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Writers’ & Artists’ Conference 2010
UPDATE: The conference is now fully booked: add your name to the waiting list by emailing your details to WAYB Conference at A&C Black. You’ll also be among the first to hear news on future events!
The Insider Guide to How to Get Published is a one-day conference on Saturday 13 March 2010 for writers who are serious about getting published.
This is the first in a series of courses brought to you by the publishers of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, the bestselling media guide for emerging writers and artists since 1901.
A complete overview of how to get your work ready for submission, the day will be filled with top tips, advice and feedback from industry specialists.
1. Conference programme
Date: 13 March 2010
Venue: Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3GA
9.30am: Doors open
10.00am: Welcome, Jo Herbert, Editor, Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook
10.05am: Introduction by chair, Liz Calder, co-founder, Bloomsbury Publishing and more recently Full Circle Editions
10.20am: Overview of the publishing industry today: what authors should know about the business of publishing; publishing trends etc. Richard Charkin, Executive Director, Bloomsbury Publishing
11am: How I got published, Julie Myerson, author and journalist
11.30am: Is your writing any good? Rebecca Swift, co-founder of The Literary Consultancy
12.15pm: Do I need an agent? Andrew Kidd, Senior Literary Agent, Aitken Alexander Associates
1pm: Lunch
2pm: Why manuscripts get rejected, Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor, Bloomsbury Publishing
2.30pm: What to submit and how, Jo Herbert, Editor, Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook
4.30pm: End
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2. Profiles of the speakers
Jo Herbert has 13 years’ experience of the publishing industry. She has worked for three mainstream publishers in various editorial roles, most recently at A&C Black for the past seven years as Editor of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and the Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook.
She has written articles for Publishing News and runs writers’ workshops at UK literary festivals on the subject of getting published. She lives in London but is originally from Wales.
Liz Calder began her publishing career at Victor Gollancz, before moving to Jonathan Cape in 1979. In 1986 she joined Nigel Newton, David Reynolds and Alan Wherry to set up Bloomsbury Publishing, where her fiction stable included Booker winners Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje and Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer.
She has been a member of the Arts Council Literature Panel, chair of the Royal Court Theatre, a founding director of the Groucho Club, and since 2003 has been a co-founder and President of the Parati International Literary Festival (FLIP) in Brazil. In 2009 she joined Louis Baum, John Christie and Genevieve Christie to form a new Suffolk-based publishing house, Full Circle Editions.
Richard Charkin has an MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; was a Supernumerary Fellow of Green College, Oxford; and attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He is Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. He is also a non-executive director of the Institute of Physics Publishing.
He is a member of the Strategy Advisory Board of the British Library; a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Board; a member of the UK’s Literary Heritage Group; a Trustee and former Chairman of Common Purpose International; Council member and former President of the Publishers Association; and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London.
He has held senior positions at Macmillan (CEO worldwide), part of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (Director); Current Science Group (CEO); Reed Elsevier (CEO Reed International Books); and Oxford University Press (Managing Director Academic and General Divisions).
Julie Myerson is the author of seven novels including the best-selling Something Might Happen, The Story of You, and her most recent, Out of Breath.
Her three works of non-fiction include Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in our House and Not A Games Person, both of which were dramatised on Radio 4 and, most recently The Lost Child which Bloomsbury published in 2009.
She has been a regular guest on BBC2’s Newsnight Review for the past 5 years. She lives in London and Suffolk with her husband and their teenage children.
Rebecca Swift is the co-founder and Director of TLC, the UK’s leading manuscript assessment service, which provides expert market-aware editorial advice to writers at all levels writing in English. TLC also runs ‘Chapter & Verse’, an innovative on-line mentoring scheme and Literary Adventures.
Rebecca read English at Oxford University and has since also worked as an editor and writer. She is a trustee of Writers’ Centre Norwich, the Maya Centre, and is a member of the Free Word Consortium.
Rebecca’s publications include poetry published in Virago New Poets, Vintage New Writing 6, Driftwood, US, and Staple; and she has also written and reviewed for The Independent on Sunday and The Guardian.
Andrew Kidd joined Aitken Alexander Associates as a senior agent and director in April 2008, and he represents a wide range of fiction and non-fiction authors. He was Publisher of Picador and Pan Macmillan between 2002 and 2008, where his writers included John Banville, Don DeLillo, Alan Hollinghurst, Jackie Kay, Andrew Marr, Oliver Sacks, Edward St Aubyn and Graham Swift.
Andrew began his publishing career at Penguin, editing Jonathan Safran Foer, Matthew Kneale, Andrew Rawnsley and John Updike among others. He is on the advisory board of First Story, a scheme that arranges for established authors to teach in state schools across the UK.
Bill Swainson read English at Leeds and has worked in publishing since 1976 with John Calder, Allison & Busby, Fourth Estate and The Harvill Press, and also as a freelance editor and literary consultant. In 2000 he joined Bloomsbury where he is currently Senior Commissioning Editor, publishing mainly non-fiction, but also fiction in translation.
A former chairman of the Poetry Society, he has been a board member of the Poetry Book Society, a literary adviser to the British Centre for Literary Translation and is currently an adviser to the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Italy. He is the editor of the Encarta Book of Quotations (Bloomsbury, 2000).
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3. Booking details
UPDATE: The conference is now fully booked: add your name to the waiting list by emailing your details to waybconference@acblack.com. You’ll also be among the first to hear news on future events!
Date: 13 March 2010
Venue: Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3GA
Price: £60 (lunch and refreshments included).
Special discount on A&C Black writing books available on the day.
Early bird discount: book before 31 December 2009 for £10 off the ticket price.
Student discount: students can enjoy £10 off the ticket price.
Places are strictly limited, so book early to avoid disappointment.
For further information contact Ellen Williams at waybconference@acblack.com or tel. +44 (0) 207 494 8533. To book your place, please download the booking form (PDF) and return it to Ellen Williams, Publicity, A&C Black, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY.
Disclaimer: A&C Black Publishers take no responsibility for lost or damaged applications. Tickets are non-refundable. Speakers are subject to change without notice. Students are required to show valid NUS card on day of conference in order to qualify for student discount. Early bird discount cannot be used in conjunction with any other discount or offer.
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Buy the 2010 Yearbook
The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook is available at a discounted price from our online bookshop. Get all the info, contacts and advice you could need.On camera: Jon McGregor
"Being longlisted for the Booker Prize changed everything - it was the launchpad for my writing career." Click to view our video with novelist Jon McGregor »
On camera: Justin Cartwright
"Just write... If you're any good you may not know it, but certainly someone else will." Click to view our video with novelist Justin Cartwright »
On camera: Julie Myerson
The novelist and journalist Julie Myerson on how she got that all-important first publishing deal. Click here to view our video exclusive »