABOUT BRAISING, by Molly Stevens, and TASTY, by Roy Finamore, were awarded the prestigious Beard Award, and another cookbook, FISH WITHOUT A DOUBT, by Rick Moonen and Roy Finamore, was chosen as the first book in the Gourmet Magazine Cookbook Club. Finally, she liked the work of writer T.R. Pearson so much that she married him.
If there is a theme to her preferences, it would follow the words of Oscar Wilde: "My tastes are simple. I am always satisfied with the best."