Is your book ready to be published? Would you like to get feedback on your pitch before you send it out?

If you plan to attend the 603 Writers’ Conference on October 17, 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 log line, 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.

The Process:

• All pitches submitted will be reviewed by an NHWP selection committee that will determine the top six 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. If you want to be part of the action, submit your literary pitch and log line to submissions@nhwritersproject.org by midnight, Wednesday, October 14, 2020. Put “PARTY PITCH SUBMISSION” as the subject. There is no cost to participate in this fun party, but to be eligible you must have paid the conference fee. Prizes will be awarded to the top three winners selected by the judges.

The Panel:

Brunonia Barry is the New York Times and international bestselling author of The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places, and The Fifth Petal, which was chosen #1 of Strand Magazine’s Top 25 Books of 2017, a Boston Magazine Must,and a Massachusetts Book Awards Must Read. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has been an Amazon Best of the Month and a People Magazine Pick. Barry was the first American author to win the International Women’s Fiction Festival’s Baccante Award and was a past recipient of Ragdale Artists’ Colony’s Strnad Invitational Fellowship as well as the winner of New England Book Festival’s award for Best Fiction. Her reviews and articles on writing have appeared in The London Times, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post. Brunonia served as chairperson of the Salem Athenaeum’s Writers’ Committee, as Executive Director of the Salem Literary Festival, and as a member of Grub Street’s Development Committee. She lives in Salem with her husband, Gary Ward, and their dog, Angel.

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.  Jessica is a Senior Literary Agent at Metamorphisis Literary Agency. 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. 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. https://www.metamorphosisliteraryagency.com/about

Lila Rose Kaplan’s plays shine light on the stories we don’t tell about women. Her heroines live in heartfelt zany comedies, bittersweet comic dramas, and imaginative musicals for young audiences. Her plays have been produced across the country. Her full length plays include: We All Fall Down, The Villains’ Supper Club , Home of the Brave, 1 2 3 – a play about abandonment and ballroom dancing, Wildflower, Entangled, Bureau of Missing Persons, and Biography of a Constellation. Her musicals for young audiences include: The Light Princess, The Pirate Princess, and The Magic Fish. Productions include: Huntington Theatre Company, American Repertory Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, South Coast Repertory Theatre, New Victory Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, Neighborhood Productions, Know Theatre, and Perishable Theatre. Development includes: Trinity Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Kennedy Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Theatreworks, Local Theatre Company, PlayPenn, and The Lark New Play Development Center. Awards include: National Science Award in Playwriting, The International Women’s Playwriting Award, and the I.J. Kapstein Award in Playwriting. Fellowships include: Huntington Playwriting Fellowship, Playwrights’ Realm Writing Fellow, Old Vic/New Voices Exchange, and the Shank Fellowship. Residencies include: The Orchard Project, Space on Ryder Farm, New Repertory Theatre Next Voices, Labworks at the New Victory Theatre, Writers Retreat at Theatreworks, Harvard Business School Playwright –In-Residence, and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Playwriting-In-Residence. BA with Honors in Playwriting: Brown University. MFA in Playwriting: UC San Diego. Lila Rose lives in Somerville, MA with her marine biologist husband and her curious daughter. www.lilarose.org

Chris Stinson is a Producer and Line Producer who tries to only work with kind human beings. Many of his films including Leave No Trace, Low Down, Me and You and Everyone We Know and Chronic, have gone on to win awards at film festivals like Sundance and Cannes and several have been nominated for Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. In 2005 he was chosen to participate in the Film Independent Producing Lab and in 2010 he won the Van McLeod film award which was won the year prior by Ken Burns. He studied film at Lyndon State College and Columbia College Chicago. He is proudly from New Hampshire and is a wicked die-hard Red Sox fan who would love to work on more films in New England like his last couple of films, Knives Out and Sound Of Metal which were filmed in Massachusetts. Knives Out was nominated for an Academy Award and Sound Of Metal comes out in theaters in 2020. His production company Live Free Or Die Films has several feature films in development. Upcoming projects include films with director’s Alexander Payne, Michael Barnett and Michel Franco.

Josh Jacobs is an LA-based writer, director, and TV writers’ assistant currently assisting in the writers room for an upcoming conspiracy thriller series. After graduating from Yale in 2015 with a biology degree, he worked at the talent agency WME and then went on to assist filmmakers and showrunners on various projects including The Old Man & The Gun (Fox Searchlight, 2018) and Strange Angel (CBS All Access, 2018-2019). He’s in post-production on a new short film, and phone screen videos he has written for the Facebook/Snapchat series TXT Stories have accumulated several million views.

The Prizes

1st place $250.00
2nd place 1yr subscription to AutoCrit
3rd place 1 yr subscription to Scrivener
4th place free live webinar
5th place free live webinar