The FWA Alumni Award is a new merit award for graduates of our 2023 – 2025 Stay the Course, Edit & Submit Your Novel, Advanced Novel Workshop and Writing a Novel programs. As Round Three of the Award opens, our Round Two winners share what it was like to participate in the Faber UK Industry day.
Fliss Goldstein, who writes as AJ Lyndon, explores themes of love, loss and sexuality in Wax and Feathers. She shares her reflections on the Faber UK Industry Day.
Those who have done literary speed dating before will have some idea of how these usually go. Sometimes you can only pitch to a maximum of two agents/publishers. Three minutes per pitch which leaves maybe 30 seconds for questions!
The Faber UK Industry Day was more relaxed and more intensive. Five minutes with each agent left time for questions, discussions of comp novels and so on. But we had 16 agents, one after another! (With two five-minute breaks). Break out rooms whirled past. I scribbled madly when anyone asked me to submit or gave me a comp novel suggestion. Three agents came up with the same comp!
It was a great opportunity to meet so many friendly, encouraging agents and to have the chance to ask them questions. It was more nurturing than confronting. The day before the event we had a Zoom session with a supportive Faber editor to prepare us for what to expect and to give our pitches a trial run.
Now I’ve started submitting to some of the agents who invited me to query them. Watch this space…
Amanda Maxwell’s work To Fall, is a story of grief, friendship, love, and war, set on the Surf Coast of Victoria, on Wadawurrung Country. She shares her reflections on the Faber UK Industry Day.
I’d entered the Alumni Award without really considering what it would mean to win it. When I found out, I gulped.
The prize was a 7pm Zoom call to England. London-based literary agents. Lots of them. And the chance to pitch to each agent.
My house is small. 7pm is when kids are coming home from sport, needing dinner, showers, to half-explode into bed. And I’d never pitched anything to anyone before.
On the prize night, I set my laptop up on a stack of books and angled out as much background mess as I could. I pitched my novel to my goldfish. To my dog. To half a cabbage. Then, I pitched it to the London agents.
I pitched it to them like I wasn’t in my kitchen. Like I wasn’t blushing. Like I was someone who could pitch.
I did it over and over. Sixteen times.
And at the end, when my screen finally went dark… I wanted to do it all again. The fear was long gone. It had been fun. The agents had listened and offered ideas. They wanted to read more. They wanted to know who I was and why I’d written this. They were warm and supportive. I wanted another two minutes with each of them. I wanted to have other books to pitch. I wanted to tell everyone to enter the Alumni Award. I hope you will!
Places in Stay the Course, Edit & Submit Your Novel, Advanced Novel Workshop and Writing a Novel programs are now open. Visit our courses page to find out more.
Applications for Round Three of the Award are now open. Applications close 30 September.
Fliss Goldstein
Fliss Goldstein has previously self-published two historical novels, The Welsh Linnet and The Tawny Sash under the pen name AJ Lyndon. She lives in country Victoria and keeps in touch with her awesome Faber buddies. Fliss wrote Wax and Feathers across three Faber courses: Kickstart Your Novel in 2022, Writing a Novel Online in 2023 and Stay the Course in 2023-24.
Amanda Maxwell
Amanda Maxwell is originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand and now lives on Wadawurrung Country on Victoria’s Surf Coast, where she works as a marine and environmental scientist. Amanda’s short stories have featured in literary journals, magazines and on radio internationally. She has just completed the draft manuscript of To Fall, her first novel. Amanda graduated from the Faber Writing a Novel Online course in 2023.