8-Minute Agent PitchFest

Writers pitching agents one-on-one in a “live” Zoom room

Participating agents include Elise Capron, BJ Robbins, and Jill Marr

Top San Diego literary agents Elise Capron and Jill Marr (Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency) and Los Angeles-based agent BJ Robbins (BJ Robbins Literary Agency) will listen to 8-minute author pitches. Writers will be pitching agents one-on-one in a “live” private Zoom room. Writers should plan a 4-5 minute pitch, leaving time for questions and follow-up. Feedback may be given on pitch presentation, and successful pitches may culminate in a request for material.

Pre-registration is required. Sign-up will open on July 12 @ 9 AM (PT).  Check www.sandiegowritersfestival.com homepage for a sign-up link.

Meet the Agents

Elise Capron is an agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. In addition to handling her own list, she oversees the daily operations of the SDLA office. She is most interested in well-written narrative non-fiction (particularly trade-friendly history, cultural studies, and science) as well as character-driven literary fiction.

A graduate of Emerson College, Elise holds a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing. She has been with the Dijkstra Agency since 2003.

Elise is interested in fiction that has unforgettable writing, a distinctive narrative voice, and memorable characters. She loves novels with an unusual or eccentric edge and is drawn to stories she has never heard before. She aims to work with writers who are getting their work published regularly in literary magazines and who have a realistic sense of the market and their audience. Some of Elise’s representative fiction titles include Tiphanie Yanique’s upcoming Monster in the Middle (Riverhead), Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead) and How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf); Howard A. Rodman’s The Great Eastern (Melville House); Courtney Brkic’s The First Rule of Swimming (Little, Brown); Rachel Toor’s On The Road to Find Out (FSG); Jonathon Keats’ The Book of the Unknown (Random House); Rikki Ducornet’s Netsuke (Coffee House Press); Maureen McHugh’s After the Apocalypse (Small Beer Press), which was picked as a “Top 10 Best of the Year” by Publishers Weekly; Ali Liebegott’s The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf); and more.

On the non-fiction front, Elise is looking for fascinating true stories told in a compelling way. She is especially interested in working with up-and-coming scholars (particularly historians) who are looking to transition from the academic market to a trade readership, as well as journalists. Some of Elise’s representative non-fiction titles include Cynthia Barnett’s Rain: A Natural and Cultural History (Crown), which was long-listed for the National Book Award and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; Meera Subramanian’s A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka (Public Affairs); Jack Shuler’s The Thirteenth Turn: A History of the Noose (Public Affairs); Jonathon Keats’s You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future (Oxford University Press); Leo Braudy’s Haunted; Jane Vandenburgh’s The Wrong Dog Dream: A True Romance (Counterpoint); Billy Smith’s Ship of Death: The Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World (Yale); and more.

Please note that Elise is specifically not interested in: Young-adult/middle-grade, picture books, romance, fantasy, sci-fi, business books, cookbooks, poetry, religious/spiritual books, screenplays, or self-help. And while she will consider memoir, please note that she is very selective in this genre.

Jill Marr is an agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She graduated from SDSU with a BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing and a minor in history. She has a strong Internet and media background and nearly 20 years of publishing experience. She wrote features and ads for Pages, the literary magazine for people who love books, as well as book ads for publishing houses, magazine pieces, and promotional features for television.

After writing ad copy and features for published books for years, she knows how to find a project’s “hook” and sell it. Jill is looking for fiction and non-fiction by BIPOC and Latinx writers, disabled persons, and people identifying as LGBTQ+, among others. She  is interested in commercial fiction, with an emphasis on mysteries, thrillers, and horror, book club, and historical fiction. She is also looking for non-fiction by authors with a big, timely, smart message as well as historical projects that look at big picture issues. Jill is looking for non-fiction projects in the areas of current events, science, history, narrative non-fiction, sports, politics, health & nutrition, pop culture, humor, music, and very select memoir.

Some of Jill’s recent and soon-to-be-published non-fiction includes the New York Times best-selling The Vagina Bible (Citadel Press) by Dr. Jennifer Gunter; Big Dirty Money (Viking) by Jennifer Taub; Use the Power You Have (The New Press) by Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal; White Women, We Need to Talk (Sounds True) by Karen Fleshman; Keep Marching (Hachette) by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the co-founder of MomsRising; Aurora (Berkley Press) by Dr. Lynne Fenton; Ali on Ali (Workman) by the daughter of Muhammad Ali, Hana Ali; Being Heumann (Beacon Press) by American disability activist Judith Heumann; Building a Business with a Beat (McGraw Hill) by the founder and CEO of Jazzercize, Inc. Judi Sheppard Misset; The Trigger Trap (Chicago Review Press) by August McLaughlin and Jamila M. Dawson; Walking Through Anger (Sounds True) by Dr. Christian Conte, the host of USA Networks’ The Secret Life of Kids; paranormal investigator Nick Groff’s Chasing Spirits (NAL);  The Tsarina’s Lost Treasure (Pegasus Books) by Gerald Easter and Mara Vorhees;  Escaping the Rabbit Hole (Skyhorse) by science writer and professional debunker Mick West; The Chosen Few (Da Capo) by USA Today writer Gregg Zoroya; Teaching Kids to Think (Sourcebooks) by Darlene Sweetland, PhD and Ron Stolberg, PhD; Mission High (Nation Books) by journalist Kristina Rizga; Don’t Lick the Minivan (Skyhorse) by Leanne Shirtliffe; and Spitting in the Soup (VeloPress) by Mark Johnson.

Please note that Jill is specifically not interested in: YA, children’s books, sci-fi, screenplays, poetry, novellas or anything involving unicorns.

BJ Robbins opened her Los Angeles-based agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing in NY. She started in publicity at Simon & Schuster and was later Marketing Director and then Senior Editor at Harcourt. Her agency represents quality fiction, both literary and commercial, and general nonfiction, with a particular interest in memoir, biography, narrative history, pop culture, sports, travel/adventure, medicine and health.

 A member of AAR and PEN America, Ms. Robbins has led workshops at UCLA Extension, UC Irvine Extension, the Writer’s Pad, and at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Fiction Workshop. On behalf of PEN, she has been a guest speaker in numerous cities in the West as part of their Writers Toolbox program, including Seattle, Portland, Santa Fe, Dallas, Las Cruces, Flagstaff, and Oakland. She was profiled in Writer’s Digest and mediabistro.com.