Our 34th Atlanta Writers Conference on May 1-2, 2026, held in-person at the Westin Atlanta Airport Hotel, consists of ELEVEN parts and you may participate in one, some, or all of these events based on your interests, goals, and budget.
Note that Zoom meetings will only be available for query letter critiques, manuscript sample critiques, query letter pitches, lightning pitches, and author coaching. The workshop, Q&A panels, free educational sessions, mixer, and award ceremony will not be available via Zoom due to the ever-increasing expense of the audio-visual equipment and personnel involved and the dwindling number of virtual participants.
The eleven conference activities are as follows:
- Saturday Manuscript Sample Critiques (SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MARCH 30; FEEDBACK RETURNED BY APRIL 30)
- Saturday Query Letter Pitches (SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VIRTUAL PARTICIPANTS: MAY 1 AT 9 P.M. EASTERN; IN-PERSON PARTICIPANTS WILL BRING PRINTED COPY TO HOTEL)
- Friday Query Letter Critiques (SUBMISSION DEADLINE FOR VIRTUAL PARTICIPANTS: APRIL 27; IN-PERSON PARTICIPANTS WILL BRING PRINTED COPY TO HOTEL)
- Saturday Lightning Pitches (NO SUBMISSION NEEDED)
- Friday Lightning Pitch Critique with an Author Panel (NO SUBMISSION NEEDED)
- Friday Workshop — “Avoiding Unforced Errors: Mistakes Writers Don’t Need to Make”
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Friday Publisher Q&A Panel
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Saturday Agent Q&A Panel
- Pre-Conference Edits (SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 3; FEEDBACK RETURNED BY FEBRUARY 24)
- Friday Author Coaching (SUBMISSION DEADLINE: APRIL 24)
- Friday Book Fair
Except for the Pre-Conference Edits, which will occur via email exchanges, all activities will be in-person at the Westin Atlanta Airport Hotel on May 1-2, 2026. For any conference attendees who select the virtual option for the critique and pitch meetings and/or author coaching, participation will be facilitated online via Zoom.
Click here for the pricing of each activity.
Click here for the profiles of the 28 guest literary agents and acquisitions editors/publishers.
If you want to register for one or more of the activities above where a submission deadline is indicated (see above in RED CAPS), click here for submission details.
VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION DETAILS: If you won’t be able to travel to the hotel, you will still be able to participate in the query letter critique, manuscript sample critique, pitch activities, and author coaching via Zoom (the Q&A panels, workshop, educational sessions, mixer, and award ceremony will only be available for in-person participants). When you register, please select the virtual attendance option. If you’ll be virtual and register for one or more query letter critique meetings, please send your query letter(s) to Conference Director George Weinstein at awconference@gmail.com by April 27 so he can send them to the agents and/or editors prior to their Zoom meeting with you. If you register for one or more query letter pitch meetings, please send your query letter(s) to George by May 1 at 9 p.m. Eastern. If you register for one or more manuscript sample critiques, send your submission(s) to George by March 30; he will send their comments to you prior to May 1 so you can prepare for your Zoom meeting with them. If you register for an author coaching session, please send your top 5 burning questions about which you want advice, along with a 1-page query letter and 1-page synopsis of the book your querying, if applicable, to George by April 24.
NOTE: if there are waitlists for the editor(s)/agent(s) you want for any of the relevant activities listed, some will be shorter than others–use the link at the bottom of any webpage to contact Conference Director George Weinstein about who has the shortest waitlists among those who are a good fit for you and your work.
Please see below for a description of each conference activity:
1. Manuscript Sample Critiques (submission deadline: March 30; feedback returned by April 30) – $200 each, up to three
One-on-one manuscript sample critique sessions on the morning and early afternoon of
Saturday, May 2, in the privacy of a hotel meeting room, where the acquisitions editor(s) and/or agent(s) you’ve selected will share their evaluation and discuss your project for about 13 minutes. A day or two before the critique meetings, you will receive the editor/agent’s written summary of comments and any notes they made on your work (they won’t do line-editing, but they shouldn’t have to; that’s why we’re offering the Pre-Conference Edit ahead of time–see activity #9 below–so you can make sure your work is free of errors and other content problems before you submit it). By the end of the session, you might be asked to submit additional pages or your full manuscript or nonfiction book proposal for consideration.
You can register for up to three of these sessions.
The agent(s) and/or editor(s) you select will return their feedback–including an indication of whether they want you to send a full or partial manuscript for further consideration–a day or two before the Saturday manuscript sample critique sessions so you will have time to prepare questions prior to your meeting.
After the final manuscript sample critiques are discussed on Saturday afternoon, all editors and agents will select one or two participants to receive a Best Manuscript Sample certificate, to be awarded at the ceremony that concludes the conference.
2. Query Letter Pitches (submission deadline for virtual participants: May 1 at 9 p.m. Eastern) – $100 apiece, up to three
For the query letter pitch sessions on the afternoon of Saturday, May 2, in the privacy of a hotel meeting room, you will bring a copy of your query letter for the agent/editor to review just prior to your meeting with them, if you will attend in-person.
If you will be virtual, you will submit your query letter to Conference Director George Weinstein by May 1 at 9 pm Eastern (to give you time to rewrite it if you’re also doing one or more query letter critiques per activity #3 below) so he can provide it to the agent/editor prior to their Zoom meeting to you.
This will be a strictly verbal exchange–you won’t receive any comments from them in writing. They will have two minutes to read and consider the project your query letter describes. Then, during your pitch meeting with them, you will discuss your project for about 13 minutes with the editor/agent of your choice, talk about your writing and your publishing ambitions, and ask the editor/agent for reactions to your query and the description of your book. If the guest is interested, you will be asked to send sample pages or even the whole manuscript for consideration.
You can register for up to three of these sessions.
The editor/agent will review your query letter prior to your meeting with them. Your query letter does the hard work of introducing your manuscript concept and yourself to the agent/editor, allowing you to build on that foundation in a natural conversation, with no recitation of a memorized spiel. To help you succeed in your pitch session(s), you can also register to get your query letter critiqued on Friday, May 1 (see activity #3 below) by two editors/agents who you will NOT be meeting with on Saturday, to give you a chance to improve your query letter ahead of time without hurting your chances with your choice picks.
If you also want 1-3 manuscript sample critiques (see activity #1 above), pitching will give you the chance to introduce other editors and/or agents to your work. We recommend you DON’T choose the same individual for manuscript critiquing AND pitching. It’s much wiser to increase your chances by meeting with as many individuals as you can who are seeking your genre/topic.
After the final pitches are discussed on Saturday afternoon, all editors and agents will select one or two participants to receive a Best Pitch certificate, to be awarded at the ceremony that concludes the conference.
3. Query Letter Critiques (submission deadline for virtual participants: April 27) – $100 apiece, up to two
Writing a great manuscript is only part of the challenge on the road to traditional publication. You also need to write a 
“bulletproof” query letter–one that won’t be rejected for errors of commission or omission–because agents and editors are not likely to ask for your manuscript if they aren’t impressed by your query. Therefore, we offer the “Query Letter Critique” on the afternoon of Friday, May 1.
The Query Letter Critique is the rare chance to share your query letter with publishing professionals for completely objective feedback. A pair of agents/editors will be randomly assigned to participants with the assurance that the individuals assigned to you will not include anyone you’re meeting with on Saturday, if applicable. Their role in this activity is not to accept or reject; rather, their goal is to help you improve your work so you can shine on Saturday and/or in all future queries. But, who knows? If you submit a great query letter at this Friday Query Letter Critique session, one or both of the editors/agents might ask to see your work too! It happens at all of our conferences and sometimes results in an eventual representation/publication contract (see our Testimonials page).
You do NOT have to register for the Saturday pitch in order to register for the Friday query letter critique–maybe you want to just try out a query letter with some talented industry professionals and get their feedback with no pressure or stress, or maybe you want to improve your letter for future queries. These are excellent reasons to take advantage of this unique chance to get important feedback about a submission that is usually just a “yes” or “no” proposition. In fact, since we introduced the query letter critique in 2013, most of our guest editors and agents have reported it was their favorite activity and considered it a must-do for all participants who are serious about getting their best work out there.
You will bring 2 copies of your query letter with you for the pair of agents/editors to read just before your meeting.
If you will be virtual, submit your query letter to Conference Director George Weinstein at awconference@gmail.com by April 27 for the assigned panel of editors/agents to review right before you meet with them (if you’re also doing a pitch–see activity #2 above–you can submit your rewritten query letter for the pitch activity by May 1 at 9 pm Eastern).
In either case, the agents/editors will read your query letter ahead of their meeting with you and give you advice about how to make your query more polished and professional so you can do your best on Saturday and/or provide guidance you can use on query letters long after the conference is over.
You can register for up to two of these sessions.
At our recent conferences, nearly 50% of Best Pitch awards by an agent or editor went to those who participated in the Query Letter Critique, so this activity really does improve your chances to shine!
4. Saturday Lightning Pitches (NEW!) – $70 apiece, up to eight
Here is a way to get more meetings in with more agents and publishers in a short timespan to increase the number of asks you might get at the conference. New for May 2026, we will have 8 agents and publishers online via Zoom on separate laptops in the College Park Ballroom for a virtual pitch slam with our own twist. Participants can register to meet with one or more of them for what we call a “lightning pitch”: this is 5-minute meeting where the participant will spend the first 3 minutes telling an individual agent/editor about their manuscript and answering the agent’s/editor’s questions. Unlike at most conferences, you won’t just get a “yes” or “no” response: during the last 2 minutes, the agent/editor will (1) offer feedback–what interested them, making them want to read the participant’s work and/or what confused them, turned them off, or otherwise made them lose interest–and of course (2) state whether they want the participant to send them a partial/full manuscript. If so, the participant will obtain the agent’s/editor’s contact information from a volunteer in the ballroom.
A timekeeper will keep these brief meetings on schedule. If the participant is in-person at the hotel, we’ll have a seat in front of each laptop, on which the agent/editor will be waiting in their Zoom breakout room. If the participant is virtual, a volunteer will move them into the agent’s/editor’s Zoom breakout room at the appropriate time. No materials need to be brought or submitted ahead of time for this activity.
5. Friday Lightning Pitch Critique with an Author Panel (NEW!) – $35
To let you practice and get feedback on your verbal “lightning” pitch(es), a panel of published authors who have a decade or more of experience querying and then assisting other writers with their pitches will help you polish your pitch. These critique sessions will use the same 5-minute timing as the Saturday lightning pitches. The participant will spend the first 3 minutes delivering their pitch and answering any questions the panelists have, but the last 2 minutes will be devoted entirely to feedback, where the panelists will recommend what to add and what to leave out. This will help you explain your manuscript more clearly and concisely, to increase your odds of getting to “yes” on Saturday during those lightning pitch sessions.
The author panel will include:
- Bestselling novelist Emily Carpenter, who is most recently published by
Kensington Books Publishing and is represented by literary agent Samantha Fabien at Root Literary - Award-winning nonfiction and fiction author and professional freelance editor Grace Wynter, who is most recently published by The Quarto Group and is represented by Rockelle Henderson, founder and president of Rock Inked Literary.
6. Friday Workshop — “Avoiding Unforced Errors: Mistakes Writers Don’t Need to Make” – $60
On Friday, May 1, after the query letter and lightning pitch critiques, we present our ever-popular two-hour workshop, this one courtesy of Amy L. Bernstein is a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction, most recently, of Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration, an inspirational book for self-doubting creatives of all ages, selected as best book on self-help and inspiration by BookFest 2025. Many of her craft essays have been published on Jane Friedman’s popular website.
On May 1, Amy will present “Avoiding Unforced Errors: Mistakes Writers Don’t Need to Make.” Drawing from her own experience and those of others, she’ll highlight the pitfalls and mistakes that writers often make at every step in the writing and publishing processes, including drafting, revising, editing, the agent/publisher pitching and pursuit game, common submission errors, contracts, marketing, author branding, and more. She will also share strategies for evaluating third-party resources (from hybrid publishers to book formatters) to avoid throwing money away or worse, falling for scams. This will be a hands-on and interactive workshop with real-time writing, shared reflections, and extensive Q&A.
7. Friday Publisher Q&A Panel – $50
Our 10 in-person acquisitions editors will answer audience questions for a solid hour about the publishing and post-publishing process, expectations for the writers, marketing and publicity, and much more.
8. Saturday Agent Q&A Panel – $50
Our 10 in-person literary agents will answer your questions for a solid hour about the querying process, what agents do for their clients, how agents get their clients published, expectations for writers, and much more.
9. Pre-Conference Edits (submission deadline: February 3) – $80 apiece, up to two
Help get your file in shape before you submit it for one or more agent/publisher manuscript critiques and/or query letter pitches with a pre-conference edit by a professional freelance editor. They will help you polish your 19-page manuscript sample, 1-page query letter, and 1-page synopsis–for novels and memoirs–or 1-page query letter and 20-page book proposal for nonfiction. These freelancers each have many years of experience identifying spelling, grammar, and punctuation problems; opportunities to further develop the fictional story and characters or memoir and nonfiction structure and prose; and ways to improve the query letter, synopsis, and/or book proposal.
You can register for up to two of these sessions.
This is a purely virtual activity taking place via email; no meetings with the pre-conference editors will take place before or during the conference. See the pre-conference edit page for complete details and the freelance editors’ profiles.
10. Friday Author Coaching (submission deadline: April 24) – $60
Here’s your chance to meet with an award-winning author to ask your top 5 burning questions about creating manuscripts, pursuing publication, and/or the writer’s life. Choose between novelist Mickey Dubrow or nonfiction and fiction author Jessica Handler. You’ll submit your questions ahead of time, along with your query letter and 1-page synopsis if available, so you can have a productive 15-minute conversation with your choice of author coach, scheduled with no overlaps on Friday with any other activities you select. See the author coaching page for complete details, including the authors’ profiles.
11. Friday Book Fair – $40
Do you have one or more traditionally published or self-published books for sale? You can reserve a vendor table at our Friday book fair, held on the second-floor atrium near many of the other conference activities from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. You keep 100% of the profits from your sales. See the book fair page for complete details.
BONUS ACTIVITIES FOR PARTICIPANTS WHO PURCHASE AT LEAST 2 ACTIVITIES:
Our Friday workshop speaker, Amy Bernstein, will offer two free talks prior to her 4 p.m. workshop: “Straight Talk About the Agent Quest” and “Adopting a Business Mindset for the Long Haul.”
On Saturday, while the morning manuscript critiques are held, we will feature in-person talks by Amy Pence, the author of three poetry collections and two chapbooks, most recently We Travel Towards It (Serving House Books, 2025), as well as the international award-winning prose/poetry hybrid [It] Incandescent. Her first novel Yellow, a genre-bender that blends speculative fiction, fact, and physics, debuts from Red Hen Press in 2026. She’s published interviews and essays in a number of magazines, including The Writer’s Chronicle and Poets & Writers. Raised in New Orleans and Las Vegas, Amy taught college English, poetry writing at Emory, and in other workshop settings. She will discuss “Creating a Body of Work: How to Embody Your Writing Practice” and “The Best Words in the Best Order: Queries & Letters That Move Your Writing Forward.”
On Saturday afternoon, we will offer talks by Tulasi Acharya, PhD, originally from Nepal, who began his American journey in 2008. He holds a Master’s in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University, a Master’s in Women’s Studies, and a PhD in Public Administration from Florida Atlantic University. He also earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Georgia College. Dr. Acharya currently teaches English at South Georgia State College. An accomplished multilingual author, Dr. Acharya has published over a dozen books across multiple genres. His academic and creative work has been published by leading publishers, including Routledge and Bloomsbury Academic. In his most recent book, titled Like Water on Leaves of Taro, Acharya extends an invitation to readers to witness mourning as both personal and communal, grounded in ancient tradition yet deeply relevant in today’s fractured world. His writing is driven by an unwavering passion for storytelling, cultural connection, and the written word. He will discuss “Research in Memoir Writing” and “Writing Across Languages and Cultures.”
Our Friday night mixer held in the Candler Room beside the hotel restaurant from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., will welcome our in-person agents and acquisitions editors and typically more than 100 participants, with musical entertainment and a cash bar, for networking and casual conversations about the craft and business and writing.
To close out the Atlanta Writers Conference on Saturday afternoon, we will offer prize giveaways, including critiques, pitches, and other activities for the next conference and lifetime membership in the Atlanta Writers Club. And then our award ceremony will commence, with all editors and agents announcing awards for Best Manuscript Sample and Best Pitch. Many participants who were awarded one or more of these certificates later received book deals from editors or representation contracts from agents. See who shines on Saturday afternoon–it might be your name our guests call!
All bonus activities are free for anyone purchasing at least two of our conference activities.
Accessibility Accommodations
Participants are requested to please notify Atlanta Writers Conference Director George Weinstein (awconference@gmail.com) by October 17, 2025 of any accessibility accommodations needed.
Our Policy on Sexual Harassment
The Atlanta Writers Conference staff, Atlanta Writers Club (AWC) volunteers, and the presenters at its conferences are committed to helping provide safe, inspiring, informative events. The Atlanta Writers Club will not tolerate sexual harassment of any kind on the part of attendees, presenters, or anyone connected to any event sponsored by the AWC. We urge anyone who experiences or observes a problem to notify Atlanta Writers Conference Director George Weinstein (awconference@gmail.com) immediately. We appreciate your cooperation.
Our Photo Policy
Atlanta Writers Conference volunteers will be taking photos during the conference to share on social media and use on the conference website to advertise the event and celebrate the participants and our guests. By registering for this conference, you are giving us permission to use your image for these purposes.
Questions?
Please contact Atlanta Writers Conference Director George Weinstein at awconference@gmail.com.
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