Rebecca Podos is an agent at the Rees Literary Agency and is looking to build her client list. She is a graduate of the MFA Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson College, whose fiction has appeared in literary publications such as Glimmer Train, Glyph, CAJE, Bellows American Review, Paper Darts, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She is thrilled to read the work of promising new authors, and to represent books by talented clients like Rin Chupeco, Ryan Bradford, Jen Estes, Mackenzi Lee, Jen Anckorn, Sarah Nicolas, and others.
Rebecca is primarily interested in Young Adult fiction of all kinds, including contemporary, emotionally driven stories, mystery, romance, urban and historical fantasy, horror and sci-fi. Occasionally, she considers literary and commercial adult fiction, New Adult, and narrative nonfiction.
Rebecca prefers email submissions, and unfortunately is only able to respond to those she is interested in pursuing. Submit a query letter and the first few chapters.
Rebecca’s e-mail is [email protected]
MAILING ADDRESS:
Rees Literary Agency
14 Beacon St., Suite 710
Boston, MA 02108
Talk tomorrow,
Kathy
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As the founding editor of
Ploughshares and the former Chair of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, DeWitt Henry has stirred, ushered, and promoted all manner of writerly dreams. He's put first stories into print and published the work of our greatest living (and sometimes not living) authors. He's sat in classrooms, seducing and exhorting. He's said to others,
You can. You will. With his memoir,
Sweet Dreams (Hidden River Press), Henry traces and comes nearly to terms with his own fantasies and emergent needs, as he tells the story of his rising and his wanting. Much of the book is devoted to a childhood and adolescence spent in the very swath of the suburban Philadelphia that I have, since my eighth-grade year at Radnor Middle School, called my own, and so I turned the pages of this book with acute interest, admiring the precision of Henry's recall—the stunning accuracy of descriptions about a place that has changed entirely and, then again, changed hardly at all.
I have (unknowingly) walked by two of Henry's childhood homes many a time; in
Sweet Dreams the porches, yards, rooms, rooftops come alive with Henry's artist mother and alcoholic father, with siblings that struggled to find their own way, with episodes of generosity and scenes of terrible despair. I spent my time at Radnor High; DeWitt did, too, with peers whose last names are familiar to me. Henry walked among the ponds and water wheels and the majestic Walton Estate before it became Eastern University. I have walked there, too, plenty of times, taking photographs like the one above. The local movie theater can be found in Henry's pages, as can Eaglesmere, an outpost I have visited. Roadways and greenways and pause and hurry—it was then, it is now, and Henry brings it to vivid life.
Sweet Dreams is a coming-of-age book. It is a book about the boy who grew up with candy wealth, fell in love with a toy printing press, and decided, early on, to be a Writer. One can decide to be a Writer, but the world, in some ways, has to stand equal to that dream. It's a contest of wills, or it can be seen as one, and DeWitt takes us through the bruises and glories. He dreams out loud. We're there.
Here he is talking about the aforementioned Walton Estate (Walmarthon), now the heart of the Eastern University campus:
... Walton's was ten minutes or so away—you waded and pushed through overgrown bushes, ferns, and low hanging branches, with dankness, cobwebs, and with shade from the branches interlocking and arching above, while woodpeckers hammered, echoing, and cicadas whirred. You'd come out, then, following a creek, above the smaller of two ponds, set in the estate's open expanse of lawn, gardens, driveways and walks. A big white house, lived in, was to the left, far off were the gatehouse and wall, and far to your right, the castle-like mansion, deserted now.
“Rebecca prefers email submissions, and unfortunately is only able to respond to those she is interested in pursuing.” For me, I don’t want to pursue an agent who doesn’t even have the energy to send a form letter. Is it really so hard to acknowledge another writer’s work — even if it isn’t what you are looking for, Rebecca? How about a little human kindness.