Another Writers’ Workshop by Dede

I am excited to report that the Burlington Writers Workshop has asked me to run this workshop for them in February… Here are the details:

Once you’ve written your book, what’s the best way to submit it for publication? Green Writers Press publisher and literary agent Dede Cummings will show examples of successful book proposals and query letters. She’ll also discuss how you can get your foot in the door with an agent or publishing house, how to follow up, and what to do if you have multiple offers (it does happen!). Come with questions!

Got a book proposal that could use some editing, and live too far to take the class? Contact Dede and she’ll find a way to help you.

About Dede Cummings
Green Writers Press publisher and literary agent Dede Cummings went to Middlebury College back in the late 1970s. In 1991, she received an award to study with Hayden Carruth at the Bennington Writers’ Workshop. Dede has had her poetry published in Mademoiselle magazine and ConnotationPress.com. She is at work on a collection of her poetry, along with her day job in publishing. Throughout the 1980s, Dede worked in publishing at Little, Brown & Company, rising to Senior Book Designer. When the company was bought by Time/Warner and moved to New York, Dede headed north with her husband and young son to return to Vermont and start freelancing as a designer. She has designed many award-winning books by such authors as Thomas Pynchon, Mary Oliver, William Shirer, Andre Dubus, and is a five-time winner of the new England Book Award, including 2 additional awards for “best in show” for Sorochintzy Fair by Nikolai Gogol, and World Alone/Mundo a Solas by Nobel Prize Winner, Vincente Alexandro.

In 2013 she started The Dede Cummings Literary Agency, signing her first book, Brave Parenting by Vermont author, Krissy Pozatek, which was sold in 24 hours to Wisdom Publications in Boston. The agency has grown since then, including a book auction for Shannon Galpin’s story: Mountain to Mountain: An Adventurer’s Journey for the Women of Afghanistan, and other titles. When one title—a children’s alphabet book called The Bird Book—didn’t sell, Dede decided to publish it herself, and The Bird Book came out in October 2013, to much acclaim. The new publishing company, Green Writers Press (greenwriterspress.com), has signed nine books so far, including the noteworthy So Little Time: Words and Images for a World in Climate Crisis, edited by Cummings, scheduled for release on February 11, 2014 (the book has a Foreword by Vermont nature writer John Elder, and an Envoy by Bill McKibben, with a percentage of sales going to 350-Vermont).

According to Publisher’s Weekly, it is “a book of eloquent testimony, in poetry and image, to the mystery and beauty imminent in nature, now so desperately imperiled. Like all art, it asks that we look up and see.”

Dede is a public radio commentator for Vermont Public Radio, and she lives next to an apple orchard on a dirt road in West Brattleboro, Vermont with her family.