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Taryn Fagerness, owner of Taryn Fagerness Agency and WSU alumna, returned to her roots to speak to WSU students in a three-day workshop this week.

Fagerness is a literary agent who works for her own company. As a student, Fagerness immersed herself in any writing she could get into, from hosting an open mic night at the CUB to doing a poetry night at a bar. For her master’s thesis, she wrote a manual for publishing manuscripts for undergraduate students, including information on how to raise money, talk to printing companies and make connections.

“She’s freaking dynamo,” English professor Peter Chilson said about his former student. “I still pass out her manual to my students.”

When she graduated, she applied to as many agencies she could, bouncing between internships and everyday retail jobs until finally being hired by Sandra Dijkstra, which eventually lead Fagerness to opening her own freelance literary agency in 2009. Her agency specializes in selling the right of books to different countries.

“I hope (the students) get a sense of the process that’s involved and the work that’s involved,” Chilson said. “I hope that they hear her story and are inspired.”

The three-day workshop was a one-credit class for students enrolled in “Workshop Topics in Writing, Teaching, Literature,” or English 358, and could also count toward an Editing and Publishing certificate.

On Monday, Fagerness taught students what it meant to be a literary agent and her duties as an agent. Attendees listened to her story and did a small workshop, demonstrating what it would be like to work on their own projects with an agent.

On Tuesday, she spoke about how to find and approach a literary agent and how to write a query letter. A query letter is a one-page letter that agents require writers to submit to be noticed. Fagerness worked closely with students to help them perfect their letters.

Today is the last day of the workshop, and Fagerness will discuss what happens to a book after it has an agent; specifically, the technical pieces that follow a book as it becomes published. Students will also play a game involving the query letters they wrote on Tuesday.

“I hope (the students) take away some great information on what agents do and how to approach them and how to think differently about their works with an eye toward getting it published,” Fagerness said. “I hope they have the tools they need when it’s all said and done to go forth, write an awesome book, and get it published.”

Fagerness will give a talk that is open to the public at noon today in the Honors Hall Lounge. She will review the topics she taught on Monday and Tuesday, and there will be a short Q & A session afterward. The talk will not be considered for English 358 credit.