How to Become a Reese's Book Club LitUp Author
Plus how publishing in lit mags might be overrated, which workshops and classes actually help, & why MFAs and New York aren't always it
For this course, I’ll be your guide Steve as we learn all sorts of ways to be a writer. We’ll explore different paths to success through a series of interviews packed with resources, tips, and submission opportunities—plus tons of surprising advice about the four pillars of a literary life: Craft, Career, Community, and Cash Flow.
If you’ve been working on a manuscript since forever, wouldn’t you want it to sell? To have a proper shot in the market?
If our work can be positioned as upmarket or book club fiction, a great way to improve the chances of a proper sale and launch is through the Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellowship.
Touted as an opportunity for “unpublished, diverse women and nonbinary individuals,” the Fellowship operates through Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club and offers a $2500 prize, a 3-month mentorship with a top-tier published author, a writers’ retreat where Fellows learn the ins-and-outs of publishing (on a $200 per diem), and a list of agents eager to hear Fellows’ pitches.
Basically, they offer knowledge and connections and more than a foot in the door—they’re kind of walking you right through it. And what do they want in return? Your books that center women, offer hope, and generate discussion.
Does that sound like your work? If so, keep reading. If not, no problem. There’s plenty to learn below anyways. (Or you can move on and miss out. Your choice!)
In July, I met online with Tolani Akinola, author of the forthcoming House Longe Has Gone Astray, to discuss the Fellowship and the paths she’s taken to get where she is.
Today we’ll cover:
Which workshops and classes actually help and why
What the LitUp Fellowship can do for careers
How publishing in lit mags might be overrated (?!) 👀
Why writers might wanna avoid both MFAs and New York (...it’s not just the rats)
How literary traditions other than Western can shape our work
And more, so let’s go!
Your guide, Tolani: Tolani Akinola is a writer of fiction. Her debut novel “House Longe Has Gone Astray” is forthcoming with Pamela Dorman Books/Viking. She was a 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow and a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Feeling Lost? Take Classes.
For a young Tolani in college, writing fiction felt as if it happened by magic, like it was an outlet for feelings, beyond her control. However, taking her first creative writing class helped make the craft of it more visible.
“Having the structure that a class provided helped make it feel less like—yes, there's creativity and there's a magical element—but writing was also something that I could sit in front of a computer and do. And there's something about the practicality involved, I think, that made me take it seriously.”
That’s how some writers produce results, by demystifying the “creative unconscious” and all that and treating fiction as a disciplined practice. (And later we’ll hear from others who might have a different take on this.)
Tolani pursued craft through more classes, first through StoryStudio in Chicago then, after grad school, through Gotham Writers Workshop’s intro to novel-writing class.
“There's a part of me that needs writing to feel less isolating and like my hand is being held a little bit. And I think maybe there's something about the structure of a class that I just love.”
The most important thing she learned?
“Don't show people your first draft.”
When a project is still in the exploratory phase, it can be damaging to hear feedback pushing it one direction or another (…or helpful! It depends!)
MFA or New York? Or a Secret Third Thing?
By this point, she had completed the first draft of the manuscript that would become House Longe Has Gone Astray. Some writers in this position might pursue an MFA for the mentorship, workshop environment, manuscript critiques, and the immersive Writing Life. Or move to New York to be closer to publishing, where agents and editors and other writers cluster.
However: an MFA for Tolani?
“I was kind of on the fence because I…didn’t want to be a broke student again. And at this point, I've heard people shit-talk MFA’s all day long. I don't really want to go to an MFA and have them change my writing voice or something.”
And as for New York?
“I was actually in Brooklyn a couple of weekends ago and I was like, ‘Wow, these people are having the time of their lives.’ It's walkable, people are outside. But then I think about the cost of living and the rats, and then I'm not as interested. I think moving to New York would make me a more anxious writer, to be honest. I've heard people say, ‘Oh, you know, publishing is there,’ but I think the distance is kind of good. All the writers are there, all the publishing houses are there. I guess that's good if you want to hang out with a bunch of writers all the time. But I'm a keen observer of things. And it's nice to be the only one who's keenly observing things. It's scary when you're talking to someone who's also keenly observing you.”
Maybe Don’t Hyperfixate on Lit Mags?
Another typical path forward would be to publish in lit mags, to sharpen one’s skills, learn to work with editors, and build a following. But though Tolani submitted to Catapult, Guernica, The Masters Review and Transition, she hasn’t racked up an acceptance for short fiction yet.
And that’s OK! We all walk different paths. Like a friend told Tolani, “You don't need short stories. You have a book deal.”
And isn’t that the ultimate goal? (Feel free to disagree in the comments!) Plus, we all work differently. For Tolani, the form of the novel is more ideal.
“I think I do better with novels because there's just so much more space. With a novel you can have a shitty thousand words and then a really good 500 words and then some mediocre 2000 words, right? And a short story: at least 75% of those 4000 words gotta be a banger. I think novels are more forgiving in that way.”
And foregoing publication of short fiction to focus on a novel manuscript paid off. In 2023, she became a LitUp Fellow through Reese Witherspoon's Book Club, a program that helps underrepresented women writers learn about publishing, get an agent, and get their book published.
Take Chances on Big Opportunities
She applied with the second (!) draft of her manuscript.
“I showed a couple of friends and one of them was like, ‘Oh, you have a lot of work to do.’ So I was in this place of, ‘Maybe my work is trash, but I'm going to submit to this competition anyway.’ Because why not? You know? Maybe my first book wouldn't be the first that got published but why not try?”
And she won, becoming one of five Fellows out of 800 or so applicants, demonstrating how some contests and opportunities want perfectly polished work while others—especially those aiming to boost emerging writers—want promising work.
Part of the prize package included a week-long writers’ retreat in Nashville plus mentorship.
“I met my mentor Curtis Sittenfeld through the program and she's really great. I was not expecting to have someone support and advocate for me so much and she really has. I was just expecting she'd be like, ‘Okay, here are your notes. Good luck.’ We talked nearly every month or so, and when I was querying, she gave me her agent's email. She's just been very hands-on throughout the process. I was not expecting her to love me and my work so much.”
In Nashville, Tolani learned all about the ins-and-outs of publishing.
“I knew nothing about querying or going on submission or like different types of book deals or preempts or auctions. None of it. So it was really helpful just to have the knowledge.”
And once she got edits from her mentor, she revised for a few months and started querying agents.
Help Your (Future) Agent Find You
LitUp offers a list of agents eager to hear from Fellows… but an overeager Tolani queried five others before she even got that list: Curtis Sittenfeld's agent, Claudia Ballard, Julie Barer from The Book Group, Marlon James’s agent Ellen Levine from Trident, and Renée Zuckerbrot from MMQ who represents Jonathan Escoffery.
“One agent that I would have liked to chat with, but she wasn't open to submissions was—she represents Britt Bennett—Julia Kardon.
One commonality among Tolani’s choices? Querying agents who represent writers whose work she admires. This is solid practice. Don’t you want to work with people whose sensibilities align with yours?
However: plot twist! Tolani ended up signing with Michelle Brower, from Trellis Literary Management, after Michelle followed her on Twitter through a post in which she’d been tagged by Curtis Sittenfeld.
Good ol’ Twitter. Where we can meet white supremacists, crypto bros, and…our future agents, apparently!
“I really liked Michelle. She has a very disarming and charming personality. I felt like I trusted her. I felt like she understood my work and my voice. And you know, she did her job. She sold my book.”
What’s it about?
“I'm so bad at the elevator pitch so I'll just word vomit. It's this family portrait about four Nigerian American siblings, set in Chicago. They all have messy love lives. You know the phrase ‘third culture kid?’ These four siblings have all experienced their parents and that liminality of being between cultures in different ways. And it's about the ways that family dynamics teach us how to love and fail to love romantically. It’s currently titled House Longe Has Gone Astray.”
What about it caught the agent’s eye?
“I distinctly remember Michelle saying that I had a great ear for dialogue and she felt, no matter what I wrote, I clearly cared about my characters, which sounds basic, but it really is for me one of the highest compliments. I love books where I can tell that the author really loves their characters and not in terms of trying to keep them from harm because that's not what we're doing here, but loves in that they care deeply about who they are and where they end up. So for someone to say they saw that in my work—it's like, ‘Wow, thank you.’
I think, also, having Reese’s Book Club support definitely helps.”
Upmarket vs. Literary Fiction: Who Cares? (No, Literally. Who?)
The book sold to Pamela Dorman Books at Penguin. And once it’s published, Reese’s Book Club will step in again to help promote it on their social media platforms.
How big was the book deal? Tolani won’t say.
“I get how this is helpful for people who are trying to sell a book and want to know what certain books got or whatever. But I just feel like for my peace of mind, I just don't want people in my business like that.”
So there are paths in place for upmarket fiction, and huge demand in the market.
Do such distinctions matter for Tolani?
“No. I hope my book reaches people who would want to read it. Maybe the person who's going to a bookstore for Dostoevsky is not trying to pick up my book. I don't think it matters. I feel like I told the story I wanted to tell in the way that I wanted to tell it.”
Know Your Literary Traditions
Looking back on the revision process, Tolani is glad that she’s stuck to her vision of what the book would be.
“I ended up writing this book where these four siblings live very distinct separate lives. And the task was how to braid it together. It's something that my agent and editor have continued to hit on, in the sibling dynamic— ‘Oh, actually there should be more envy between the siblings.’ And there isn't, and why isn't that? It feels like the very obvious thing to reach for.”
However, agents and editors might try to shape our work according to Western literary tradition, in which narratives are conflict-driven so characters compete for things. The whole point is breakage and repair. That's the Western arc. But maybe in other traditions, it doesn't always go like that. Tolani agrees.
“That kind of arc is impossible to miss if you live in the West, basically. So I don't think that my novel is an entire departure from it. But I was reading Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses and it talked about how in Western literature the conflict is this internal thing that's brewing and brewing and brewing, right? Then there's a climactic point. And in a lot of literature from other places what shifts things is really external. And I think that's the case with my book, where, yeah, there's this brewing of conflict, but the thing that ends up radically changing the characters' lives doesn’t stem from the beef they all have with each other. I was a little bit afraid that this thing in my book was kind of a deus ex machina. But isn't that life? Like, you know, people are casually living their lives and then the hurricane strikes.”
In the West there’s more of a fantasy of agency and autonomy. “I determine my own path.”
“It's definitely a myth. That's another reason why I'm glad I went to public health school. It gave me a clearer idea of how the world works. On a larger scale, this whole idea of social and economic mobility in America, that the individual charts their own destiny is very delusional. It does not hold up in data at all. Most people live and die in the same social class in which they are born and there's very little mobility. But in the U.S., people really like this idea of, ‘If I just work hard enough, my life can change in an instant.’ I mean, this is not that life.”
Don’t Be Salty
As for her journey so far, Tolani wishes that she’d been kinder to herself through the whole process. And…
“…this is kind of obvious maybe—I think it's important to not be too salty. When I was querying agents, they would say like, ‘Oh no, I like this but I didn't love it,’ or, ‘This didn't work for me,’ and my advice is to keep having the mentality of: this thing, this short story, this novel, whatever—there's someone who's going to want to read it and someone who's going to see the value, even if it's just my bestie. Don't burn bridges. Don't pop off in the comments. Don't send stank email replies. You know what they say: abundance mentality, not a scarcity mentality.”
She promises not to respond to stinky reviews on Goodreads.
Apply, Apply
As for the other opportunities and resources that have helped her along her way?
“I got into a place formerly called the MacDowell Colony but it's just MacDowell now. That was very helpful on my journey as a writer. I got to stay in a cabin and write. Why not? It's just unlike anything else and I got to meet all these brilliant artists who are super humble.”
And in the future, she’s hoping to link up with Black Rock Senegal, run by Kehinde Wiley, and the Stegner Fellowship.
Cherish Your Inner Voice and Good People
It’s important to enrich our writing lives with good opportunities and, most of all, good people.
“I think it helps to find the people who can hear your inner voice alongside you. Like you and I can be talking and I might be like, ‘Oh Steve, I want this thing, but this and this and this,’ right? The type of person in your life who would be like, ‘Oh, but you want that thing. I heard you say that.’ Cherish those people. They can help sweep aside the noise in your head and remind you what you want and care about. Yeah, basically get a therapist. Be compassionate to yourself. It's a marathon, not a sprint, you know.”
Connect with Tolani on her website or on Instagram. As for her future plans, she says, “I'm currently working on a draft for a new novel. It's very early stages and I have no idea where it's going. But I like that. It's hard but it's all yours. When it's the first draft, it's all yours.”
Next Steps & Networking:
Working on upmarket or book club manuscripts? Thinking about giving one a shot?
Or is your work already upmarket and you didn’t even know?
It’s nice to have trusted readers to share work and discuss craft and career. Premise, chapters, pitch, query, whatever. And the comments section might be where you find those friends. As well as other answers. (Any veterans of preempts and auctions, etc. in this workshop…? 👀)
Share your thoughts, ask questions, and find your people. Or just muse or lurk or vent. Whatever you do, be supportive and kind and generous and let us know what else you want to know.
Resources & Submission Opportunities Mentioned
Craft & Community
Fellowships & Residencies
Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellowship
6 Agents Open to Upmarket Work
Julie Barer, The Book Group
Ellen Levine, Trident
Claudia Ballard, WME
Renée Zuckerbrot, MMQ
Julia Kardon, HG Literary
Michelle Brower, Trellis Lit
Roadmap #2:
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Damn, Steve, I was going to take this month off, because the topic isn't quite where I am in my writing life. But I couldn't put it down, and Tolani was so practically, wonderfully human about the entire process. Really great lesson. Thank you!
Steve, this is a great opening to the course. Really appreciated the insights and perspectives from debut author Tolani Akinola on a wide range of areas, and like the way you are presenting and breaking down this valuable information — thank you!