The Writer and the Agent: A Conversation with Robin McLean and Stephanie Steiker

Panel discussion about writing and publishing, featuring author Robin McLean and literary agent Stephanie Steiker. Free and open to all.

Robin McLean worked as a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first story collection, Reptile House, won the BOA Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, Pity the Beast, was noted as a best book of fiction of 2021 by The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal. Her 2022 story collection, Get’em Young, Treat’em Tough, Tell’em Nothing, was an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times and longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. She is currently a Visiting Writer at the University of Montana.

Stephanie Steiker has been a literary agent at Regal Hoffmann & Associates since 2015. From 2008 to 2015 she was Associate Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, working with prominent figures in literature, academia, and the arts. Previously she has worked for the online magazine Words Without Borders; the journal East European Politics and Societies; and the New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. A native New Yorker with a degree in comparative literature from Brown University, she lived in Poland from 1999 to 2001, has a background in documentary film, and for several years wrote about the downtown NY music scene for The New Yorker.