Patricia Kesling-Wood has spent the last few years honing her work at the Retreat and Conference in Jacquelyn Mitchard's Retreat class while living on a boat in Hawaii.  Neil Nyron (Putnam) saw her book, Lottery, in the MWC 2006 Manuscript Marketplace and contacted her. Following the Conference, Lottery was sold in a heated auction involving some of the top editors in New York for a hefty advance. Putnam is now publishing  Lottery in a huge release this fall as their lead title for their Fall catalog and has also used Lottery's cover art for their own catalog cover. Lottery is now available for advanced orders.
Pre-order Lottery »

     Past attendee, Linda Collison, “I got my agent Laura Rennert through the Maui Writers Conference Manuscript Marketplace.  Nancy Holder was my instructor in the MWC's advanced novelist writer's course, and back in 1996 I was one of two Maui Writers Conference grand prize winners for my fiction (entitled, With a Little Luck) judged by Don McQuinn and John Saul.  Although With a Little Luck never had any luck being published, I continued to attend the Conference, wrote another novel, and about three years ago Laura Rennert sold my book, Star-Crossed, to Michelle Frey, Christopher Paolini's (Eragon) editor at Knopf!  Star-Crossed was published in November.  I am so grateful to the Maui Writers Conference for my success!” Order Star Crossed »

     Publishers Weekly 2006, “Neil Nyren at Putnam has bought world rights for Falling Into Manholes by Wendy Merrill, a book of funny, smart, skewed and “embarrassingly honest” autobiographical tales from a forty-something, in-recovery-from-everything good girl/bad girl who, in her search for love, keeps falling into manholes – before she finally learns how to climb out.  Nyren met Merrill at the 2006 Maui Writer’s Conference, and when she said she had published essays in two small-press collections, asked to see them. They were waiting when he got back to the office, soon followed by a detailed book proposal.  He liked them, distributed them to several women in-house – “I want you to buy this book so she can move here and be my new best friend,” said one – and in less than three weeks after his first meeting Merrill, they had a deal.”