Amy Bishop-Wycisk joined Trellis Literary Management in 2023 after eight years with Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She's cultivating a wide-ranging list in upmarket and book club fiction, light sci-fi and fantasy, speculative fiction, expert-driven narrative nonfiction, cultural criticism, history, and select YA, with a special interest in underrepresented voices, especially from the AAPI community. Her list includes titles such as A Crane Among Wolves by NYT bestselling author June Hur, the Daughter of Sparta series by Claire M. Andrews, and GAME FACE by award-winning author, Shari Green. 

Kelly Caldwell has written for Vox, Pacific Standard, Entropy, New York Newsday, House Beautiful, Time Out New York, The Writer, and Essay Daily, among many others. One of her essays was named a Notable Essay by the editors of the Best American Essays series and anthologized in If These Walls Could Talk: Thoughts of Home. She is also dean of faculty at Gotham Writers Workshop.

Jennifer Chen Tran is a literary agent at Glass Literary Management. With over a dozen years of experience in the publishing industry, Jennifer is passionate about nurturing and championing the creative lives of the authors and artists. She works with a wide range of award-winning talent, including entrepreneurs, journalists, physicians, thought leaders, James Beard nominated chefs, and graphic novelists, among others. Jennifer is an editorial agent who believes in the art and magic of collaboration. Her ultimate goal is to work in concert with authors to create books that will have a lasting positive social impact on the world.

Prior to joining Glass Literary Management, Jennifer was a literary agent at Folio Literary Management and Idea Architects and served as Of Counsel at The New Press. She obtained her Juris Doctor from Northeastern School of Law and a Bachelors in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. She is an attorney in good standing in California and New York, a member of the Authors Guild, and a member of the Association of American Literary Agents.

Cindy House is the author of the memoir Mother Noise (Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books), and her essays and short fiction have appeared in Passengers Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Wig Leaf, Solstice Literary Magazine, Longleaf Review, and So To Speak, among others. She is a humorist who opens regularly for David Sedaris at Kennedy Center, Symphony Hall, and The Town Hall in New York, among others. She teaches in the MFA program at Lesley University. She attended the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and holds an MFA in Fiction from Lesley University.

Sarah Khalil is an agent at Calligraph. Prior to Calligraph’s founding, Sarah was at Kneerim & Williams for four years, developing several of the agency’s best-selling and award-winning authors alongside Jill Kneerim and Katherine Flynn. She holds an MA in Publishing & Writing from Emerson College and a BA in English Literature with a minor in History from the American University of Beirut. Big ideas, radical thought, and propulsive writing are the cornerstones of her taste.

Joselin Linder is the author of the memoir The Family Gene, and co-author of the nonfiction books The Gamification Revolution, Game-Based Marketing, and The Good Girl’s Guide to Living in Sin: The New Rules for Moving in With Your Man. She is also co-author of the humor books The Stoned Family Robinson and The Purity Test: Your Filth and Depravity Cheerfully Exposed by 2,000 Nosy Questions. Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, TedX, and Elle.com among others. 

Chad Luibl is an agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. He comes from the workshop model of creative writing and has a hands-on editorial approach to agenting. For fiction, he is particularly drawn to novels that are more character or plot-driven, thrillers that are as inventive as they are suspenseful, speculative and historical fiction that offer a nuanced perspective on place, and graphic novels that push the boundaries of the genre.

Sharon Pelletier joined Dystel, Goderich & Bourret in 2013 after working for Europa Editions and Barnes & Noble. While her interests are broad, Sharon is especially seeking upmarket fiction, including unexpected suspense fiction and smart, complex women’s fiction. On the nonfiction side Sharon is eager for compelling, fierce narrative nonfiction by journalists, experts, and emerging voices with a growing platform. In all categories she particularly welcomes marginalized voices.

Melissa Petro is a freelance writer with bylines on TIME, The Guardian, Washington Post, NY Magazine, Rolling Stone, Real Simple, Marie Claire and many other places. Her first book, Shame On You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification will be published by Putnam Books, a division of Penguin/Random House, in Fall 2024.

Maggie Smith is the author of six award-winning books including You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, and Goldenrod. A Pushcart Prize winner, Smith has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, and the Kenyon Review, among others. 

Michelle Tessler has worked in the publishing industry for over twenty years. Before forming her boutique agency in 2004, Michelle worked at the William Morris Agency and the prestigious literary agency Carlisle & Company (now Inkwell Management). She also spent seven years working in content and business development in the Internet industry, beginning in 1994 when she was hired by best-selling author James Gleick to help launch The Pipeline. In light of the digital opportunities that are transforming publishing, Michelle’s experience in the Internet world is of great benefit to her authors, both as they navigate ebook opportunities, and as they look for creative and effective ways to market their books to niche communities that can be targeted online.

She represents a select number of best-selling and emerging authors in both fiction and non-fiction. Clients include accomplished journalists, scientists, academics, experts in their field, as well as novelists and debut authors with unique voices and stories to tell. She values fresh, original writing that has a compelling point of view. She represents, among many others, Paul Collins, Frans de Waal, Mira Jacob, Amy Stewart and Amanda Eyre Ward.

Along with two memoirs, Jerald Walker is the author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, a Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and Winner of the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award. His work has appeared in publications such as The Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones, and it has been widely anthologized, including five times in The Best American Essays series and in the Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the James A. Michener Foundation, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College.

Maria graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in English and Drama, then obtained her Masters in Modern Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Before joining InkWell, she worked as a Foreign Rights Assistant at Janklow & Nesbit. Maria enjoys a blend of literary and commercial fiction, as well as speculative fiction and magical realism. She is particularly fond of novels that straddle the cultural divide. She is looking for nonfiction projects that speak to the current cultural moment or examine overlooked facets of society. Her clients include Luke Dumas, Eduardo Garcia, Marcia Zug, and Audrey Burges.

Teresa Wong is author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression, a finalist for The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Her comics have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s. A teacher of memoir and comics at Gotham Writers Workshop, she was also the 2021–22 Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary. Her second book, All Our Ordinary Stories, a graphic memoir about life as a child of immigrants, will be published in Fall 2024.

Jade Wong-Baxter joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in 2021. She previously worked for three years at Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents. Her clients include Chris Belcher (Pretty Baby, Avid Reader, 2022); Delia Cai (Central Places, Ballantine, 2023); and Hannah Matthews (You or Someone You Love, Atria, 2023). Jade is looking for adult literary/upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction, with an emphasis on narratives by and about people of color, as well as the perspectives of marginalized identities. Her other areas of interest include grounded speculative, memoir, cultural criticism, and Asian-American history.