Writing Certificates > The Writer's Spotlight > Winter 2026
Winter Writer's Spotlight
In this Issue:
- Recent Writing News: Students
- Recent Writing News: Instructors
- Feature Essays: Esther Lin and Jeanne De Vita
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Student Writing News
We are thrilled to celebrate new publications, awards, and other writing-related news from our student community.
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Nina Schuyler’s novel, Afterword, was selected as part of the One City One Book: San Francisco Reads program. Her short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the 2025 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. It won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature.
Liza Monroy has published a new piece, "The Highway Nanny," in Necessary Fiction.
Wendy Tokunaga has recently published a new novel, Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter.
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Writing and publishing Cold Thief Place spanned a decade, from the earliest poem, “Tell Me Where the Past Is,” written in 2015, to the publication date of March 2025. Cold Thief Place spent nine years in repeating cycles of writing, revision, sequencing, and three years in the limbo of submission, which is when I sent the manuscript off to various contests and publishers, and could do nothing more but continue to write, revise, and sequence. This is an arithmetically oriented way of saying that there was no final version of Cold Thief Place until it was accepted.
That’s a curiosity about books of poems. The writer’s process does not necessarily end at the completion of one or many poems. It may continue in the task of arranging the poems in a deliberate sequence to form a collection—whether a chapbook or a full-length. To misquote Coleridge: sequencing is the art of arranging the best poems in the best order.
I should hasten to say that a poet does not need to publish a collection to regard themselves as a poet. What makes the poet is the practice itself, of playing and uncovering truths in the medium of language and the line. We all can name historic writers who never published in their lifetimes. Nevertheless, I recommend that students of poetry experiment with sequencing their own poems in small groups, even if they choose to never publish a collection. Good sequencing allows one to read differently: to experience each poem as a solo piece, as well as a single in a chorus of many, all harmonizing together.
With Cold Thief Place, I was bewildered. I had so many stories to share: the heroism of my parents, who had survived the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution in China. Their flight to Latin America. Our arrival to the United States and becoming undocumented. My mother’s sorrow and desperation, which drove her to join a cult. That she died, too young, of cancer. My poems flowed over with stories. How might I sequence the poems in a way that plunged the reader into drama without overwhelming them?
I know I’m not alone in having “too much to say.” Continuing Studies students live extraordinary, complex lives. A boon for writers, yes, but extraordinary, complex lives do ask a lot of aesthetic questions that we should not ignore. For example, my embarrassment of riches demanded that Cold Thief Place introduce its cast of characters—mother, father, sisters, husband—as a play does: with some attention to each character before moving on. Because the poems were varied in topic, I felt they must be unified in some way—emotionally. I wished the sequence to evoke grief, the light coolness of irony, respite, and in closing, more grief, but of a gentler nature. I wished for the reader to enjoy the colors of these emotions distinctly, without muddling. All this, I believe, can be achieved by a striking sequence.
I composed a total of three. I wrote an additional fifty pages of poetry that I slowly wove into the manuscript, replacing and discarding older poems. With each sequence, I discovered a new emotional arc, a new harmony that had been previously muted for the sake of a different arc and harmony. I’d like to think that with each sequence the manuscript grew in clarity and sophistication. But art, they say, is never complete, only abandoned. When the happy news of the Alice James Award came along, I felt I could rest; at least a few other readers agreed with my understanding of my book, and after publication, more readers will too.
So far, so good. Cold Thief Place has been longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. And its subject matter—of being undocumented—has only intensified on the national stage, unfortunately. Putting together a book has been an intensive but highly gratifying experience. The practice has made me more curious about what more poets can do when sequencing, what other experiences we can provide the reader. I am already excited about sequencing my second book!
Volume, Volume, Volume
The volume of incoming work is staggering. Staggering. Yes, the volume of submissions that come in is incredibly high, but the job is about so much more than reading and evaluating submissions. Let’s look at the process and some numbers:
This is a labor-intensive process
In December 2025, I received 1,262 queries in QueryTracker. Let’s say I took no time off in December and worked 40 hours per week and prorated the last week of that month to about 180 working hours for the month of December.
If I spent only five minutes per query, that would mean I spent 105 working hours only on submissions in that same month. No income generation. No editing. No progress. Just reading and responding to queries.
Many queries exceed 500 words (which is non-standard but very common) so reading the 500+ word query, checking the author’s socials, website, or other links to their work, and reading five sample pages can take far longer than five minutes. There will also be submissions I reject simply because the query letter revealed something significant about the work and I know I would not be a good fit for that book. Even if I can save some time off the 5 minutes per submission, it’s not likely I can read faster than 1-2 minutes.
Many submissions require thought and analysis, and that in many cases will mean far more than 5 minutes of time.
I’m not a math major, but reading submissions is a labor-intensive process. The longer I am open to submissions, the more regular communications I receive from authors. Authors will receive offers of representation from other agents or offers of publication from small presses and that may change the timeline I have to do review the work. I also have to spend time reading and responding to those emails.
No wonder it takes many agents months to keep up/catch up on their queries. This doesn’t even factor in full manuscript requests or meetings! I would never use any kind of AI to make this process faster, so when authors are waiting in my queue, they really are waiting for me to thoughtfully consider not just their query and sample pages, but their author brand, their contribution to the genre space, and the way I might successfully pitch their book to the market.
If you add full manuscript requests to the pile, just managing incoming submissions is a more than full-time job.
Pitching a book is an art unto itself
Now I understand why authors have to put so much work into the query letter and pitch to even get noticed by agents. Agents must be able to do that exact work to pitch a book to a publisher, but with a depth and complexity that is very, very different.
If you as the author can’t “sell” me on your book in the query letter, it’s likely there are pieces missing, the premise is overly complex, or there isn’t a highly commercial pitch in the novel.
But isn’t pitching the agent’s job and not the author’s? Not exactly. The pitch that I have to create to make you, your book, and your career look like a worthwhile investment to a publisher is a lot more complex (and longer!) than the query letter and one-sentence pitch you provide. If you don’t have a compelling pitch, it’s just too easy to pass on the book—even if it’s really good. One clue that a book isn’t pitch-ready? The word follow.
No novel with strong, clear stakes and effective conflict “follows” a character on their journey. The character is either chasing after something or running from something—ideally their need to have solution (not nice to have) to an imminent problem.
Time is on your side
While literary agents move slowly at times, sometimes, the process moves very quickly indeed. The first authors I first connected with via QueryTracker in December are already on submission just 6-8 weeks later. Bring a sharp concept and effective execution to the submissions inbox, and the work will speak for itself—and maybe move very quickly through the pipeline.
- Brian Christopher Giddens continues to be impressively productive and is seeing great results from sending his work out! His two poems "Crazy" and "End of Days" have been published in Reverie Magazine. He also has poems forthcoming in The Bluebird Word, and fiction forthcoming in Allium and Chiron Review. He also recorded an audio version of a poem he wrote for The Amazine, which should soon be accessible through their website.
- Roger Mills’ novel Everything’s Under Control will be published by Bancroft Press.
- Holland Sweet had this personal essay published, inspired by a prompt from our class, “Getting Started in Creative Nonfiction: A Ticket to the Truth.”
- Gregory Wilson Taylor’s novel Edge Of The Fall: The storm is the least of her worries was published in December.
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Instructor Writing News
Nina Schuyler’s novel, Afterword, was selected as part of the One City One Book: San Francisco Reads program. Her short story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the 2025 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. It won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Liza Monroy has published a new piece, "The Highway Nanny," in Necessary Fiction. Wendy Tokunaga has recently published a new novel, Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter.^Back to top
Features: Esther Lin and Jeanne De Vita
This winter, we are thrilled to share essays from two of our instructors.
Esther Lin
We are delighted to celebrate the publication of poetry instructor Esther Lin’s book, Cold Thief Place, which won the Alice James Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. We asked Esther to share an aspect of writing or publishing the book that she thought our Continuing Studies students would find illuminating or instructive, and she wrote a beautiful reflection on the long arc of creating and compiling a collection of work spanning many years.Writing and publishing Cold Thief Place spanned a decade, from the earliest poem, “Tell Me Where the Past Is,” written in 2015, to the publication date of March 2025. Cold Thief Place spent nine years in repeating cycles of writing, revision, sequencing, and three years in the limbo of submission, which is when I sent the manuscript off to various contests and publishers, and could do nothing more but continue to write, revise, and sequence. This is an arithmetically oriented way of saying that there was no final version of Cold Thief Place until it was accepted.That’s a curiosity about books of poems. The writer’s process does not necessarily end at the completion of one or many poems. It may continue in the task of arranging the poems in a deliberate sequence to form a collection—whether a chapbook or a full-length. To misquote Coleridge: sequencing is the art of arranging the best poems in the best order.
I should hasten to say that a poet does not need to publish a collection to regard themselves as a poet. What makes the poet is the practice itself, of playing and uncovering truths in the medium of language and the line. We all can name historic writers who never published in their lifetimes. Nevertheless, I recommend that students of poetry experiment with sequencing their own poems in small groups, even if they choose to never publish a collection. Good sequencing allows one to read differently: to experience each poem as a solo piece, as well as a single in a chorus of many, all harmonizing together.
With Cold Thief Place, I was bewildered. I had so many stories to share: the heroism of my parents, who had survived the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution in China. Their flight to Latin America. Our arrival to the United States and becoming undocumented. My mother’s sorrow and desperation, which drove her to join a cult. That she died, too young, of cancer. My poems flowed over with stories. How might I sequence the poems in a way that plunged the reader into drama without overwhelming them?
I know I’m not alone in having “too much to say.” Continuing Studies students live extraordinary, complex lives. A boon for writers, yes, but extraordinary, complex lives do ask a lot of aesthetic questions that we should not ignore. For example, my embarrassment of riches demanded that Cold Thief Place introduce its cast of characters—mother, father, sisters, husband—as a play does: with some attention to each character before moving on. Because the poems were varied in topic, I felt they must be unified in some way—emotionally. I wished the sequence to evoke grief, the light coolness of irony, respite, and in closing, more grief, but of a gentler nature. I wished for the reader to enjoy the colors of these emotions distinctly, without muddling. All this, I believe, can be achieved by a striking sequence.
I composed a total of three. I wrote an additional fifty pages of poetry that I slowly wove into the manuscript, replacing and discarding older poems. With each sequence, I discovered a new emotional arc, a new harmony that had been previously muted for the sake of a different arc and harmony. I’d like to think that with each sequence the manuscript grew in clarity and sophistication. But art, they say, is never complete, only abandoned. When the happy news of the Alice James Award came along, I felt I could rest; at least a few other readers agreed with my understanding of my book, and after publication, more readers will too.
So far, so good. Cold Thief Place has been longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. And its subject matter—of being undocumented—has only intensified on the national stage, unfortunately. Putting together a book has been an intensive but highly gratifying experience. The practice has made me more curious about what more poets can do when sequencing, what other experiences we can provide the reader. I am already excited about sequencing my second book!
Jeanne De Vita
Students who have queried agents, seeking representation for their novels or memoirs, may have waited (and waited and waited) to hear back, wondering why it’s taking so long for their dream agent to read a one page query and 5-20 page writing sample.
Recently, one of our instructors—Jeanne De Vita—made the leap to literary agent. In addition to being a creative writing instructor, Jeanne is herself an author and an editor. She had often given astute publishing advice to aspiring authors and clients, and she knew the business well. When one of them suggested that she should be an agent, she thought: why not?
Having been in the job for a few months now, Jeanne has this information to share with anyone hoping to land representation, beginning with the reason why it takes forever to hear back from prospective agents.
Volume, Volume, Volume The volume of incoming work is staggering. Staggering. Yes, the volume of submissions that come in is incredibly high, but the job is about so much more than reading and evaluating submissions. Let’s look at the process and some numbers:
This is a labor-intensive process
In December 2025, I received 1,262 queries in QueryTracker. Let’s say I took no time off in December and worked 40 hours per week and prorated the last week of that month to about 180 working hours for the month of December.
If I spent only five minutes per query, that would mean I spent 105 working hours only on submissions in that same month. No income generation. No editing. No progress. Just reading and responding to queries.
Many queries exceed 500 words (which is non-standard but very common) so reading the 500+ word query, checking the author’s socials, website, or other links to their work, and reading five sample pages can take far longer than five minutes. There will also be submissions I reject simply because the query letter revealed something significant about the work and I know I would not be a good fit for that book. Even if I can save some time off the 5 minutes per submission, it’s not likely I can read faster than 1-2 minutes.
Many submissions require thought and analysis, and that in many cases will mean far more than 5 minutes of time.
I’m not a math major, but reading submissions is a labor-intensive process. The longer I am open to submissions, the more regular communications I receive from authors. Authors will receive offers of representation from other agents or offers of publication from small presses and that may change the timeline I have to do review the work. I also have to spend time reading and responding to those emails.
No wonder it takes many agents months to keep up/catch up on their queries. This doesn’t even factor in full manuscript requests or meetings! I would never use any kind of AI to make this process faster, so when authors are waiting in my queue, they really are waiting for me to thoughtfully consider not just their query and sample pages, but their author brand, their contribution to the genre space, and the way I might successfully pitch their book to the market.
If you add full manuscript requests to the pile, just managing incoming submissions is a more than full-time job.
Pitching a book is an art unto itself
Now I understand why authors have to put so much work into the query letter and pitch to even get noticed by agents. Agents must be able to do that exact work to pitch a book to a publisher, but with a depth and complexity that is very, very different.
If you as the author can’t “sell” me on your book in the query letter, it’s likely there are pieces missing, the premise is overly complex, or there isn’t a highly commercial pitch in the novel.
But isn’t pitching the agent’s job and not the author’s? Not exactly. The pitch that I have to create to make you, your book, and your career look like a worthwhile investment to a publisher is a lot more complex (and longer!) than the query letter and one-sentence pitch you provide. If you don’t have a compelling pitch, it’s just too easy to pass on the book—even if it’s really good. One clue that a book isn’t pitch-ready? The word follow.
No novel with strong, clear stakes and effective conflict “follows” a character on their journey. The character is either chasing after something or running from something—ideally their need to have solution (not nice to have) to an imminent problem.
Time is on your side
While literary agents move slowly at times, sometimes, the process moves very quickly indeed. The first authors I first connected with via QueryTracker in December are already on submission just 6-8 weeks later. Bring a sharp concept and effective execution to the submissions inbox, and the work will speak for itself—and maybe move very quickly through the pipeline.