Amy Berkower
Special Guest
After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Amy Berkower 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.