Featured Agents and Query Critiques

You need more than a superpowered picture book manuscript to get published. You need a champion of your work to get it in the right hands. But where can you find this champion? And how can you craft a query that grabs their attention?

Join us for this year’s Featured Agents Panel and find out!

Agents Assemble: Query Critiques to the Rescue

Is your query strong enough to leap over the slush pile in a single bound?

Join our superhero agents—Leah Pierre of Ladderbird Agency, Lori Steel of SteelWorks Literary, and Ritu Anand of D4EO Literary—as they use their industry X-ray vision to analyze picture book queries from Summit attendees. Learn how to avoid query kryptonite and supercharge your submission strategy.

Let’s get to know this year’s Featured Agents:

Get to know Leah Pierre:

A Texas native, Leah briefly moved to the East Coast to attend Rosemont College to pursue her dream of working in publishing. Not long after graduating with her B.A. in English and History, Leah found an agency home at Ladderbird Literary Agency as a Junior Agent and now, after five years, has grown to become a Senior Agent and a member of the AALA and an alum of their LAOC mentorship.

Leah returned to her alma mater to pursue her M.A. in Publishing. After having accomplished her dream of working in publishing, she moved back to Texas to begin her next adventure and continue searching for the next project that will hook her (or make her cry). She is a tenacious advocate for BIPOC writers and is always looking for ways to bring more diverse intersectionality to the publishing industry.

Leah likes to spend her time enjoying the company of fictional characters more than people. But when not in the company of fictional characters, she likes to crochet, hike, travel, hang out with friends and family, and catch up on the movies and TV shows she is always behind on.

Get to know Lori Steel:

Lori began her career in young people’s literature first as an educator and school librarian, later as a freelance editor and writing instructor. She has degrees in history, education, and an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA), where she also received certification in the Picture Book, and was honored with the Alumni Gift Award.

After graduating in 2012, Lori coordinated the VCFA Summer Residency Abroad (Bath, UK) for four years, initiated the kidlit writing class program at her local indie, Politics & Prose, and entered publishing as an Agency Assistant at Greenhouse Literary. She interned at two other kidlit-focused agencies before taking on her own clients first at Raven Quill Literary, then at Red Fox Literary. She founded SteelWorks Literary in 2024 with her talented list of authors, illustrators, and graphic novelists. Lori is a longtime member of ALA and SCBWI, and is a member of AALA where she serves on the Illustration Committee.

Her clients include both debut and award-winning authors, and she continues to seek diverse perspectives, literary approaches, and unique story experiences for her list. Lyrical language, compelling voices, evocative settings, and evergreen stories told with heart are areas of particular interest in any genre/audience.

Get to know Ritu Anand:

Ritu Anand has been a passionate storyteller since childhood. Caught and admonished for writing—under her desk—during a math class, she recalls being highly inconvenienced. Inspiration had struck from within and there was little else she could have done to curtail it.

Today, Ritu has earned the recognition of being an award-winning author of Kara’s Dreams, a picture book about being resilient in the face of adversity. She gives tremendous credit to the various teachers at Mater Dei Convent, who, in the formative years of her life, laid an impression upon her. No good story should ever be filed away but be shared, she believes. And that is why, she has chosen to champion voices yet unheard.

Ritu is excited to represent writers of kidlit, literary fiction, general fiction and historical fiction. She joined D4EO Literary Agency in Spring 2023. As a writer herself, she is on the same page with other writers and applauds their creativity.

Plus, each of these Featured Agents are part of this year’s PICTURE BOOK MANUSCRIPT submission opportunities with the Summit + Submissions ticket!

Attendees who purchase the Summit + Submissions ticket will have the opportunity to submit a full manuscript to each Featured Agent and Featured Editor. They will each have their own submission form. That means you will be able to tailor your pitch AND manuscript to each individual agent or editor according to what they are seeking in submissions.

For example, you could submit the same picture book manuscript to every agent and editor, a different manuscript to each agent and editor, or anything in between. No matter what, you’ll have six opportunities to submit your picture book manuscript to these industry professionals.

At this time, two of these Featured Agents are NOT accepting unsolicited picture book submissions from picture book writers, so this is an excellent opportunity to get your manuscript in front of three awesome agents who might not otherwise see it!

Mark your calendar and make plans to join us for:

Picture Book Summit 2025:

Big, Bold, and Brave: Supercharge Your Picture Books!

October 4, 2025

Early Bird Registration opens June 11, 2025!

Mark your calendar for October 4, 2025, for a full day of online picture book writing fun, including:

• Three Superstar Speaker Presentations
• Two in-depth Craft Workshops
• Featured Agents Panel
• Featured Editors Panel
• And more!

Ticket Giveaway!

Here’s how YOU can score a free ticket to all the festivities!Early Bird Registration opens June 11, 2025, and you have a chance to win a free ticket to this year’s Summit before registration even opens!

Just scroll to the bottom of this post and enter the Rafflecopter. You can get entries for visiting us on Facebook, following us on Instagram or Bluesky, and sharing the event on Bluesky or in your Instagram stories. In fact, an entry each day you share us on social media. Check out all the details in the Rafflecopter below.

The Rafflecopter is open until June 9, 2025. Three Picture Book Summit 2024 Ticket Winners will be announced on June 10, 2025.

Stay tuned and add yourself to our newsletter list as we reveal the rest of this year’s Superstar Speakers, Workshop presenters, Featured Agents and Editors, and 2025 pricing structure over the coming days! Join the Insider’s List here.

Good luck!!

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