OPENING LINES June 2018

You’ve got seconds to hook your reader with your opening lines. Will they read on or not? Find out what a top literary agent thinks. Meet Angharad from the Kowal Stannus Agency.

Our OPENING LINES series gives you a chance to get some professional feedback so you can apply a bit of spit and polish to your words. This time, it’s Angharad Kowal Stannus. Three submissions will be chosen at random for feedback. If yours is selected, it will be published anonymously here in June with her response. (That way, we all get to learn from her and from each other.)

Here, Angharad introduces herself:

I’m the founder of the Kowal Stannus Agency, a literary agency that represents authors and illustrators of fiction and non-fiction, for adults and children. I spent the first half of my career in international publishing at Simon and Schuster NY, before I moved to London in 2008 to open the UK arm of agency Writers House. As an American living in the UK, with experience as an agent and a publisher, I’m able to offer my clients a unique service and sales perspective. I’ve worked with Neil Gaiman, Eric Carle, Ken Follett, Christopher Paolini, Ian Falconer, Stephenie Meyer, and Stephen Hawking, to name just a few.

How to submit your Opening Lines

Please email features2@britishscbwi.org and write Opening Lines entry in the subject line. Your email needs to contain a) your full name b) title c) elevator pitch and d) first few opening lines. Make sure we receive it by 10th June 2018 for your chance to get your lines seen by Angharad. We’ll publish the results on 22nd July. Remember, Opening Lines isn’t a competition, so you are free to submit your story elsewhere.

Credit for headshot: Angharad Kowal Stannus

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Liz MacWhirter is a creative copywriter, man-loving feminist and planet-hugging activist. Her YA debut Black Snow Falling, an Elizabethan fantasy, will be published in August 2018 by Scotland Street Press. Agented with Fraser Ross Associates.
Contact: writers@britishscbwi.org
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Website: www.ljmacwhirter.com
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