New York 2025 Workshop Leaders and Assistant Editors

Only the Best
Susan Breen's first mystery, MAGGIE DOVE, was published by a digital imprint of Penguin Random House on June 14, 2016. The sequel, MAGGIE DOVE'S DETECTIVE AGENCY, was published on November, 2016. Susan's short stories and essays have been published by a number of magazines, among them Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, American Literary Review and anderbo.com. One of her stories was selected for inclusion in Best American NonRequired Reading. She is also a proud finalist in the Writer's Policy Academy Golden Donut story competition. Susan's first novel, THE FICTION CLASS, won a Washington Irving Award from the Westchester Library Association, and was discovered and published as a result of the New York Pitch.

Susan teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers in Manhattan. She's also on the faculty of the New York Pitch Conference and New York Writers Workshop. She lives in a small village in the Hudson Valley with her husband, two dogs (cockapoos) and a cat. Her three grown children are flourishing elsewhere.


Michael Neff is an award winning author, Pushcart nominated poet, widely published short fiction writer, literary agent, writer conference organizer, as well as an accomplished developmental editor. His literary political novel about Washington during the Reagan years entitled ALL THE DARK WE WILL NOT SEE was published by the distinguished academic press, Serving House Books. A few years later, an urban fantasy, MAGICIANS IMPOSSIBLE, was created and co-edited by him, and later published by Macmillan Books. His science-fantasy novels, AMERICAN OZ MAKER (pseudonym Warwick Gleeson), and the prequel, WORLD MAKER, have both received multiple awards. The former was chosen by an editorial panel at Kirkus Reviews to be a "Top 150 Best Books" choice in 2019, and in 2020 the novel achieved Amazon Best Seller status. The prequel in 2018 won four national book awards for SFF, including First Place in Science Fiction and a Finalist in Fantasy, Beverly Hills Book Awards, as well as the Merit Award for the CIPA EVVY in Fantasy, and Third Place CIPA EVVY in Science Fiction.

A new thriller novel co-authored by him, BEST SERVED DEADLY, gained Top Ten finalist status in the 2022 Screencraft LA Book Writing Competition out of a field of over 2000 entries, and was chosen by Coverfly in LA to rank Fourth Place in their Top 20 Thriller "Red List" of all time. The project is now being represented by popular literary agent, Terrie Wolfe. Two more novels currently in production by Michael include WAR DRAGON OF ROME (historical fiction) and SHADOW BROKERS OF OZ (book III of the SFF series). His latest screenplay, a dramedy entitled KNOCK ON THE SKY, received four Best 5% "Recommend" reviews from top coverage outfits in Hollywood including WeScreenplay and Indie Film Hustle and is currently making the rounds with producers in Hollywood. More about him can be found here.


Three-book deal with St. Martins for the Mercy Carr mystery series, and now on the way to a fourth book.
Her last nonfiction book on craft, Writing With Quiet Hands, reviewed on Amazon - "Paula Munier's Writing with Quiet Hands is the real deal. Munier knows writing and publishing from all the angles and covers them in such a way as to teach, inspire, and encourage. If you want to learn, turn the pages and behold." - Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times best-selling author of Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins.
To date in 2025, Paula has clocked over 150 official deals with major publishers as an agent for Talcott-Notch Literary Agency.
To date in 2025, Paula has signed ten authors from the New York Pitch Conference, and all have contracts with major publishers.

Literary agent, editor and author Paula Munier is one of the biggest new stars in New York publishing. Her energy is boundless, her network endless, and being a writer herself, as well as a congenial human being, her care and compassion for her writers is legendary. Paula possesses broad experience in a wide variety of genres, and in creating content in all formats across all markets for such media giants as Disney, Gannett, Greenspun Media Group, and Quayside. She began her career as a journalist, and along the way added editor, acquisitions specialist, publishing executive, and literary agent to her repertoire. She served as the Director of Innovation and Acquisitions for Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, where she headed up the acquisitions team responsible for creating and producing both fiction and nonfiction for print, eBook, eShort, and direct-to-eBook formats.

As a literary agent for Talcott Notch, her deals over the past two years span the genre spectrum. They include a nice six figures for THE REGISTRY by Shannon Stoker; SNIPER by Vaughn Hardacker, DYING FOR ATTENTION by James Shannon, THE BODY LANGUAGE OF LIARS by Dr. Lillian Glass, TREAT ME LIKE A DOG by Larry Kay, THE FISHERMAN by Vaughn Hardacker, DISINTEGRATION by Richard Thomas, DARK TURNS by Cate Hollahan, DEATH DEALER by Kate Flora, ORPHAN #8 by Kim van Alkemade, and HOT DOGS AND CROISSANTS by Natasha and Victorine Saulnier.

She is also the author or co-author of several books including HOT FLASH HAIKU, 365 WAYS TO MAKE AMERICA A BETTER PLACE, 101 THINGS YOU AND JOHN McCAIN DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SARAH PALIN, ON BEING BLONDE, a YA suspense novel EMERALD'S DESIRE, and mainstream fiction novel FIXING FREDDIE. Paula also served four terms as President of the New England chapter of Mystery Writers of America as well as on the MWA board; and she's an active member of Sisters in Crime.

Her flagship book on fiction craft, PLOT PERFECT, is one of the most sought after technique manuals in the commercial fiction business.

Algonkian Assistant Editors

Gardner "Bud" Browning

Gardner is an award-winning author. In addition to receiving a New Hampshire Literary Award, two of his novels were part of an international English literacy program for middle grade readers (published as G.M. Browning), and his speculative fiction novel, KARMA CITY was published by Del Sol Press. The Bud-ster enjoys classic literature, fishing, playing guitar, professional wrestling, and spending time with his family.


Jinju Richards

Born in Alaska to a Korean mother and an American father, Jinju Richards grew up speaking Korean as her first language but fell in love with the written English word in kindergarten. Tiger parented all the way to Princeton and then Yale Law School, she switched from writing briefs to composing speculative fiction exploring themes of cross-cultural identity. Her global experiences include teaching at a university in North Korea and leading a science fiction and fantasy workshop in a U.S. federal prison. These days, she splits her time between various passions, from assisting with the NY Pitch Conference and managing non-profit research projects to cooking Korean dishes and braiding her toddler’s halfro.


Josh Sippie

Josh Sippie is a fiction writer who masquerades as a professional sports writer. He has appeared on McSweeney's Internet Tendency, pretending to be a mutated crayfish. He teaches various blogging classes at Gotham Writers Workshop, he's an assistant at Talcott Notch Literary Agency, works the quarterly New York Write to Pitch Conference, and hosts scavenger hunts across the east coast. He holds a BA in English and History from the University of Central Missouri.


Audrey Woods

A. A. Woods is a Boston-based Hispanic writer of science fiction and fantasy. After earning an entirely unrelated bachelor's degree in Molecular Genetics at the University of Vermont, she's been steadily inching her way into the publishing industry. She is now represented by Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. You can find more of Audrey at aawoodsbooks.com.

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