Roundtable 3 — People of Publishing

DISCUSSION LEADER

Marisa Vigilante joined Hay House in 2024 and has two decades of editorial experience, including Random House Publishing Group, Avery/Penguin, Rodale Books, and Little, Brown Spark. Over the years, she has worked on a range of wellness, health, psychology, science, self-help, and lifestyle books that have become bestsellers, won awards, and helped people thrive.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Amanda Bergeron (she/her) is Vice President, Editorial Director at Berkley, acquiring contemporary and historical book club fiction with smart page turners, big emotions, transporting historicals, and family stories with strong narrative hooks or genre-blends. She joined Berkley in 2016 from William Morrow/Avon, where she began her career.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Elisa Ung is a New York Times bestselling collaborative writer who specializes in memoirs, cookbooks, and the stories of immigrants and refugees. She is the coauthor of Gursha, which The New York Times named one of the best cookbooks of 2025, and Mango and Peppercorns, which won the 2022 award for Literary or Historical Food Writing from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). She was a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and a food critic and dining columnist for The (Bergen) Record and northnewjersey.com.

DISCUSSION LEADER

TJ Ohler is an editor at Zando, acquiring genre fiction with a focus on horror, romance, and mystery/thriller. Prior to joining Zando, TJ was a literary assistant at Andrea Brown Literary Agency and an assistant store manager at Books of Wonder in New York City. Most recently they have been supporting the development of Evil Twin, Zando’s horror imprint.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Sally Ekus is a Senior Literary Agent at JVNLA, where she specializes in cookbooks and non-fiction and has brokered over 300 book deals. Sally also authors the best-selling Substack newsletter, Not So Secret Agent. Sally is on the advisory council for the Julia Child Foundation and a 2026 Cherry Bombe Power List honoree. She is a proud member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Women’s Media Group, and The Association of American Literary Agents.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Clio Seraphim is a Senior Editor for both the Random House and Dial Press imprints in the literary fiction, memoir, and food space. She is drawn to bold, boundary-pushing stories that center complex women, have a deep emotional undercurrent, and seek to find the beauty in the darkness. Her recent publications include Patrick Ryan’s bestselling novel Buckeye; Ruth Reichl’s The Paris Novel; and Salman Rushdie’s memoir Knife.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Molly O’Neill is an agent at Root Literary. Over the past twenty years, she has been the editor and agent of #1 New York Times bestsellers and global publishing phenomenons, a publishing/tech start-up executive, and a marketing and publicity expert. Clients on her list include emerging, established, and award-winning authors, illustrators, author/illustrators, and cartoonists/graphic novelists.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Molly Turpin is an Executive Editor at Random House, where her publications include All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, which won the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award; Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal, which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for American History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Cundill History Prize; Zachary D. Carter’s The Price of Peace, which was an National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and winner of the Sidney Hillman Prize; and Jason Stanley’s New York Times bestselling How Fascism Works. She first joined Little Random as an Editorial Assistant.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Jemiscoe Chambers-Black is a co-founder of Starling Literary + Media and a literary agent who champions storytellers across age categories. Before becoming an agent, Jem spent over a decade as an Assistant Director in film and television. She later shifted to publishing, joining the Andrea Brown Literary Agency and ultimately co-founding Starling Literary + Media in 2025. She serves as the co-Vice President of the Association of American Literary Agents.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Jessica Wade is an executive editor who acquires fantasy, science fiction, and horror for the Ace and Berkley imprints of Penguin Random House. Authors she works with include Matt Dinniman, Wiliam Gibson, Rachel Harrison, Grady Hendrix, Alexis Henderson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Julie Leong, Sangu Mandanna, and C.M. Waggoner.

DISCUSSION LEADER

Fernanda Martinez is a literary agent with more than seven years of experience across editorial, scouting, and literary representation. She is the founder of Fernanda Literary. Fernanda started her career at Penguin Random House’s Vintage Español as an Associate Editor. At Fernanda Literary, she works primarily with early-career authors, with particular interests in upmarket fiction, speculative fiction, and stories that intersect art, history, and culture.