Michelle Witte
Read. Write. Edit.
Magical Realism in Books and Film
Image above created by Stefano Vitale for Broadway musical production of Like Water for Chocolate. This is the fifth in a five-part series on Magical Realism. If you haven’t read the previous posts, I recommend starting with Part 1: What Is Magical Realism? “When you...
What Magical Realism Is to Me
This is fourth in a five-part series on Magical Realism. If you haven’t read Part 1: What Is Magical Realism?, I’d recommend starting there. “Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it,...
Elements of Magical Realism
This is the third in a five-part series on Magical Realism. If you haven't read the first two, I recommend starting with Part 1: What Is Magical Realism? “I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn’t an unformed and gelatinous substance...
Pitch Sessions: Are There Options?
Last week on Twitter, some agents got to talking about pitch sessions at writing conferences. It was a good discussion with responses that pretty much echoed the others: While we love attending conferences and meeting writers, pitch sessions themselves are ineffective...
What Magical Realism ISN’T
This is second in a five-part series on Magical Realism. If you haven't read Part 1: What Is Magical Realism?, I'd recommend starting there. “Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory....
What Is Magical Realism?
“It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise . . . to such an extreme that no-one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of José Arcadio Buendía with...
The Books for the Teens
Writers seem to really like the visual post I did recently on the types of picture books and illustrations I'd like to see in my inbox, so I figure, why not do some more for other genres/age groups I rep. This one will be slightly different since I'm not looking for...
#MSWL
Once again #MSWL day is upon us. For the uninitiated, #MSWL is a Twitter hashtag that agents and editors use to indicate the kinds of manuscripts they'd like to see in their query inbox. These include a variety of genres, age groups, subjects, ideas, characters,...
The Books with the Pictures
I've been expanding my interests as an agent from MG and YA to include books for the littler crowd. I've found some incredible author-illustrators whose work is so amazing I can't even describe, and I want more.* Especially since editors who've seen the quality...
Hello, Paris!
If you haven't heard, Ashley Evanson's forthcoming HELLO, WORLD series of board books are so freakin' adorable. To illustrate why, I present my niece two-year-old Ava as she reads from PARIS: A BOOK OF SHAPES. Pre-order yours now! Amazon: amzn.to/1PNYhrk; B&N:...
