All Writers requesting manuscript critiques by literary professionals: please read the critique submission guidelines developed with the advice of literary agents and editors. Follow these guidelines for submissions. No submissions will be accepted that do not follow the guidelines. The guidelines are found below, followingthe photos and bios of literary professionals participating in Faulkner for All for 2026.
MEET THE LITERARY PROFESSIONALS
We are pleased to introduce you to literary professionals who will be critiquing manuscripts during Faulkner for All, 2026 for registered writers who submit work in advance of the festival. These very talented men and women review the work prior to the festival and and make their appointments with their assigned writers before the festival opens. They are:
Katherine Fausset is a Literary Agent and Vice President at Curtis Brown, Ltd., where she represents literary and upmarket fiction, and select non-fiction. Her 
clients include multiple New York Times bestselling and internationally acclaimed authors. Notable recently published titles are Emily St. John Mandel’s Exit Party, Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, Stefan Merrill Block’s Homeschooled: A Memoir, Kyle Minor’s How to Disappear and Why: Essays, and Cara Black’s Hugette. Notable forthcoming titles include Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili’s Backstitch, Jami Attenberg’s The Amnesiac, Benjamin Percy’s The End Times, and Laura van den Berg’s Ring of Night.
Dr. Eddie Gammara, a former college professor, runs Gamarra Media, selling stories and building franchises across publishing and entertainment. Previously,
he was VP of Literary Affairs for Paramount’s Nickelodeon & Awesomeness brands where he scouted and acquired books and other material. He also was a Literary Manager/Producer at The Gotham Group, representing screenwriters, directors, animators, authors, illustrators, and publishers. Clients included New York Times best-selling storytellers as well as Oscar, Emmy, Annie, Caldecott, Newbery, and Geisel winners and nominees. As Executive Producer, he worked on The Maze Runner trilogy which grossed nearly $1 Billion dollars. He also was Executive Producer for Jerry Spinelli’s iconic Stargirl for Disney+ and Jordan Peele’s Wendell & Wild for Netflix. Education: BA, Vassar; MA, NYU/Tisch; MA/PhD, Emory University. For more on Eddie Gammara, visit: https://www.gamarramedia.com/
Ben George is Executive Editor of Puskin Press, USA, newly established by 
UK’s highly successful Puskin Press. Previously Ben was an editor at Little Brown, where he was noted for his highly diverse acquisitions list. He acquires both literary fiction and nonfiction, including some crime fiction. He has published such notables as Nathan Harris, whose debut, the Booker-longlisted The Sweetness of Water, was an Oprah Book Club pick and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award; James Hannaham, whose novel Delicious Foods won the PEN/Faulkner Award; Luis Alberto Urrea, whose novel The House of Broken Angels was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; Tom Lin, whose debut, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, made him the youngest ever winner of the Carnegie Medal for Fiction; Alejandro Puyana, whose debut, Freedom Is a Feast, was a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist; Adam Haslett, whose novel Imagine Me Gone was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and Leslie Jamison, whose addiction & recovery memoir, The Recovering, was Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year. He loves going unusual places in fiction, whether that’s Svalbard or outer space. For nonfiction, he continues to pursue his curiosity, resulting in such diverse subjects as pirates, psychotropic drugs, wrongful conviction, 19th Century charlatans, an Indonesian whaling tribe, and the dangers of social media.
Jeff Kleinman is a partner in Folio Literary Management, which he co-founded more than 20 years ago. In the years since, Folio has grown from a new agency 
into one of the country’s leading literary management companies, most recently acquiring the storied Harold Ober Associates, whose extraordinary literary legacy includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, and Langston Hughes. Jeff has been instrumental in Dolly Parton’s book projects, and similarly with book projects for Loretta Lynn, Paula Abdul, the Johnny Cash Estate, and the memoir of William Faulkner’s niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, along with an eclectic assortment of musicians, entertainers, historians, and cultural figures. What he most enjoys about being an agent, however, is discovering writers before the rest of the world knows who they are. His clients have included Garth Stein, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Art of Racing in the Rain, which sold millions of copies around the world and became a major motion picture; Karen Dionne, author of the international bestseller The Marsh King’s Daughter, also adapted into a major film; Lara Prescott, whose debut The Secrets We Kept became a New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club selection; Brendan Slocumb, whose debut The Violin Conspiracy launched a bestselling career; and Robert Hicks, author of the bestselling The Widow of the South. After all these years, Jeff still opens his email hoping to find something good.
Retha Powers, an editor at Henry Holt, acquires fiction and nonfiction. She is passionate about books by authors who write inventively about the intersections of race, identity, gender, history, and current events. She is particularly interested in working with writers who challenge the status quo, build community, and create compulsively readable works that connect readers from varying backgrounds and experiences. Her acquisitions include Carolyn Ferrell’s PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction finalist, Dear Miss Metropolitan; Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction longlist, My Monticello; José Olivarez’s Promises of Gold, which was longlisted for a National Book Award for Poetry; Crystal Smith Paul’s Reese’s Book Club Pick, Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?; Yvonne Battle-Felton’s Shirley Jackson Prize winner, Curdle Creek; Dennard Dayle’s acclaimed How to Dodge a Cannonball; and Lessons for Survival by writer and climate activist Emily Raboteau.
Celina (Cindy) Spiegel was the co-founder and co-publisher of Spiegel & Grau and a founding editor and publisher of Riverhead Books. She has launched the careers of many writers, including James McBride (The Color of Water), Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner), Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy), Gary Shteyngart (The Russian Debutante’s Handbook), Chang-rae Lee (Native Speaker), Alex Garland (The Beach), Kathleen Norris (Dakota), and ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere); and has edited notable and bestselling writers including Yuval Noah Harari, Ari Shavit, Harold Bloom, Steven Rinella, Yann Martel, Sara Gruen, Leslie Chang, Sana Krasikov, Anne Lamott, and Dan Pink. Other books she has published on the Spiegel & Grau list include Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me; Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime; Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black; Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore; the Beastie Boys’ The Beastie Boys Book; and Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy. Spiegel is also the editor, with Christina Büchmann, of the anthology Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible and, with Peter Kupfer, of Great First Lines. She sits on the boards of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a nonprofit that collects and propagates champion tree genetics and replants them with the goal of restoring our ancient forests, and Columbia Global Reports, a not-for-profit publisher at Columbia University.
Michelle Tessler founded the boutique Tessler Literary Agency in 2004. She represents a select number of award-winning, best-selling, and emerging 
authors in both fiction and non-fiction. She looks for fresh, original writing that has a compelling point of view and voice.In fiction, she represents literary, women’s, and commercial. In non-fiction, she represents narrative, popular science/nature, memoir, history, psychology, business, biography, food, and travel. Michelle is editorially driven, and works with memoirists and novelists on editing their manuscripts before submission and positioning their work. She likewise works closely with clients to craft winning book proposals that will not only interest acquiring editors, but also satisfy the concerns of a publishers’ marketing and publicity staff. She represents, among others, Mira Jacob (Good Talk, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing); Rebecca Kauffman (The Reservation, The Gunners); Bonny Reichert (How to Share An Egg); Heather Rose (A Great Act of Love); Amy Stewart (Girl Waits with Gun, The Drunken Botanist, Wicked Plants); Amanda Eyre Ward (The Jetsetters, How to Be Lost); Christine Webb (The Arrogant Ape); Sharon Weinberger (Valley of Death); and Guy Winch (Mind Over Grind, Emotional First Aid). She is a member of the Association of Author’s Representatives and Women’s Media Group. Learn more at www.tessleragency.com
Sally Wofford-Girand founded Union Literary 12 years ago, merging her company Brick House Literary with Keating Literary. Previously, she was the foreign rights director at The Elaine Markson Literary Agency working with authors ranging from Salmon Rushdie to Alice Hoffman. Her particular area of interest is fiction that is both literary and propulsive along with history and memoir. Current favorites include Maggie O’Farrell, Jen Beagin, Richard Powers, Dana Spiotto, Barbara Kingsolver (DEMON COPPERHEAD, a favorite), Lidia Yukovitch, Lydia Millet, Jose Saramago, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner. She is a hands-on agent with a passion for great storytelling, and she loves the thrill of discovering and working with debut novelists. She is on the board of Writer’s Omi, an
international writers colony near Hudson, NY, and a founding board member of the non-profit Literary Agents of Change, created in concert with the American Association of Literary Agents. She cares more about voice, character and “stakes” than plot but would be happy to find a ghost story a la Shirley Jackson (another favorite author). She lives in New York City with her family.
Manuscript Critique Submissions
If you wish to submit work for critiques by an agent and editor, we require that everything be submitted electronically. Hard copy of manuscripts will not be accepted for critiques. You will need to mail by snail mail your registration form or photo copy your reservations sheet to us well before opening day of the festival.
To receive a reservations/registration form, email faulkhouse@aol.com.
You can pay by check or cash and mail the form. Alternatively, you may email your registration form and pay by Venmo to the Society’s Venmo account: @James-ForFaulkner_300.
Winners and those other authors registered for the Writers’ Tuition Package have as part of their packages one agent critique and one editor critique. For writers who already are represented, we can offer two critiques by editors. Only the nine winners and runners-up of the Faulkner Society’s literary competition and Louisiana volunteers accepted as scholarship participants are eligible for complimentary tuition packages with the critiques. Others on the published Short lists are eligible for a discount of 50% on the writers’ tuition package, Other Finalists are eligible for a discount of 25% on the writers’ tuition package. Writers with winner or paid festival packages who wish additional critiques may sign up for extra critiques ($50 per extra critique). Writers who do not register for the tuition package may sign up for critiques for a fee of $100 per critique.
Payment of fees is required at the time writers sign up for critiques. Prior to submitting, please review the guidelines below. Agents and editors are assigned on a first-come, first -serve basis of requests and according to type of work submitted. And when their time slots are filled, no additional submissions can be accepted.
CRITIQUE GUIDELINES
1. Write a cover letter in the body of your email to The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society stating that you are attending the conference and wish to have manuscript critiques and consultations. As far as possible, we place manuscripts with appropriate professionals.
2. In addition to the letter to the Society, prepare an attachment in word.doc or pdf format (we will not accept pages or google docs) which includes:
[box]A. For Novel, novella, or novel in progress, memoir, history, biography: Contact sheet (your name and all contact info, name of work, type of work, estimated word count of completed manuscript); synopsis (not more than one page single spaced or two pages double-spaced) and 25 to 30 pages, usually first couple of chapters, or some pages you feel are the best example of your writing skills. Total submission 7,500 words,
double-spaced, one-inch margins.
PLEASE REMEMBER:
CONTACT SHEET, TITLE, SYNOPSIS, AND WRITING SAMPLE MUST BE IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT ATTACHMENT IN THIS ORDER.
We absolutely will not accept this information pasted into the e-mail message box.
B. For Short Story, Essay, Journalistic Feature (such as travel writing), or Criticism: Contact sheet, and entire manuscript, double-spaced, one-inch margins.These submission may have a synopsis but a synopsis is not required. PLEASE NOTE: CONTACT SHEET, TITLE, AND WRITING SAMPLE MUST BE IN A SINGLE DOCUMENT ATTACHMENT. We will not accept as paste-ins in e-mail message box.
C. For Poetry: Contact sheet, and selection of three poems. Note: none of the agents and editors who are participating in Words & Music. 2015 accept poetry as a rule. We are offering critiques by established poets who are widely published, however. And participating poets will be conducting advice sessions as well. Contact sheet and Poetry samples must be in a single document attachment. [/box]
Please Note: Once all assignments have been made and work is forwarded to editors and agents, your assigned editor and agent will contact you either by phone or e-mail to make your appointments for your one-on-one consultations during the Faulkner for All festival, September 25 – 28, 2025.
3. Send your electronic submission to: faulkhouse@aol.com and put “Manuscript Critiques” in your message header and your cover letter to us in the message box.
Important! General Guidelines for All Categories
When you are naming your attachments, use your name, and type of work (e.g. Rosemary James non-fiction.docs). It is not necessary to put a variation of “Faulkner Society” in the title, as this has caused us separating and filing problems, and a lot of extra work changing the titles so we can easily recognize the documents.
Again, you must register with applicable fees before your work is assigned. Only competition winners, and Louisiana writers approved for scholarship participation may submit for manuscript critiques without paying applicable fees.
When you come to the conference, if submission is a completed work, such as a novel, have your manuscript it in its entirety as a direct link you can send to a requesting editor or agent. Make certain you are not sending work samples that are marked up with editing changes.
Please address all questions to: Faulkhouse@aol.com. We are short-handed and an all-volunteer organization without sufficient staffing to handle a lot of telephone conversations.
A Tip for Writers Submitting
One thing that really ticks off agents and editors is a poorly edited manuscript. Try to get several people to line copy edit your submission for typographical and grammatical mistakes and double check yourself. Then, be sure to get actual names and places correct. It is very distracting to see typos and it makes readers mad when authors are too lazy to get venues mentioned in the right location and spelled correctly.
Finally, for longer works, the synopsis is critical, as it demonstrates the author’s ability to summarize and present the summary in an interesting, well-written manner.