Hello, little loves. Welcome back to the English Experience. Today's post ties in with the previous one about agents, English majors as a whole, and new experiences. Without further ado, lets dive into one of my experiences as a WSU undergrad.
Taryn Fagerness Agency
In early September, I had the chance to be a part of a one-credit workshop hosted by DJ Lee and Taryn Fagerness through the English Department at WSU. Taryn is an agent who began her own company in March of 2009 selling books to foreign markets and working with subsidiary rights. She is, without being too biased, really freaking cool.
In this two-day workshop, Taryn went over being an agent, and what all of that entails. Some of the topics she touched on were:
What do agents do?
When do I need an agent?
How do I get one?
How do agents think?
What is a Query Letter, and how do I write one?
I could make a whole freaking post on all of the information that she shared, but I want to encourage you to go look her up. She has all kinds of knowledge. One thing I will share, however, is her workshop game that she had us play.
At the end of the first day, Taryn asked us to, using the information we had learned about query letters, create one for our own piece of writing that we have been working on, no matter the genre, and submit it to our online portal. There, each student could read other students', and decide which ones were their top, and come to the next scheduled workshop day with those in mind. She then had us pick our agents, and assigned groups of us a sum of money and a publishing house, where we had to fight for the books we really wanted based on the query letters we read.
Let me tell you right now, this game was like a cattle auction. It was ruthless and absolutely insane with the amount of money publishing houses were throwing around for a book to sign with. It was, as Taryn said, extremely realistic, however, and in that moment we got to learn a little bit more about her job, and what she deals with on a daily basis. It was extremely informative, and something that I enjoyed learning about. The evening flew by.
If you're interested in learning more about Taryn, her agency, or the information that I learned as a student, please visit http://www.tarynfagernessagency.com/, or see WSU's https://english.wsu.edu/visiting-writers/ to see more information on upcoming events and workshops that may appeal to you. You may also want to check out WSU's VWS YouTube channel, found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCygXs6JV-AIXJkJmfSkfA9g/videos.
Until next time, little loves.