Naomi has had three literary agents. She's got an MFA. She's done books with big 5, small, and university presses. She's written literary, commercial, and non-fiction work. She has an unusually broad range of experience in this industry. If you have questions about how to get a book published, and, in particular, about the process of finding and pitching an agent, please come to this talk. Naomi is very frank, very uncensored, with a lot of thoughts on how to convince agents that you are the next big thing. She self-published a book on this topic, The Cynical Writer's Guide to the Publishing Industry.

Who knows how accurate any of her thoughts are! She says tons of stuff that is probably complete nonsense / totally irrelevant to the current publishing industry. She has been fired by at least two literary agents after all! But she will at least tell you what she thinks. She also wrote this text, so don't blame Peggy for this. The talk is open to Ruby members and their guests, but not to the general public.

About Naomi Kanakia 

Naomi Kanakia is the author of three YA novels, a literary novel for adults, and a work of non-fiction, the forthcoming What’s So Great about Great Books. Her stories, poetry, and essays have been published in American Short Fiction, Asimov’s, Gulf Coast, LitHub, Best Small Fictions, and others. She publishes wonderful Substack that you should definitely read, although it does publish kind of a lot, like twice a week, so it's definitely a bit of a commitment.