Welcome to the 22nd (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a FREE recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. So if you’re writing contemporary or literary young adult (read below for exactly what this means), then this 22nd contest is for you! The contest is live through end of day, Wednesday, August 24, 2016. The contest is judged by agent Andrea Morrison of Writers House.
WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED
After a previous “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! That’s why these contests are not to missed if you have an eligible submission.
HOW TO SUBMIT
E-mail entries to dearluckyagent22@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.
MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!
ANDREA MORRISON of Writers House
started in the California office in 2009 as an intern to Steve Malk,
and she has been in love with publishing and the company ever since. In
NYC, she first learned under Brianne Johnson, and then went on to assist
Rebecca Sherman and Geri Thoma. She’s had the opportunity to work
closely with a variety of best-selling and award-winning authors and
illustrators, in genres ranging from picture books to middle grade and
YA, to adult literary fiction and nonfiction. She is now actively
building her own list of clients. Andrea studied literature &
writing at University of California, San Diego and earned her MFA in
fiction from Columbia University.WHAT TO SUBMIT (AND OUR SOCIAL MEDIA REQUIREMENTS)
The first 150-250 words (i.e., your first double-spaced page) of your unpublished, completed book-length work of young adult (no high sci-fi or high fantasy, please). You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry.
Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a TinyURL for this link/contest for you to easily use is http://tinyurl.com/z7e9rsc.
An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. If we’re friends on FB, tag me in the mention. And if you are going to solely use Twitter as your 2 times, please wait one day between mentions to spread out the notices, rather than simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to include the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point. And if you use Twitter, put my handle @chucksambuchino at the middle or the end, not at the very beginning of the tweet, or else the tweet will be invisible to others.)
Here is a sample TWEET you can use (feel free to tweak): New FREE contest for writers of Young Adult http://tinyurl.com/z7e9rsc Judged by agent Andrea Morrison of Writers House, via @chucksambuchino
Check Out These Great Upcoming Writers’ Conferences:
- Aug. 12-14, 2016: Writer’s Digest Conference East (New York, NY)
- August 20, 2016: Toronto Writing Workshop (Toronto, Canada)
- Sept. 9, 2016: Sacramento Writers Conference (Sacramento, CA)
- Sept. 10, 2016: Writing Workshop of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
- Sept. 10, 2016: Chesapeake Writing Workshop (Washington, DC)
- Oct. 28-30, 2016: Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference (Los Angeles, CA)
- Nov. 5-6, 2016: ShowMe Writers Masterclass (Columbia, MO)
- Nov. 19, 2016: Las Vegas Writing Workshop (Las Vegas, NV)
- Feb. 26 – March 3, 2017: Writers Winter Escape Cruise (conference/cruise departing Miami)
WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?
Completed contemporary or literary young adult novels.
This is NOT a contest for YA books that are definitively science fiction or fantasy. This contest is for contemporary (modern realistic) stories and literary YA stories that may or may not have a touch of something else. In other words, if there is magical realism, that’s OK. Some light fantastical elements are fine. But anything that would classify as mainstream sci-fi or high fantasy should not be submitted. Historical YA is acceptable.
In Andrea’s own words: “I have a soft spot for literary YA. I like both true-to-life books and novels that include magical elements (I love low fantasy and magical realism, but I’m not the right match for high fantasy novels). I’m interested in stories about love, friendship, family dynamics, and mixtures of all of the above. Mysteries are great here, too. I do really like edgy YA, stories involving artwork, books that take place in a variety of locations, and novels that explore rarely discussed topics. A few YA titles I love: WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart, BONE GAP by Laura Ruby, BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver, I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN by Jandy Nelson.”
CONTEST DETAILS
- This contest will be live through the end of August 24, 2016, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced at the top of this blog post thereafter.
- To enter, submit the first 150-250 words of your book (i.e., your first double-spaced page). Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.
- You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again. All that said, you are urged to only submit your best work.
- The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W: A Content and E-Commerce Company, Inc.
- By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.
Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com ($50 value)! 3) Their choice of any of Chuck’s two new books coming out in September 2017 (the Guide to Literary Agents 2017 or the Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2017).
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