The Prose Pros

Mid-Year Review Pt 1: Lauren's 47 Full Requests and Signing with a New Agent

In this episode, co-hosts Lauren Khan and Tali Shammas sit down for part 1 of their mid-year review. This episode focuses on Lauren's querying journey, which led her to sign with her dream agent. Covering topics ranging from craft to querying, we tackle the nitty-gritty of writing and marketing a standout manuscript. Join us next week for part 2 and Tali's path to becoming a literary agent!

The Long Road to Publishing with Alex Finlay

Alex Finlay is a bestselling novelist who has been hailed as “one of the genre’s most exciting voices” (E! News) having “earned a reputation for producing suspenseful, fast-paced thrillers” (Associated Press). His novels include the 2021 breakout, Every Last Fear, the 2022 Goodreads Choice nominee for Best Mystery & Thriller, The Night Shift, the 2023 LibraryReads Hall of Fame recipient, What Have We Done, the 2024 national bestseller, If Something Happens to Me, and the 2025 the instant national bestseller, Parents Weekend.  His work has been an Indie Next pick, a five-time LibraryReads selection, an Amazon Editor’s Best Thriller, a Barnes & Noble best mystery, as well as a Cosmopolitan, CNN, Newsweek, E!, BuzzFeed, Business Week, Goodreads, Parade, PopSugar, and Reader’s Digest best or most anticipated thrillers of the year. Hollywood has scooped up rights to his work for adaptation to the screen, including his May 2025 release, Parents Weekend. Finlay’s novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages and are sold in countries around the world, including Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, to name a few. He's a director of the thriller/mystery section of the Leopardi Writing Conference in Italy, and a board member of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Finlay, who writes under a pen name, is a magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame Law School and a prominent Washington, D.C. lawyer who has represented clients in more than 40 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Becoming a Reese's Book Club Pick with Emily Everett

Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. Her debut novel All That Life Can Afford is the Reese’s Book Club pick for April 2025, out now from Putnam Books. She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Emily studied English and music at Smith College, and studied abroad for a year at University College London. After graduating, she returned to London to do an MA in literature at Queen Mary University of London. She lived and worked in the UK from 2009 to 2013. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. Her short story “Solitária [https://kenyonreview.org/journal/janfeb-2020/selections/emily-everett/]” was selected as a runner-up for the Kenyon Review’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2020, and supported by the Vermont Studio Center.

On Writing for the Market and Voice with Sunyi Dean

Sunyi Dean (sun-yee deen) is a multi-award-losing author of speculative fiction. She was born in Texas, raised in Hong Kong, and now resides in Yorkshire. Her debut novel, THE BOOK EATERS, was an instant #2 Sunday Times Bestseller. In her spare time, she likes buying whisky, collecting dumbbells, and dying in jiu-jitsu. She also founded the Hugo-nominated Publishing Rodeo Podcast [https://sunyidean.com/podcast] with fellow Tor author, Scott Drakeford. Her highly-anticipated sophomore novel, THE GIRL WITH A THOUSAND FACES, will hit stores in May 2026.

Advice from an Author and her Publisher: Isabelle Engel and Kelly Stone

Isabelle Engel was raised in New England and now lives and works in Washington, D.C. She has a MA in English from George Washington University and a BA in English, Theatre, and Creative Writing from UMass Amherst. When she's not writing, she can be found reading, watching reality TV, going on hikes, petting other people's dogs, and listening to true crime podcasts. Kelly Stone is an associate editor at St. Martin’s Publishing Group, where she's worked since 2021. She graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Communication, where she researched the ways we interact with social media in the digital age and how to educate young adults to become more media literate. She is the Mentorship Chair of the Young Publishers Association, where she created a program to connect people across different levels of the publishing industry.