The Coaches
Kate Brauning is the founder of Breakthrough Writers’ Boot Camp. She’s also talent manager at powerhouse book packager Working Partners and a developmental editor at Dovetail Fiction, their YA imprint. She’s an author of young adult thrillers with a twist of the unusual, including How We Fall, The Ballad of Dinah Caldwell, and and the short story “Godzilla Girls.” As a child, she spent a lot of time in her local library, wandering the shelves and discovering all kinds of stories about all kinds of people. An incurable love for seeing real life through the pages of a book drew her to writing fiction, and at fifteen she decided she wanted someone to find her own books by searching through the shelves of a library. She's been writing ever since.
After teaching high school English for three years, she decided her life would be publishing all the way, and she started working as an intern for Carol Mann Literary Agency. Since then she has edited for publishing houses, bestselling self-publishing authors, and clients of literary agencies, including The Bent Agency, New Leaf Literary, and Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. She's worked as an acquiring editor at Entangled Publishing and as a copyeditor for Lerner Publishing Group, and she has been invited to present at SCBWI, the Romantic Times Convention, Pikes Peak Writers Conference, Idaho Writers Conference, RWA, Midwest Writers Workshop, Dordt University, Northwestern College, University of Nebraska Omaha, and others. Her novels have released to positive reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, VOYA, Horn Book Guide, and School Library Journal, and How We Fall was a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Best YA Novel nominee.
Books Kate has acquired and/or edited include:
The November Girl by Lydia Kang: Goodreads Best YA of the Month, Nebraska Book Award Winner, BookRiot Must-Read New Release, Locus Magazine Best Book of the Year
Toxic by Lydia Kang: RWA 2019 Athena Award winner
Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz: Kirkus starred review recipient, Booklist starred review, Publishers’ Weekly starred review, 2020 Sydney Taylor Honor Book
Island of Exiles by Erica Cameron: Kirkus starred review, Junior Library Guild Selection, Kirkus indie book of the month
Sea of Strangers by Erica Cameron: Junior Library Guild Selection
No Kissing Allowed by Melissa West: USA Today bestseller
Knocked-Up Cinderella by Julie Hammerle: USA Today bestseller, RITA Contemporary Romance Mid-Length Nominee
The Devil’s Submission by Nicola Davidson: Smart Bitches Trashy Books A-Grade Recipient
Currently Kate lives in Austin, Texas, with her family and her Siberian husky, Willow. In her spare time, she travels, works on her baking skills, hunts down new music, and reads just about everything. Kate loves people, dark chocolate, snorkeling, feminism, everything about autumn, bright colors, grassroots social action, red maple trees, superstitions, advocating for human rights, ghost stories, night skies, equality, pie, and talking about books. She’s working hard on her next few novels, and if you see her, say hello, because she’d love to take you out for coffee and ask you what you’re reading.
For more about Kate, browse around the site using the menu above and follow her on Twitter and Facebook, or subscribe to her newsletter here.
Paula Weiman is a literary scout specializing in children’s and young adult literature with West Wind Literary Scouting, a role that allows them to bring books to the children who will love them around the world. Prior to their time in scouting, they have held positions at major publishing houses (Scholastic, W.W. Norton), literary agencies (Pippin Properties, Aevitas Creative Management, HG Literary), and bookstores (Strand Bookstore in New York, the Abbey Bookshop in Paris), giving them a holistic view of the publishing industry. They’ve done everything from reviewing queries to placing books in readers’ hands.
They got their start as a writer at the Vermont Young Writers Conference (then known as the Champlain College Young Writers Conference) as a teen, where professional writers opened their eyes to the idea that it’s possible to make a career out of books. They volunteered with the conference for nearly a decade, running writing workshops, craft sessions, and open mics that encouraged high school writers to explore their creative potential.
In addition to their professional experience, Paula has a lifelong fascination with fairy tales and a love for 90s rom-com retellings of classic literature. You can see the influence of those interests in the short stories they’ve published with Red Weather, The Spectacle, and 34 Orchard. For more, follow them on Twitter @tinyfairyhunter.
Jen Malone is the author of thirteen middle grade and young adult novels, including The Arrival of Someday (HarperCollins), The Sleepover (Simon & Schuster), Wanderlost (HarperCollins), and Follow Your Art (Dreamworks Animation/Penguin Random House). She has also authored nonfiction craft how-to books and even ghostwritten a Nancy Drew title under the Carolyn Keene penname. Her debut picture book publishes summer 2022 with KiwiCrate.
Jen’s workshops on writing and publishing draw on her experiences as a former regional Head of Marketing and Publicity for 20th Century Fox and Miramax Films, sixteen years as an adjunct professor at Boston University, and seven years as a freelance editor. She has been on faculty at dozens of writing conferences and spent four years as an Author in Residence at a middle school. As a presenter, her audiences have ranged from the Canadian Parliament to a New Age commune in the Swiss Alps.
While she now tries to save the drama for her books, Jen once spent a year traveling the world solo, met her husband on the highway (literally), and went into labor with her identical twins while on a rock star's tour bus. You can learn more about Jen and her books at www.jenmalonewrites.com. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @jenmalonewrites.
Megan Manzano is a literary agent at Steven Literary, formerly D4EO Literary Agency, with seven years of experience in the publishing industry. Starting with the goal of becoming an author, Megan had several short stories published in Maudlin House, Twisted Sister Lit, and an anthology, Chaos of Hard Clay. Alongside writing, she worked as an editorial intern for indie fantasy publishers, pivoting gears a few years later from writing to build a career in traditional publishing.
She held a position as an assistant editor in an academic publishing house, before switching to marketing for Trade books. Both roles allowed her to see how a manuscript becomes a book, and what goes into a campaign to make a book successful. Taking these skills and her desire to work closely with authors, Megan later became a literary agent for kidlit and adult literary fiction.
Mentorship has always been important to Megan since publishing often feels like a puzzle with too many moving pieces. Some of her mentorship roles include: the Pitchwars class of 2018, the RevPit class of 2020 and 2022, the 2021 WriteHive conference, the 2020 WriteOnCon conference, among others.
In her free time, she’s either hiking, finding her latest TV or movie obsession, snuggling her dog, or crying over a good book. You can learn more about Megan at meg-edits.com. Find her on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. She's not great at the latter, but her dog is a main feature.