Or, ‘We’re not sure if books by Black authors or queer authors or Muslim authors sell.’ There are these barriers based on prejudice that some people have experienced, and (#DVpit founder literary critic Beth Phelan) created this opportunity to create more access, and I benefited from it. “There are people who have been told, ‘Oh, we already have one of your stories.” I have been told that, actually. Nevertheless, Gray has a lot of gratitude for #DVpit helping her circumvent the traditional, torturous process of finding an agent, which can be especially demoralizing for marginalized writers. So, I try to be very transparent about how on the page it looks like it happened very quick, but it did take quite a long time before it came into fruition.”
“I started it in 2015 in college, and it did not sell until 2020. “People get caught up in, ‘Oh, you found your agent on Twitter,’ but it’s worth noting that ‘Beasts of Prey’ did take five years to write,” said Gray.
To be fair, that is a simplified version of her journey. Multiple agents responded to Gray’s pitch, she said, “and that was how it started.”
The pitch event Gray participated in was #DVpit, which the website says is open to “unagented, marginalized voices who have been historically underrepresented in publishing” the interpretation of that is left up to the author. The way it works is an author writes a 280-character pitch for their book, including the designated hashtag, and tweets it on the appointed day when it will be fielded by agents who, if they’re interested, will request to see the first couple chapters of the manuscript.
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