The State of the Publishing Industry - Part of the Summer Words Craft Panel Series
2023-06-19 13:30 - 14:30 (America/Denver) | CO, United States
Purchase a pass for $30 to gain access to all events in the series.
Publishing experts will help you navigate the book business, give advice on how to get published, and discuss challenges and opportunities facing the industry today.
Panelists: Millicent Bennett, Kirby Kim and Dana Murphy
This event is free to summer words students! Your student badge serves as your pass.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Millicent Bennett
Millicent Bennett, Executive Editor, acquires primarily literary fiction, upmarket book club fiction, and voice-and character-driven narrative nonfiction, including memoir, with an emphasis on marginalized and underrepresented voices. She joined Harper in 2021 as part of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt integration, where she served as editorial director, and after seventeen years as editor at PRH, S&S, and Hachette.

Kirby Kim
Kirby Kim, a native of Los Angeles, California, attended Pomona College and got his JD at UC Hastings College of the Law. Kirby has worked for Charlotte Sheedy Literary, Vigliano Associates, WME, and Janklow & Nesbit. He represents both literary and commercial authors. He’s most interested in receiving manuscripts that straddle the fence a bit, with upmarket expression combined with a genre element or plot device. When it comes to straight literary work, he’s alternatively drawn to rich, sweeping stories that try to encompass a time or a place or tightly written, narratively innovative stories or voices with award potential. His commercial interests include thrillers, mysteries, and speculative fiction. He also represents a range of nonfiction, working with leaders and journalists in the areas of science, culture, business, and current affairs. Some of his clients include award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang, Edgar Award winner James A. McLaughlin, Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Lauren Etter, rapper/actor Common, two-time National Book Award winner in the Philippines Gina Apostol, and debut novelists Ling Ling Huang and Adam White. Kirby is currently a board member of the Asian American Writers Workshop. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife and two kids.
Dana Murphy
Dana Murphy represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction for both adult and teen readers. She joined Trellis Literary Management in 2022, after a decade building her list at The Book Group. Books by her clients have been New York Times and international bestsellers and chosen as Barnes & Noble Discover, Book of the Month, Read with Jenna, Indie Next and NYT Editors’ Choice picks. Across genre, Dana falls in love at the story and line-level simultaneously. She’s always searching for language and plot that move in equal measure, and novels with a soft heart, a sense of humor, and a deep earnest affection for their characters and story. In non fiction, she loves well-researched cultural criticism — especially if it reckons with “low” and “unworthy” pop culture in a smart, serious way or interrogates the power structures that shape our collective understanding of “good” taste.
