Meet the panelists!
25 June: 4-6pm The Paris Writers Workshop is opening its doors to the public for the:
Traditional publishing is changing as digital transforms the industry – what does this mean for you, the writer?
I am honored to be moderating the Paris Writers Workshop Experts Panel discussion with distinguished panelists Samantha Chang, Linda Fallon, Mark Kessler and Hanah Seidl, who have years of experience in key areas of publishing.
Bios
Lan Samantha Chang is the author of two novels, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, and a story collection, Hunger. Hunger was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award and the winner of the Southern Review Fiction Prize. Inheritance won the PEN/Beyond Margins Prize for the Novel. Samantha’s short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she is professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa and Director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Linda Fallon has been working at Shakespeare and Company for seven years where she is the head buyer. She started her bookselling career in an independent bookshop in Cork, Ireland before moving to the nearby Waterstone's where she was the fiction buyer for two years. Later she moved to London where she was the fiction buyer for the Richmond branch of Waterstone's for two years, before finally moving to Paris to work at Shakespeare and Company.
Mark Kessler has been an agent at Susanna Lea Associates since 2002. With offices in Paris, New York, and London, our aim is to work in close collaboration with authors and publishers in order to maximize the potential of each project both domestically and in translation – in print, audio and electronic media -- and, when applicable, for film. The defining characteristics of our list are: authors and projects that have potential on an international level; and a small and eclectic choice of projects, focusing on a select number of projects rather than spread our energies thin. Among the authors that we work with are France’s bestselling novelist Marc Levy, the former FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt, philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, and novelist Adam Ross. After studying comparative literature at NYU, Mark worked in contracts and royalties for the French Publishers Office in New York (http://www.frenchrights.com/). in foreign rights at Editions Robert Laffont in Paris, and as a literary scout in New York at Maria Campbell Associates (http://www.mbcbook.com/about.html).
Hannah Seidl has lived in France for 15 years, and spent the last 7 and a half years working as the Marketing & Events Manager at WHSmith Paris, primarily responsible for planning literary events at the bookshop. She has a degree in International Business and French from Saint Norbert College, with prior work experience as a fashion jewelry buyer for Carson Pirie Scott, a chain of department stores in the Chicago area.
moderator: A graduate of HEC, Laurel Zuckerman worked for 18 years in B2B integrated supply chain information systems, one of the technologies now disrupting the publishing world. Author of Sorbonne Confidential and editor of Paris Writers News, she also talent scouts for a small press.
The Panel “Getting Published – A Writer’s Options” will be held:
4PM – 6PM Wednesday 25 June 2014
On the Campus of the American University of Paris.
Combes Building, Room C12, at 6, Rue du Colonel Combes, 75007
The Publishing Panel is free of charge and Open to the Public.
