PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PANELS - EDITORS & AGENTS

MATT ORTILE is the author of the essay collection The Groom Will Keep His Name and the co-editor of the nonfiction anthology Body Language. He is also the executive editor of Catapult magazine and was previously the founding editor of BuzzFeed Philippines. He has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and MacDowell; has taught workshops for Kundiman, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and PEN America; and has written for Esquire, Vogue, Condé Nast Traveler, Out magazine, and BuzzFeed News, among others. He is a graduate of Vassar College, which means he now lives in Brooklyn.

TAYLOR BYAS is a Black poet and essayist. Originally from Chicago, she moved to Alabama for six years, where she received both her Bachelor’s degree in English and her Master’s degree in English (Creative Writing concentration) from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Taylor currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a third year PhD student and Albert C. Yates Scholar at the University of Cincinnati studying poetry. She is also an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus. 

Before joining Ayesha Pande Literary, ANNIE HWANG began her career at Folio Literary Management where she had the pleasure of working with debut and seasoned authors alike. As a former journalist, Annie possesses a keen editorial eye which she brings to her approach to agenting, taking an active role in the careers of her clients. Annie represents voice-driven literary fiction and select nonfiction. In particular, she gravitates toward subversive and irreverent literary fiction and impactful mission-driven narrative nonfiction that grapples with the complexities of our world. Above all, Annie is always on the hunt for gifted storytelling that stretches its genre to new heights. @AnnieAHwang

REGINA BROOKS is the founder and president of Serendipity Literary Agency in New York, New York. Her agency is the largest African American owned agency in the country and has represented and established a diverse base of award-winning clients in adult and young adult fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Her authors have appeared in USA Today, the New York Times, and the Washington Post as well as on Oprah, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSBNC, TV One, BET, and a host of others. In 2015, Publishers Weekly nominated Regina Brooks as a PW Star Watch Finalist, and she was honored with a Stevie Award in Business. Writer’s Digest Magazine named Serendipity Literary Agency as one of the top 25 literary agencies. Formerly, she held senior editorial positions at John Wiley and Sons (where she was not only the youngest but also the first African American editor in their college division) and McGraw-Hill.

Prior to her publishing career, she worked as an aerospace engineer and made history as the first African American woman to receive a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from The Ohio State University. She is a graduate of The School of the Arts High School in Rochester, NY.

LINDA CAMACHO was always a fan of escaping into a good book, so the fact that she gets to make it her career is still surreal. She graduated from Cornell with a B.S. in Communication and has seen many sides of the industry. She’s held various positions at Penguin Random House, Dorchester, Simon and Schuster, and Writers House literary agency until she ventured in agenting at Prospect Agency. She’s done everything from foreign rights to editorial to marketing to operations, so it was amazing to see how all the departments worked together to bring books to life. Somewhere in between all that (and little sleep), Linda received her MFA in creative writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Now at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency, Linda continues to work with colleagues and clients who inspire her every day.

JD BELTRAN  is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, designer, journalist, writer, and cultural strategist.   She has written columns on art & culture for the Huffington Post and SFGate.com, and currently writes for Visual Art Source. She's achieved grants from Artadia, the MIT Media Lab, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Stochastic Labs, and Ars Electronica. She also was awarded a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Fellowship, and residencies at Skowhegan, the Pilchuck School, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Stochastic Labs, and the Lucas Artists Residency at Montalvo Arts Center. She serves as a Commissioner on the San Francisco Arts Commission (since 2009), and was appointed as its President for 8 years, from 2011 to 2018. Beltran founded the non-profit Center for Creative Sustainability, which cultivates and implements groundbreaking creative collaborations, projects, initiatives, and legislation towards sustainability in the arts, the environment, and our society.