My friend and co-teacher for an upcoming publishing course at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program interviewed me for the Writing Life series on her website. Thanks, Shirin! And thanks to everyone who sat in on the Zoom chat.

I cringe and can’t watch myself on the recording, but I do want to articulate a couple of my main points better, because I've heard that some of my comments led some viewers to drink (😂), which was totally not my intention… [CLICK ON THE HEADLINE TO READ MORE]

My friend Shirin Yim Leos and I will be co-teaching a publishing course called “From First Draft to Launch Day: How to Succeed on the Road to Publication” at Stanford Continuing Studies live online (i.e. on Zoom) starting in March. Check out the course description here and go here to register. Registration opens on February 22. Hope you’ll join us!

Bestselling author Alan Gratz’s book, which I acquired and edited at Starscape (the middle grade imprint of Tor Books), is more timely and relevant than ever….

It all started the day Amy Anne Ollinger tried to check out her favorite book in the whole world, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, from the school library. That’s when Mrs. Jones, the librarian, told her the bad news: her favorite book was banned! All because a classmate’s mom thought the book wasn’t appropriate for kids to read.

Amy Anne decides to fight back by starting a secret banned book library out of her locker. But soon things get out of hand, and Amy Anne finds herself on the front line of an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read. In the end, her only recourse might be to try to beat the book banners at their own game. Because after all, once you ban one book, you can ban them all…

My friend James L. Sutter, whose query letter I consulted on, sold his YA novel to Sara Goodman at Wednesday Books (Macmillan) via agent Josh Adams at Adams Literary. You can read the announcement here. Woo-hoo! Way to go, James!

James was kind enough to give me a testimonial about my query editing: “Susan gave me thorough, thoughtful feedback on my query letter, combing through it word by word to show me how to make it stronger. That new, improved version helped me get a top-notch agent and a two-book deal with a great publisher.”