Event Recording
December 2, 2021
Amanda Leduc in conversation with Anne Collins and Samantha Haywood
This From Manuscript to Marketplace event features Amanda Leduc, the author of The Centaur’s Wife, in conversation with Anne Collins, executive editor at Random House Canada, and Samantha Haywood, president of the Translantic Agency. Designed with an audience of fellow writers in mind, From Manuscript to Marketplace offers case studies of the path to publication and candid conversations about the current realities of publicity, social media, virtual events, working with agents and editors, and more. Each event provides a unique portrait of the collaborative process behind the scenes.
Amanda Leduc’s essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US and the UK. She is the author of the non-fiction book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space (Coach House Books, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Nonfiction, and the novel The Miracles of Ordinary Men (2013, ECW Press). Her latest novel is The Centaur’s Wife, out now with Random House Canada. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she works as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada’s first festival for diverse authors and stories.
Anne Collins is now the executive editor of Random House Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada, and has been a vice president of the company since 1998. Before moving into her new role in January 2021, she spent 23 years as the publisher of Random House Canada, adding responsibility for Knopf Canada in 2009. Before moving over to the world of book publishing, Anne was an award-winning writer and magazine editor, whose second book, In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada, won the 1988 Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction. Authors she’s worked with include Julian Barnes, Peter Carey, Douglas Coupland, Roméo Dallaire, Cherie Dimaline, Chris Hadfield, Jane Jacobs, Wayne Johnston, Robert Kolker, Amanda Leduc, Barry Lopez, Annabel Lyon, Anthony Marra, Tessa McWatt, J.B. MacKinnon, Sean Michaels, Jodi Picoult, Richard Powers, Eden Robinson, Patti Smith, Graham Swift, Debbie Travis, Padma Viswanathan, Martha Wainwright, Sarah Weinman, and Ian Williams.
Samantha Haywood is president of the Transatlantic Agency. She has extensive experience selling authors in North America for publication and TV/film representation. She launched her client list with Transatlantic Agency in 2004 after working in the international rights departments of Random House of Canada Ltd and WCA Ltd. Samantha represents a diverse and vibrant client list of novelists, memoirists, investigative journalists, graphic novelists, cookbook authors and thought leaders. Samantha represents international rights for the renown publisher, Drawn & Quarterly. She is also a founding member and former President of PACLA, the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents.
Amanda Leduc’s brilliant new novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic, is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures. Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family are among only a few who survived. At times devastating, but ultimately redemptive, Amanda Leduc’s fable for our uncertain times reminds us that the most important things in life aren’t things at all, but rather the people we want by our side at the end of the world.
