On Day of the Girl, Thursday Oct. 11th at DVF Studios, we are celebrating our young women writers with our very special Honorary Chair, Amy Berkower, Chair of Writers House, . Also joining us will be honorees, Tomi Adeyemi, New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone and Phoebe Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of Everything’s Trash, But it’s Okay and co-creator and co-star of 2 Dope Queens along with Samhita Mukhopadhyay, of Teen Vogue as emcee.
“I’m pleased to align with Girls Write Now. They are mentoring the next generation of women writers and leaders. They are also championing girls’ voices in an industry that needs them. While doing all of this, they are giving them the professional development — and the guts — to ask to be paid for their work. Because it matters.” – Amy Berkower.
After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Amy took a job at Writers House. A year later, she was promoted to agent and started the children’s book division, which today is one of the preeminent children’s departments in the business. In 1991, Al Zuckerman, the founder of Writers House, offered Amy a full partnership, and in 2012, she became the agency’s chair. Amy’s diverse clientele includes Newbery Award-winning authors Sharon Creech, Jack Gantos, and Ann Martin, National Book Award winner Kimberly Willis Holt, popular series such as Choose Your Own Adventure, Sweet Valley High, The Baby-Sitters Club, Junie B Jones, Captain Underpants and Dog Man, and such modern-day classics as Bunnicula and Frindle. Her adult list includes the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., bestselling author Nora Roberts, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Dave Barry. Amy has is a long standing board member of Poets & Writers, a non-profit whose mission is to foster the professional development of poets and writers, and to create an environment in which literature can be appreciated by the widest possible public. Publishing is a family business: her husband, Dan Weiss, was the founder of 17th Street Productions and publisher of SparkNotes, her daughter, Sara, is a Senior Editor at Ballantine, and her son Matt, is the author of two children’s books, Please Be Nice to Sharks and Clownfish Aren’t So Funny.
Girls Write Now is pleased to align with Amy as we rally behind our strong group of young women – and shape the narrative.