When agents say no and no and no and…

By Donna Miscolta | November 30, 2022 |
Text banner that says, "I'm sorry to say that OFELIA AND NORMA is not a match for my list. Please remember that the publishing industry is very subjective, and another agent may feel differently."

A year ago I began querying agents to represent my recently completed novel OFELIA AND NORMA. In the book publishing world, an agent is the first tier of gatekeepers, the ones who decide which manuscripts to select to submit to the next tier of gatekeepers, the editors at publishing houses who then decide which to…

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When a poem takes the stage

By Donna Miscolta | October 28, 2018 |

Claudia Castro Luna’s book Killing Marias is subtitled A Poem for Multiple Voices. Each page addresses the lost life of one of the women or girls disappeared and murdered in Juárez, Mexico on the other side of the border from El Paso, Texas. Claudia invited me, writer Catalina Cantú, and dancer Milvia Pacheco to share…

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Writing, Pie, and Canoes

By Donna Miscolta | July 28, 2016 |

I’ve written about the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference before here and here. I’m doing so again. I’ve attended the conference six out of the last eight years. Three of those years I enrolled in one of the full morning workshops – a daily, intensive two and a half hours of manuscript critique or generative writing.…

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