Do you have an idea for a book? A manuscript you're trying to publish? This is your chance to put your creativity to the test! Come give a one-minute elevator pitch to a panel of experienced editors and agents for real-time Shark Tank-style feedback. Winners receive a free month at Paragraph. Select finalists receive free weeks. Judges for this month’s Pitch Wars include editor Brenda Copeland, agent Kathy Schneider of Jane Rotrosen Agency and agent Stacy Testa of Writers House.

We draw names from both the Eventbrite ticket list AND door sign ups. If you do not get a Pitch Ticket in advance, come anyway! We do our best to get everyone in!

This event is free and open to the public.

Brenda Copeland is an editor with more than twenty years’ experience at the big five publishers and over ten years’ experience as an adjunct professor in the graduate publishing program at NYU. Now an independent editor, she works closely with authors through all stages of the writing and publication process, helping them reach their creative potential.

Kathy Schneider began her long and varied publishing career as manager at an independent bookstore and a Barnes & Noble, in Princeton, NJ. She worked at Random House as VP, Marketing Director, and spent more than 10 years as SVP, Associate Publisher at HarperCollins where she oversaw the publicity and marketing departments, and worked on publications by Madeleine Albright, Anderson Cooper, Steve Harvey, Cameron Diaz, Gretchen Rubin, Mitch Albom, Ann Patchett, Michael Chabon, Wally Lamb, Michael Crichton, and Harper Lee. Kathy joined JRA Literary in 2016. She covers platform-driven nonfiction in the areas of current affairs, business, pop culture, personal growth, and humor, as well as narrative, memoir, and upmarket, bookclub fiction. When she’s not in her office in Manhattan, she can be found reading under a beach umbrella at the Jersey Shore.

Stacy Testa is an agent at Writers House, where she has worked since 2011. She represents a wide range of genres, from literary, upmarket, and historical fiction to memoir, narrative, and platform-driven nonfiction. In addition to representing her own clients, she is Writers House’s Media Rights Manager, a role in which she works on developing film and TV adaptation deals for the agency’s clients.