The founder of the Columbia Fiction Foundry discusses the components of the query letter (for fiction) and the proposal letter (for nonfiction), centering on why that agent was selected and how the author’s project compares with the agent’s recent projects. The core of Ralph’s presentation will be how to cull the Publisher’s Marketplace database for projects comparable to the author’s, and how to integrate those comps in the query or proposal for optimal impact.

Ralph White is the author of Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians (Simon & Schuster, April 2023). He founded the Columbia Fiction Foundry, a literary workshop for Columbia University alumni, and served as its president for ten years. During that time, his workshop supported the commercial publication of more than five books, and he continues to volunteer there by reading members’ manuscripts and with targeting and querying literary agents. 

The Writing Life events in 2023 are generously underwritten by Jenny Lawrence.