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Writing a Query Letter and Finding the Right Agent for Your Novel w/ Alice Martin

You’ve written a novel! You’ve edited and re-edited it! You want to share your story with others! Now what?

In these two, two-hour sessions, you will learn how to pitch your novel to agents, how to write a query letter that is both eye-catching and appropriate to the genre, and how to make a savvy submission list of agents for your project.

We’ll start with a brief overview of the different pathways to publishing to better understand when and why to seek an agent. Then, we’ll identify the component parts of agent query letters by close reading examples together. Finally, we’ll help each other brainstorm pitch potential hooks and comparable titles for our projects-in-progress. In our second session, we’ll workshop each other’s complete query drafts, discuss strategies for finding the right potential agents for your project, and begin to build our own submission lists.

Whether you have a query letter drafted or aren’t completely sure yet what a query letter (or agent) is, this class is open to all interested in finding a supportive community during the trying process of seeking publication!

Alice Martin is a fiction writer, born and raised in North Carolina, and the author of Westward Women (St. Martin's Press 2026). Her creative work has appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Appalachian Heritage, Triangle House Review, and elsewhere. She received her PhD in American literature from Rutgers University and is now an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University. Before returning to academia, she worked for years in commercial book publishing as an editor and agent at Algonquin Books and Writers House, LLC. Now, she lives in Waynesville with her husband, son, attention-seeking cat, and too many typewriters.