A Publishing Speakers' Series Fall 2025: Agents and Editors in Conversation
Wed. Aug. 13, 2025
Thank you to the Internal Research Grants at U Winnipeg for funding these events!
Rachel Letofsky (Transatlantic Agency) in conversation with David Ross (Penguin Canada)
Date: Monday, Sept 22 2025
Time: 2:30-3:30 PM CT
Please register and submit questions in advance: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/-HZ_UQVoQlmrxNJGfBrj7w
Hosted by Prof. Lindsay Wong
RACHEL LATOFSKY has been working in publishing since 2010 and started building her list as a literary agent in 2013. She represents bestselling and award-winning authors such as Cherie Dimaline, Danny Ramadan, Ivan Coyote, Jessica Johns, and Vivek Shraya, and is the agent for the ground-breaking anthology Never Whistle at Night, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore Van Alst Jr., which has been on the Indie Bestseller list since its publication in September 2023 and sold over 100,000 copies in North America.
Rachel’s clients have been nominated for, and won, such prestigious prizes as the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award, the Giller Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Awards, the OLA’s Forest of Tree Awards, the Writer’s Trust Awards, the Trillium Awards, the BC Book Awards, CBC’s Canada Reads, the Sunburst Award, the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards, the Pink Triangle Awards, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Awards.
Rachel loves working with diverse voices and authors who follow their hearts in pursuit of their art, which leads her to represent books across many genres and categories, from literary, commercial, upmarket fiction and narrative-driven non-fiction to graphic novels, YA, middle-grade, poetry, and some picture books. She works with her clients in a focused and hands-on manner and truly loves discovering and championing debut authors.
DAVID ROSS is editorial director of Hamish Hamilton Canada, an imprint of Penguin Canada. He acquires literary fiction and memoir with a focus on identity, sexuality, and belonging. Titles he’d edited have won Canada Reads, Lambda Literary Awards, BC Book Prizes, and Indigenous Voices Awards. Among the bestselling Canadian authors he’s published are Samra Habib, Vivek Shraya, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Cody Caetano, and Kai Cheng Thom.
Jo Ramsay (Transatlantic Agency) in conversation with Hilary Lo (Knopf Canada)
Date: Monday, Sept 29 2025
Time: 2:30-3:30 PM CT
Please register and submit questions in advance: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/JDYWR1AJQiG21VbLPwvd6w
Hosted by Prof. Lindsay Wong
JO RAMSAY is a Literary Agent at Transatlantic Agency. They’ve worked in publishing for over eight years at a number of publishers and literary magazines which include Simon and Schuster, Shrapnel Magazine, Arsenal Pulp Press, PRISM International, and Greystone Books. Their writing has been published in The Globe & Mail, Maclean’s, and This Magazine, among others. Jo is looking to represent a variety of adult fiction and nonfiction. (Pronouns: They/She).
HILARY LO is an assistant editor at Knopf Canada and Alchemy, where she edits across the fiction and non-fiction lists. She has had the pleasure of working on books by Chetna Maroo (Western Lane), Christina Sharpe (Ordinary Notes), Y-Dang Troeung (Landbridge), Dionne Brand (Salvage) and Seán Hewitt (Open, Heaven), among others. Hilary's list includes Everything and Nothing At All by Jenny Heijun Wills; Rayne Fisher-Quann's highly anticipated essay collection, Complex Female Character; Exhumations by Joanne Leow, an incendiary exposé of Singapore and its history of oil refinement; and Raksha Vasudevan's Empires Between Us. She is also the series editor of the annual Alchemy Lecture, curated by Christina Sharpe and Dionne Brand. Hilary hopes to continue building out her list with boundary-pushing narratives and beautiful, disruptive writing.