ALL ABOUT PITCH SESSIONS
Pitch session requests open on Sunday, April 26th at Noon Eastern/9 am Pacific and close on Sunday May 3rd at Noon Eastern. Pitch sessions will be held on Saturday, June 6th, at Noon Eastern, location TBD.
​
What Is a Pitch?
A pitch is a concise, engaging description of your project meant to pique the interest of the person to whom you are pitching your story. Make your pitch short—two or three sentences at most—and be prepared to answer questions.
​
What Should I Pitch?
Pitch finished projects. Do not pitch ideas. Make sure your work is error-free and ready to submit. If someone shows interest in your work, they will ask you to submit it once StokerCon has ended.
​
To Whom Should I Pitch?
Choose pitch takers who are seeking work like yours and represent the subgenres and age ranges of your project. If you’ve written a Young Adult Horror novel, make sure the person/people to whom you want to pitch represent/publish YA Horror. This is a critical part of the pitch process—do your homework before you decide to whom you wish to pitch. You have one shot with this person. Make sure it counts.
How Do Pitch Sessions Work?
There are a limited number of pitch sessions for each publisher, editor, or agent assigned on a first-come, first-served basis, in the order the requests are received. When you preregister for a pitch session, list up to three of your preferred pitch takers. This helps your chances to get at least one of your favored choices.
If you receive a pitch session appointment, arrive at least ten minutes early to the hallway outside the pitch room doors. Appointments will be called by name when it is their turn. Do not enter the pitch room until your name has been called. Sometimes pitches run fast and your turn may come early. A moderator will be present to help with timing. If you do not receive a pitch appointment, there may be pitch-takers willing to take extra pitches at the end, if there is extra time. Hopeful pitchers may wait in the hall for these opportunities, but they are not guaranteed. Do not approach moderators or pitch-takers in the hallway asking to be squeezed in.
How To Register For A Pitch Session
Please email pitchsessions@horror.org with your top three choices. In the Subject Line, put STOKERCON 2026 PITCH SESSION. Any pitch requests received before the date and time listed above will be discarded, as will any received after the closing time. You will be notified by email the names and times of the persons to whom you will pitch.
Please note we receive roughly forty pitch requests in the first five seconds of the open registration period. If you only list one person to whom you would like to pitch, you may not get any pitches.
WHO'S TAKING PITCHES
Emma Cole
Emma is an editor at MIRA, an imprint of HTP Books acquiring
romance and romance-adjacent projects.
​
What I'm looking for in a pitch: paranormal, horror, and
speculative romance, including fairy tale retellings, sci fi, and
dark fantasy; quirky, unapologetically romantic stories that
trust the reader; always on the lookout for underrepresented
voices.
​
What I'm not looking for in a pitch: a story without any
romantic plot; extreme horror; non-consensual sexual content.
​​
​
​
​​​
Theresa Glover​
Theresa Glover is a dark UF/horror writer, Associate Publisher
at Falstaff Books, acquiring and developmental editor, avid
southeastern convention attendee, assistant con-runner for the
Saga writing conference and a wallet’s worst nightmare when
she’s selling books.
Falstaff is looking for novel-length work in horror, dark fantasy,
dark romantasy, fantasy, science fiction, or mystery. We aren’t
looking for short story collections or anthology pitches, and we
prefer books to be at least 75K in length. No splatter punk or
extreme horror, no erotica or erotic horror, no sexual assault on
the page, glorification of same, glorification of abuse of children
or animals, and no Nazi shit.
John G. Hartness
John G. Hartness, publisher at Falstaff Books, is a teller of tales,
a righter of wrongs, defender of ladies’ virtues, and some
people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of love.
Awarded the 2016 Manly Wade Wellman for NC Science Fiction
and Fantasy.
John is looking for Novel-length work in horror, dark fantasy,
dark romantasy, fantasy, science fiction, or mystery. We aren’t
looking for short story collections or anthology pitches, and we
prefer books to be at least 75K in length. No splatter punk or
extreme horror, no erotica or erotic horror, no sexual assault on
the page, glorification of same, glorification of abuse of children
or animals, and no Nazi shit.
​
Alexandra Murphy
Alexandra Murphy (she/her) is an editor at Page Street Publishing
and is especially excited to be launching their new horror imprint,
featuring titles such as the Bram Stoker Awards ® Nominee, The
Faceless Thing We Adore, former Cracked editor Robert
Brockway’s I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200, and the
upcoming debut We Sent Them Down Singing. She’s also the
Assistant Director of the nonprofit Martha’s Vineyard Institute of
Creative Writing. When she’s not working, you can find her
wandering Tucson bookstores with a Dunkin’ in her hand looking
for something weird, dark, and funny to read.
What Alexandra is Looking for: Adult horror novels only. Ideally
standalone. Looking for high concepts and a diverse cast of
characters. Subgenre favorites include comedic, cosmic, body horror, fresh takes on haunted house tropes, creatures, cryptids, aliens on earth or underwater; folklore and curses.
And How to Pitch it to Me: Tell me your one-sentence logline, relevant subgenres/tropes, and who you think the book is perfect for.
​
NOT looking for: Young adult, new adult, or middle grade. Short story collections, novellas, anthologies, or graphic novels. Detective procedurals; high science-fiction or high-fantasy; historical horror; vampires; slow-burn gothic; unnecessary sexual violence; mental illness as the reveal
​​​
Christoph Paul
Christoph Paul is the singer/songwriter of Goth Rock band
The Dionysus Effect, he is the EIC of CLASH Books, and an
award-winning author represented by Inkwell. Christoph is
looking for horror with a hook and a heart. Style is important
to him so he searches for a strong voice-driven narrative--the
first paragraph of the book is strongly encouraged to have
with the pitch. Genre mashups are welcome along with
existential themes.
​​
​
Alec Shane
Alec Shane majored in English at Brown University, a degree
he put to immediate use by moving to Los Angeles after
graduation to become a professional stunt man. Realizing that
he prefers books to breakaway glass, he moved to New York
City in 2008 to pursue a career in publishing. Alec quickly
found a home at Writers House Literary Agency, where he
was able to carve out a niche as the agency's go-to guy for
horror. In the horror genre specifically, Alec would love to
learn about monsters, legends, and evils from other cultures;
he's not opposed to the occasional vampire or demon story,
but that isn't his focus right now. He's also on the lookout for
a female serial killer (or just female villains in general), haunted
houses, abandoned asylums, and towns harboring secrets. In juvenile horror, if it's fast-paced and features a group of kids biting off more than they can chew - not to mention creepy crawlies that can just as easily chew them - he's in. On the nonfiction side, Alec would love to see humor, biography, history (particularly military history), true crime, “guy” reads, and all things sports. In fiction, Alec is looking for mystery, thrillers (though he’s experiencing terrorist fatigue at the moment), suspense, historical fiction, literary fiction, and middle-grade and young adult fiction. He doesn’t want Romance, straight sci-fi, high fantasy, picture books, self-help, women’s fiction, food, or travel memoir.​
Arley Sorg
ARLEY SORG is an associate agent at kt literary. He is
interested in speculative and fantastic works for adults,
including horror. He may be interested in YA titles. He is
often drawn to books with layers, stories with some kind of
meaning, authors with something to say. What that looks like
can vary greatly. For pitches? Try to relax. This is not your
only shot. Think about what is cool, interesting, and special
about your work. Convey an idea of what the book does and
how it does it: what is the actual story. Besides agenting,
Arley is also co-Editor-in-Chief of Fantasy Magazine, Senior
Editor and film reviewer at Locus, and more. He is a two-time
World Fantasy finalist and three-time Locus Award finalist.
He can be found at arleysorg.com, Twitter (yes, still... for now),
Blue Sky, and Facebook.
​​
Cherry Weiner
Cherry Weiner grew up in Australia, lived in Europe for three
and a half years and moved to American when she married
her husband, Jack in 1972. She has been agenting since 1977,
when she left the Robert P. Mills Agency, Mills’ famous clients
(she will not any drop further names, but might tell you about
it, if you ask her), took two years to convince her to open her
own agency. They did this by inundating her with new authors
and their manuscripts. She started out by handling science
fiction, fantasy, and horror. She now handles all genres of
fiction and a good number of fairly well-known authors in the
field of Horror, Science Fiction / Fantasy, Romance, Mystery,
Westerns, Native American novels and Historical novels covering all the various genres each category can break out into. Only once in a very special situation has non-fiction crept into the mix but no poetry, no children’s fiction and almost no Young Adult works. If there is Y.A., then it is science fiction, fantasy or horror, and only by the authors she already handles in adult fiction. What Cherry is looking for... the author to tell her there is a complete manuscript - word count - single title or series, and then we talk about the actual work(s).
​
R. B. Wood
Founder, Editor-in-Chief, and CEO of Ruadán Books; R. B.
Wood is a retired business technologist and C-level executive.
Along with his passion for publishing, R. B. is an author of
speculative dark thrillers.
R.B. and his wife Tina adore animals and are self-professed
“crazy cat people.”
​
You can find him online on most social media platforms or at
his website.
RBW-Ruadán Books is looking for unpublished, original dark
speculative fiction & dark thriller novels & novellas of
genre-bending tales that explore the darkness within us all.
We expect deeply flawed characters, sweeping settings, and nail-biting tension.
​
RBW-We are NOT looking for Splatterpunk, body horror, graphic scenes with abuse against children or women. We are also not looking for preachy stories that pound a morality message into the reader. Messages should be subtle and sublime to encourage people to THINK.
​
​
​
