Grab your coffee (or your $80 celebration bottle of wine*) and settle in, because this one’s a good one. Jessica Sinsheimer and Julie Kingsley are broadcasting live from Julie’s cabin, joined by agent Amy of Trellis Literary Management. Over the next hour, members get real, generous, live feedback on their queries and first pages, across picture books, essay collections, dark fantasy, literary thrillers, sci-fi romance, cozy middle grade, gothic suspense, and more.
What makes this one worth your time isn’t just the craft notes, though there are plenty (comp titles done right, how to weave setting and tension, when a query is spoiling too much). If you’ve ever been afraid to put your pages in front of a stranger, watching eleven writers do exactly that, and come out the other side with useful, encouraging notes, is its own kind of pep talk.
Stick around for the Q&A near the end, where Amy tackles AI detection anxiety, the truth about query check-ins, whether seasonal timing matters, and what to do when you keep getting full requests but no offers.
*Shoutout to that piece! We hope you get a fancy bottle when you get an agent.
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About the Instructor
Amy Bishop-Wycisk View Faculty Page
Amy Bishop-Wycisk (why-zick) joined Trellis Literary Management in 2023 after eight years with Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She’s cultivating a wide-ranging list in upmarket and book club fiction, historical fiction, light sci-fi and fantasy, speculative fiction, expert-driven narrative nonfiction, cultural criticism, history, and select YA, with a special interest in underrepresented voices, especially from the AAPI community.
Her list includes titles such as The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim (a Reese’s Book Club selection and NYT bestseller), The Red Palace by Edgar Award-winning author June Hur, and Girly Drinks by Mallory O’Meara (a James Beard Award winner). Before diving into the world of publishing, she graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Creative Writing. Though she grew up upstate, she currently resides in Woodside, Queens with her husband and cat. You can find her on Twitter at @abwycisk.
Photo Credit: Davey King