Are you a writer hoping to get published? Or just curious about how books make their way from a writer’s mind to the bookstore shelf? A bestselling author, agent, and editor will talk about their roles in the path to publishing, answering questions about how they choose what to publish and promote, how they work together and apart, and the future of the fast-changing publishing industry.  

Panelists include: 

Jonathan Allen: A journalist who has reported on Congress, the White House and electoral politics in Washington for more than twenty years, Jonathan Allen is the co-author of the New York Times-bestselling Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign and HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, with fellow journalist Amie Parnes. A winner of the Dirksen and Hume awards for his reporting on Congress, Allen currently covers the White House for NBC News. He has also been the Washington bureau chief for Bloomberg, White House bureau chief for Politico and a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and The Hill. He graduated from the University of Maryland.

Kerri Kolen: Kerri Kolen has worked in publishing for more than fifteen years, most recently as Executive Editor at Putnam Books, a division of Penguin Random House. Over the course of her career she has also worked as Executive Editor at Hyperion Books, Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster, and two stints on the agency side at Witherspoon Associates (now part of Inkwell Management) and Sterling Lord Literistic. Kerri has acquired and edited a broad range of acclaimed and bestselling narrative non-fiction, including: Hoda Kotb’s Hoda, a New York Times bestseller and Books for a Better Life Award finalist; three books by Sophia Amoruso, including #Girlboss, a New York Times bestseller and adapted into a Netflix original series; Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis’ Choosing Hope, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist; Burt Reynolds’ most recent memoir, But Enough About Me, a New York Times bestseller; Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home, a New York Times bestseller, adapted into the major motion drama, Lion, nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay; Jaycee Dugard’s A Stolen Life, a New York Times bestseller, which sold over 1.5 million copies and has been published in more than 20 countries; Carrie Fisher’s New York Times bestsellers, Wishful Drinking and Shockaholic; and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s On The Shoulders of Giants, a New York Times bestseller. She has also acquired and edited select upmarket commercial fiction, including: Dust and Shadow, Jane Steele and The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye, twice-nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel; two novels by Camille Perri, author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy; and Carrie Fisher’s The Best Awful. Kerri has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Bridget Wagner Matzie has represented projects such as the #1 New York Times bestseller Shattered by Jon Allen and Amie Parnes, the national bestseller The Case for Impeachment by Allan Lichtman, the New York Times bestseller The Party Is Over by Mike Lofgren, the acclaimed novel The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma by Ratika Kapur, the LA Times bestseller Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric Wilson, and the New York Times bestselling novel Daemon by Daniel Suarez, among others. Matzie represents nonfiction and commercial fiction as an agent at Aevitas Creative Management and was recently listed as one of DC’s top book agents by Washingtonian. 

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