GrubWrites

Lit Up 2021: Bidding Closes Today!

Today is your last chance to bid on Lit Up 2021 items! For this year's virtual bidding experience, we’re excited to offer you more items and experiences at many price points. You can look forward to a variety of items to bid on online, including:

An autographed baseball from Red Sox Player #7 Christian Vázquez
A 1-on-1 mentorship session with author, editor, speaker, and creative writing instructor Jennifer De Leon
An author headshot session with local photographer Lou Goodman
Two signed, first edition copies of Stephen King’s The Institute
A 1-on-1 hour mentorship session with poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator Regie Gibson
A beautiful summer day at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, where you can look forward to a beach day, an ice cream cone, and a picnic on a boat
Cheese cave tour and tasting for 4 at Formaggio Kitchen
A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure package with writer, poet, performer, editor, critic, teacher, journalist, and D&D enthusiast Ethan Gilsdorf
A one-on-one meeting with novelist Katherine Sherbrooke
And much more!

We're also offering one-on-one meetings with top literary agents Kat Kerr, Reiko Davis, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Beth Marshea.

Get to Know Them

Feel free to read up on the agents before you bid!

Kat Kerr joined Donald Maass Literary Agency in 2019. She graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelors in English in 2009 and is drawn to literary and commercial voices within the adult and YA markets, as well as adult nonfiction. Kat feels strongly about supporting programs like We Need Diverse Books and is passionate about creating space in this industry for those from historically marginalized communities. She is actively seeking to grow her client list and is particularly hungry for magical realism, literary leaning speculative and science fiction, women’s fiction, YA works with a lot of heart, and narrative nonfiction with something to say.

Reiko Davis joined DeFiore & Company in early 2016. Prior, she was an associate agent at Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency. She grew up in Kansas City, received her BA in Comparative Literature and Art History from Brown University, and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course.

Reiko’s interests are varied, but she is particularly drawn to narrative journalism on the topics of pop culture, science/psychology, and current events as well as memoir that focuses on social justice, issues of race and gender, and the history and experiences of women and people of color. For fiction, she’s primarily looking for upmarket and literary novels, specifically set in contemporary times. She loves young, underrepresented voices, magical realism, and voice driven coming-of-age stories. On the children’s side, she’s actively looking for YA and middle grade projects that aren’t afraid to tackle big questions or important emotional truths, and do so through remarkable storytelling, humor, and heart.

Kaitlyn Johnson received her BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. After graduating, Kaitlyn refused to leave the concept of nightly homework behind. A literary agent for Belcastro Literary Agency, she is also a freelance editor at her own company, Strictly Textual. Kaitlyn started her literary journey as a copyeditor for academic publisher codeMantra, a YA editor for Accent Press, a Conference Assistant for GrubStreet, Boston, and has been agenting since 2016. She has written various articles for Writer’s Digest and has had a flash fiction story published in the anthology A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. Check out her wishlist here.

Beth Marshea is the owner and Lead Agent at Ladderbird Literary Agency. She has a BA in Literature and a Masters in Business Administration and is always looking for new and exciting ways to bring more diversity into publishing and beyond. Outside of agenting, Beth, teaches writing in her local community with a focus on bringing reluctant writers and readers into the magical world of books. She loves the outdoors and is also a certified lifeguard.

Beth would like to see more works from disabled writers, from LGBTQIA+ writers, from Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, and all other groups who do not regularly get to see their stories in print. She would love to see more non-binary representation across categories as well. Across categories she would love to see more works that show joy in marginalized communities.