Samantha Wekstein, Agent at Thompson Literary

Samantha Wekstein is an agent at Thompson Literary, after spending six years at Writers House. She graduated from the University of Maryland in 2012 with a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing. She interned at Rowman & Littlefield and Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency before landing at Writers House in 2013 with an internship. There, she was the assistant to CEO, Amy Berkower and then to founder, Al Zuckerman. She also briefly worked as an assistant at The Agency Group. She has been lucky enough to work with a variety of best-selling and award-winning authors across all genres. She is now in the process of actively building her client list.

Samantha’s passion is YA fiction. She loves creative and epic fantasies in the vein of Sarah J. Maas or Leigh Bardugo. But she is also drawn to contemporary YA with multi-dimensional female characters like those of Julie Murphy and Melina Marchetta.

She also loves middle grade of any kind, but especially books that deal with themes of friendship, adventure, or encountering tragedy for the first time. Her favorites are Sharon Creech and Gail Carson Levine.

In adult fiction, she is looking for historical, romance, women’s fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi.

She doesn’t have a huge interest in nonfiction, but is open to humor, and pop culture.

Work with Samantha

LIVE Meetings: Meet face-to-face, from home. Choose Zoom, Google Meet, or phone, and speak for the appointed time about your query, first page, and/or first ten pages (for longer meetings). Does not include written notes, but is a chance to have an honest discussion about your work, and to ask follow-up questions. International meetings welcomed.

WRITTEN Critiques: Get detailed, thoughtful notes on your work. Comes with large-scale edits (character, world, plot, tension, concept, conflict, and similar as needed) in an editorial letter and small-scale, line-by-line notes as needed (for longer critiques, an average of three per page). Work arrives in your inbox by the date on the calendar.

HYBRID is a live meeting at the appointment time, with written notes.

Member Reviews of Samantha

I already took her advice and am confident about querying and having my first pages read by other agents.

Samantha's suggestions on improving my first page by adding a little more emotional depth were spot-on. I already took her advice and am confident about querying and having my first pages read by other agents.

Rachel Remick

Much needed validation and encouragement

My time with Samantha Wekstein from the Manuscript Academy was a wonderful experience! Not only did I gain some incredibly solid and productive input on my query letter, but I also received some much needed validation and encouragement about my concept. So often, the world of the writer is an isolated bubble of questions and worries and wondering whether what we have to say will be of any interest to anyone beyond our desk, and quite often, the email responses we get don't give the kind of feedback that we really need to realize our project's worth or potential -- perhaps that it's just not a great fit. Samantha gave me honest and concrete feedback, and she did it in a professional, yet safe and comfortably human way. Thank you SO much!

Todd Merrifield

Exceptional feedback

I am grateful for Samantha Wekstein’s insight. In ten minutes, she welcomed my questions first and then provided me the feedback she planned to share after reading my query. She let me know areas of the query that confused her, encouraged me to add more detail to the second paragraph about the book’s summary, invited me to add another paragraph for the story’s content to tell enough about the project, made a couple of minor edits, and told me to be specific about why I selected her that goes beyond “per your manuscript wish list” since she knows what’s on her wish list. I need to highlight in the first paragraph what it is about my book I think will interest her. My advice to other writers is to be certain you come with a list of your own questions, but not too many. Also, know that ten minutes is plenty of time to listen to the feedback to help inform the next revision. In hindsight, I regretted not recording the conversation on my handheld recorded. Writing the notes in the moment was messy; I spent the next thirty minutes rewriting my notes. Exceptional feedback and experience.

Danielle DeFauw

She knew what I needed to move my story along!

Samantha was wonderful! She was very positive, and knew exactly what I needed to move my story forward.

Kathi Most

Great, constructive feedback!

Samantha is very helpful with great, constructive feedback. She’s also fantastic at making authors feel at ease and relieving anxiety on phone calls.

Madeline Dau