The Writer and the Literary Agent: A Conversation

This event is free and open to the public. The Elliston Poetry Room is located in Suite 646 on the 6th Floor of Langsam Library on the UC Uptown Campus at 2911 Woodside Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45221. Public parking is available in the Woodside Garage beneath Langsam Library, or along Martin Luther King Drive on the north edge of the Uptown Campus. An elevator in Woodside Garage will take you to Floor 4 (ground level) and once inside Langsam Library another elevator can take you to floor 6.
Mariah Rigg is the author of the debut short story collection Extinction Capital of the World (Ecco, 2025), which has received praise from Oprah Daily, Vulture, Chicago Review of Books, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, and more. Her work has been featured in The Sewanee Review, Oxford American, Electric Lit, and Chicago Review of Books, among others, and has received support from organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts, MASS MoCA, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Lambda Literary. Mariah holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Currently, she teaches creative writing as a visiting fellow at Mount Holyoke College.
Amy Bishop-Wycisk (why-zick) is an agent with Trellis Literary Management. With almost a decade of experience, she's cultivating a wide-ranging list in upmarket and book club fiction, grounded sci-fi and fantasy, speculative fiction, expert-driven narrative nonfiction, and select YA, with a special interest in underrepresented voices. Her authors’ books have been NYT, USA Today, and indie bestsellers, a Reese’s Book Club selection, James Beard Award and Edgar Award winners, Indie Next picks, and Book of the Month and B&N Monthly selections. Before diving into the world of publishing, she graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Creative Writing. You can find her on Instagram at @abw.books.