Roshani Chokshi

Roshani Chokshi is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling series The Star-Touched Queen, The Gilded Wolves and Aru Shah and The End of Time, which Time Magazine named one of the Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. Chokshi’s adult debut, The Last Tale of The Flower Bride, was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and often draw upon world mythology and folklore. Chokshi is a member of the National Leadership Board for the Michael C. Carlos Museum and lives in New England with her family. Visit her online at roshanichokshi.com and on Instagram at @roshanichokshi.

Michael LaRonn

Michael La Ronn (also known as M.L. Ronn) has published over 90 science fiction & fantasy novels and self-help books for writers. 

His fiction includes the urban fantasy Good Necromancer series, the dark fantasy Last Dragon Lord series, and the futuristic science fiction Android X series. Currently, he writes primarily urban fantasy.

His nonfiction books for writers include the bestselling Be a Writing Machine, which teaches how to beat writer’s block forever, and The Pocket Guide to Pantsing, which explains how to write a novel without an outline (with confidence).

Michael also runs the award-winning YouTube channel “Author Level Up,” with over 40,000 subscribers and 2 million views. Writer’s Digest voted the channel one of the “Best Resources for Writers” in 2020.

Michael devoted himself to the writing life in 2012 after a near-death experience, writing 10 to 12 books per year despite working a demanding full-time job as an insurance executive, raising a family, and attending law school classes in the evenings. His productivity methods are so effective that his YouTube subscribers have accused him of being a cyborg in disguise (he pleads the fifth).

For more information on Michael’s books, visit his fiction website at www.michaellaronn.com and his resources for writers at www.authorlevelup.com.

David R. Slayton

David R. Slayton (He/Him) grew up in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where finding fantasy novels was pretty challenging and finding ones with diverse characters was downright impossible. Now he lives in Denver and writes the books he always wanted to read. His debut, White Trash Warlock, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. In 2015, David founded Trick or Read, an initiative to give out books along with candy to children on Halloween as well as uplift lesser-known authors or those from marginalized backgrounds. His epic fantasy, Dark Moon, Shallow Sea, won the Colorado Book Award.

Jeff Somers

Jeff Somers began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. He has published nine novels (including the Avery Cates cyberpunk series and The Ustari Cycle urban fantasy series) and over fifty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2006 and “The Little Birds,” published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 2023. He writes about books for BookBub, the craft of writing for Writer’s Digest (which published his book Writing Without Rules), and everything else for Lifehacker. His  tenth novel Five Funerals will be published by Ruadán Books in Fall, 2025. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.

Sheyla Knigge

Highline Literary

Sheyla Knigge (SHAY-luh KUH-nig-gee) is a budding publishing professional who comes to the industry with a lifelong love of reading under her belt. Having worked under Victoria Marini since 2021 she has had the immense pleasure of perusing a variety of books that have gone on to do incredibly well and cannot wait to do the same for her own clients soon. What I'm looking for fluctuates as the seasons do, but something that I am steadfastly looking for at all times is immersive stories, the kind I can't stop talking about long after I have put them down. I'm particularly drawn to fantasy novels across genres, but stories that have a lot of heart are my sweet spot.

Daniel Niv

Olswanger Literary

I am looking for fantasy manuscripts, particularly romantasy! I also love new adult, magical realism, dark academia, historical fiction and retellings, and family sagas. For romance, I am more intrigued if the setting is historical or unique. The most important thing for me when reading a manuscript is to connect with the protagonist. I often find myself connecting to vulnerable protagonists who discover their strengths. Overall, I love stories with a compelling hook, an emphasis on character development, high stakes, and plot twists.

I welcome manuscripts with diverse voices from all backgrounds and marginalized communities.