It’s here! The Pitch Wars Class of 2019 Agent Showcase.

The Agent Showcase is here! Make sure to scroll down for some exciting news!!

First, I want to thank all the mentors and committee members for volunteering and making Pitch Wars 2019 amazing this season. Without their hard work and generosity, this event couldn’t happen. How can you show your appreciation to our volunteers, you ask? BUY THEIR BOOKS! Seriously, I’ve read a huge amount of them, and I’m sure you can find one or a few or a dozen or more you’d love.

For those who don’t know what Pitch Wars is, it’s a mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns choose one writer each to mentor. Mentors read the entire manuscript and offer suggestions on how to make the manuscript shine for the Agent Showcase. The mentor also helps edit their mentee’s pitch for the showcase and their query letter for submitting to agents. Mentors can participate solo or pair up and co-mentor.

During the Agent Showcase, each mentee is featured on a post that includes their pitch and the first page of their manuscript. Last year, we had over a hundred agents participate in the showcase. Participating agents view the posts and make requests. Over the past eight years, Pitch Wars has changed many lives. Countless authors have been matched with agents and even gone on to book deals and successful careers. We’re well over 300 successes since I started the event in 2012! But most importantly, Pitch Wars has grown into a writing community that connects authors with other authors, creating an atmosphere of camaraderie as we go through all the various stages in our publishing journeys.

The entries for the 2019 Pitch Wars mentees are now live on the showcase site here:  https://showcase.pitchwars.org/

The agent request comments will be hidden, which means you won’t see requests until the showcase has ended. This is to reduce stress on both our mentees and our agents.

Here is the showcase schedule …

• February 5: Adult entries go live at 12:01 am ET
• February 6: MG entries go live at 12:01 am ET
• February 7: YA entries go live at 12:01 am ET
• February 10: Showcase ends at 11:59 pm ET
• February 11: All agent requests are made visible.

Now, for some other news. With the end of the showcase, there will be a changing of the guard so to speak. 

I want to give a huge THANK YOU to Sarah Nicolas for managing this year. It takes A LOT of hours, day in and day out. to manage Pitch Wars in the months prior to the showcase–choosing mentors, getting the mentee submission applications ready, vetting manuscripts, the agent showcase, and all the questions and issues that come up before, during, and between. Sarah has done such an amazing job! We are so lucky to have had them manage the 2019 event. Love you tons, Sarah, for all your hard work and volunteering your time so generously! (Of course, they aren’t going anywhere, since they’re on the committee. Thank goodness!)

You can find Sarah online:
Website  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Goodreads

Now, I’d like to introduce you to our 2020 Managing Director, Sonia Hartl. Sonia has worked behind the scenes as our Communications Director since 2018 and has always been so on top of things. She’s takes care and puts her heart into everything she does. We know she will do a spectacular job managing Pitch Wars, and we hope you’ll take the time to congratulate and thank her for volunteering.

You can find Sonia online:
Website  |  Twitter

Both Sarah and Sonia have something to say, so I’ll turn it over to them …

From our 2019 Managing Director, Sarah Nicolas …

It’s been such an honor serving as Managing Director this year. I was so lucky to follow in Kellye’s footsteps because she laid so much of the groundwork that made managing Pitch Wars a lot easier this year. With such a wonderful team in place (Juliana Brandt and Kellye Garrett as Mentor Liaisons, Pintip Dunn as Mentee Liaison, Sonia as Communications Director, Gail D. Villaneuva as Technology Director (taking care of the website and forms), Rachel Lynn Solomon as Agent Liaison, Leigh Mar as Social Media Director, Brenda Drake guiding us all, as well as our wonderful advisers and blog team), I feel like I was almost superfluous. All of the credit goes to them.

I love Pitch Wars and believe in its mission of helping writers, so I’m not going anywhere. I’ll still be on the committee and working in an as-yet-undetermined capacity going forward. Thank you for trusting us and for continuing to participate in our wonderful community. Now I’m going to go figure out where Poe Warburton (our PW mascot, the owl) is with that mojito.

From our incoming Managing Director, Sonia Hartl …