The Pitch Party

Is your book ready to be published? Would you like to get feedback on your pitch before you send it out? You can submit your literary pitch to a panel of judges for a chance to win a great prize! Your pitch must be one paragraph (maximum of 125 words). It should have all the elements that tell an agent or publisher what the story is about. It should have “GMC”: goal, motivation, and conflict. In addition to your one-paragraph pitch, you need to include your logline, the one sentence that sells your book. All genres are welcome to participate. It doesn’t matter if your book is fiction or non-fiction — you just need to have a great pitch. NHWP premiéred this fun event at the 2020 603 Writers’ Conference with great success.

The Process:

• Pitches must be submitted by the approved deadline prior to the 603 Writers’ Conference. 
• All pitches submitted will be reviewed by an NHWP selection committee that will determine the top five to be presented to a panel of judges at the 603 Pitch Party.
• The final five will be announced at the beginning of the Pitch Party. All finalists must be present to answer questions about their book. If the finalist chosen is not present, an alternate finalist will be selected.
• Each of the finalists’ pitches will be read to the panel of judges and audience by an actor, with great passion and suspense.
  The panel will ask the finalists to answer any questions they have about the pitch before determining the top three winners. The decisions of the panel will be final.

This is a fun exercise where everyone gets to learn what makes a great pitch.

Prizes will be awarded to the top three winners selected by the judges.

2:30-End     The Pitch Party
The Panel: Moderator and Judges:
Peter Biello, who will moderate the Pitch Party, is the host of All Things Considered and The Weekly New Hampshire News Roundup on New Hampshire Public Radio and a writer of short stories, novels, and radio journalism. His work has appeared in Gargoyle, Lowestoft Chronicle, and various NPR programs. He's the founder of the Burlington Writers Workshop, a nonprofit writing workshop in Vermont, and co-founder of Mud Season Review, a national literary journal. He lives in Concord, New Hampshire. James Patrick Kelly has won a Nebula, awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America and two World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards. His most recent books The First Law of of Thermodynamics Plus (2021), a collection in PM Press’s Outspoken Author series edited by Terry Bisson, King Of The Dogs, Queen Of The Cats (2020), a novella from Subterranean Press, a collection, The Promise of Space (2018), from Prime Books, and a novel, Mother Go (2017), an audiobook original from Audible. In 2016 Centipede Press published a career retrospective Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly. His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. Jim’s plays have had productions in New York, Chicago, and Honolulu, among other venues, and his award-winning novelette, Think Like A Dinosaur was adapted for the television anthology series, Outer Limits. He has narrated fifty-two of his own stories for Audible.com as part of its StoryPod project. With John Kessel, he has co-edited five anthologies, including Rewired, the Post-Cyberpunk Anthology and Digital Rapture, the Singularity Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Find him on the web at www.jimkelly.net. Working for many years as a freelance substantive editor and being a multi-genre author herself, it is no surprise that Jessica Reino has a wide variety of tastes when it comes to storytelling. She's a member of SCBWI New England, The Women’s Fiction Writers Association where she was a Webinar Program Leader. She has also been a contributor for The Children’s Writer’s Guild Online Magazine as well as a reviewer for Story Monsters Ink. She has experience as an author coach and freelance editor with Pandamoon Publishing. She also runs a monthly Twitter chat #thewriterszen. Jessica is a Senior Literary Agent for Metamorphosis Literary Agency. Whether the story is tackling tough topics or serves solely to entertain, Jessica is looking for manuscripts that are well-written with a strong voice in order to make that emotional connection. Alison Weiss has been in publishing for more than ten years. She’s currently acquisitions editor at Pixel+Ink (part of the Trustbridge Media Group), a publisher focused exclusively on series publishing with transmedia potential. There, she’s worked on many series, including Twig and Turtle by Jennifer Richard Jacobson, The Great Peach Experiment by Erin Soderberg Downing, and the forthcoming The Curious League of Detectives and Thieves by Tom Phillips. She’s run her own editorial consultancy, working with publishers including Simon & Schuster, Audible, and Arctis, as well as private clients, and was Editorial Director at Sky Pony Press, where her list included William C. Morris Finalist Devils Within by S.F. Henson, the Project Droid series by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser, illustrated by Mike Moran, the Timekeeper trilogy by Tara Sim, and the Mahabharata-inspired Celestial Trilogy by Sangu Mandanna. In 2016 she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She’s been trying to live up to the title ever since. You can follow her on Twitter @alioop7 and learn more about Pixel+Ink at Pixel+Ink Books.

2022 Overview
(Schedule and Keynote)