P&T Knitwear, in conjunction with PEN America, is pleased to welcome back award-winning author Susan Shapiro for a panel discussion of insider tips and tricks for navigating the publishing world. Shapiro will be joined in conversation by vice-president and publisher of Legacy Lit Krishan Trotman, literary agents Alia Hanna Habib, Kate McKean, and Pronoy Sarkar, executive editor at Penguin Random House Emi Ikkanda, and Lester Fabian Braithwaite, author of Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant…And Completely Over It.
This hybrid event will be held in-person with limited amphitheater-style seating, and will be available live over Zoom for the members of PEN America. For in-person attendees: doors open at 6:30pm. The cost of a $5 general admission ticket for both in-person and online can be applied towards your purchase of any book or product in P&T’s café the night of an event or through online purchase.
Speakers
For some sadistic reason known only to him and his therapist, Lester Fabian Brathwaite has been a professional writer for almost fifteen years. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and The Advocate, among other publications, and has also served as senior editor for Out magazine. His debut essay collection, Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant…And Completely Over It, came out from the Penguin Random House imprint Tiny Reparations Books in 2024.
Alia Hanna Habib is a literary agent at The Gernert Company. She represents narrative nonfiction, memoir and literary fiction including Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times’ 1619 Project’s forthcoming book series; Judy Batalion’s New York Times bestselling The Light of Days optioned by Stephen Spielberg’s Dreamworks Pictures and Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Her authors have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and have been nominated for the Edgar Awards, PEN Awards and National Book Awards. Her debut book, Take It From Me: An Agent’s No-Nonsense Guide to Building a Nonfiction Career from Scratch comes out from Pantheon in 2026.
Emi Ikkanda is an executive editor acquiring nonfiction and select fiction projects at Tiny Reparations Books, Dutton, and Plume at Penguin Random House. Highlights on her list include #1 New York Times bestselling author Ijeoma Oluo’s Mediocre, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans, Josephine Baker’s memoir Fearless and Free, Michael David Lukas’s novel The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, and Sanaë Lemoine’s novel The Margot Affair.
Kate McKean is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, New York who handles fiction, nonfiction and kidlit. She earned her MA at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Electric Literature, Catapult, and her first book, Write Through It: An Insider’s Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life will be published by Simon Element in 2025, followed by a picture book from Sourcebooks in 2026. She writes the Agents & Books newsletter at katemckean.substack.com. You can find her at katemckean.com.
Pronoy Sarkar is a literary agent at Borchardt Agency, which represents numerous luminaries, from Anne Applebaum and Ian McEwan to Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams. A graduate of Duke University, he previously worked as a senior editor at Little, Brown, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster specializing in science, history, journalism, business, pop culture, and economic nonfiction.
Susan Shapiro is the bestselling author/coauthor of books her family hates like Unhooked, The Forgiveness Tour, Five Men Who Broke My Heart, The Bosnia List, and American Shield. A long-time member of PEN America, she freelances for the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, Slate, Salon, The Cut, Elle, Oprah and The New Yorker magazines online. An award-winning writing professor at NYU, The New School and Columbia University, she now teaches her popular “Instant Gratification Takes Too Long” writing/publishing classes on Zoom. You can follow her on Instagram at @profsue123.
Krishan Trotman, who has been called “the Beyoncé of Books” is Vice-President and Publisher of Legacy Lit, an imprint dedicated to voices marginalized, underserved, and overlooked. Her authors have included congressman John Lewis’ Across That Bridge, Stephanie Land’s Maid, Ibtihaj Muhammad’s Proud and Zerlina Maxwell’s The End of White Politics. She’s been featured in the New York Times, Essence Magazine, New York Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, Salon, Shondaland, MSN, CSPAN, is the author of the PRH series Queens of Resistance (about AOC, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi & Elizabeth Warren) and mom to her son Bleu.