Lee Ann Ward is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of 11 novels. Her young adult romance, GLIMPSES OF WILDERNESS, is an international bestseller and runner-up for YARWA's Athena Award. Her novel, SEE, was The TBR Pile's  Book of the Year in 2017. She is the former senior editor of Champagne Books and a novel-writing teacher.  She writes young adult and women's fiction, and has taught her plotting through storyboarding techniques at conferences across the country.
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Lee Ann's workshop for our live retreat will be announced shortly.

Joyce Scarbrough is the author of eight novels and numerous short stories featured in multiple anthologies. Joyce is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature, she was the founding senior editor for Champagne Books, and she now works freelance as an editor and book coach. Joyce was president of the Mobile Writers Guild for three years and still serves on its board of directors. She is also a member of the Southern Breeze chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, but she also writes women’s fiction. She has served on the faculty of the Mobile Literary Festival since its inception in 2016 and has given numerous workshops on characterization and editing for writers’ groups, conferences, libraries, colleges, and high schools throughout the Southeast. Joyce has lived all her life in LA (lower Alabama), she is the mother of three gifted, non-conformist children, and she’s been married for 39 years to a superhero who disguises himself during the day as a high school math teacher and coach.
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Joyce's workshop for the live retreat will be announced shortly.

After earning a master’s degree from the University of Florida, Laurie began her career as an English teacher. She then spent over ten years working as a freelance writer and editor in desktop publishing, including serving as a Pitch Wars mentor for five years. She is proud to have worked with debut author Megan Scott on her Sunday Times Bestseller The Temptation of Magic.
 
In 2022 Laurie completed the Denver Publishing Institute, leading to an internship at Creative Media Agency, Inc. before stepping into her current role as an associate agent and internship coordinator.
 
See Laurie's complete Manuscript Wishlist here:
https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/laurie-dennison/
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Laurie will be listening to pitches at Writing Away Refuge 2025. Her workshop topic will be announced shortly.

Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong is a life-long lover of books and enjoys vivid memories of the exact day she unlocked the secret code behind letters that, when combined, form words. Since then, it’s the rare occasion when you’ll find her without a book in her hand, a Kindle in her purse, or a pair of AirPods in her ears while she devours the works of whatever author she’s selected as her new favorite of the month.
Cathie’s journey in the publishing industry was born in 2014 after her oldest child left for college. With newfound time on her hands, she set about writing The Edge of Nowhere, a work of adult historical fiction inspired by her grandmother’s life as a widow raising fourteen children during the one-two punch of the 1930s Dust Bowl and The Great Depression. Three years later, she followed up with her sophomore novel, Roam, a young adult title inspired by the homeless community that resides in the town where she currently lives. The release of this second book coincided with Cathie’s first job as a literary agent where she spent eight years learning the industry before joining the team at Marsal Lyon.
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Born and raised in Oklahoma, Cathie is a 1992 graduate of the University of Oklahoma where she received a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in history. Not suprisingly, she’s a rabid OU Sooners football fan. Currently, she resides in Minnesota where she and her husband of 32 years share and share two grown children and a son-in-law.
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See Cathie's full manuscript wishlist here: Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong – The Official Manuscript Wish List Website
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Cathie will be listening to pitches at Writing Away Refuge 2025. Her workshop topic will be announced shortly.

Katie Reed is a literary agent and developmental editor with Andrea Hurst and Associates. She began her career in publishing with Andrea Hurst while pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in English and has worked in the industry for over a decade. As a literary agent, Katie loves discovering new talent, building lasting connections with her authors, and working diligently to represent books readers will love.
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Katie is working on building her list with compelling, standout, projects to champion. She is especially drawn to books with deep, relatable themes that seep through the pages and make readers think about their own world in a new light. She is open for submissions in the following genres:
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• Commercial Women's Fiction, especially with a strong romantic subplot. 

• Upmarket Fiction that combines a unique, propulsive plot with poignant, introspective writing, like Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt or Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (my favorite book of 2022!)

• Historical Fiction that adds something new to the genre (think Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus).

• Women’s Suspense/Psychological Thriller with a female protagonist (a la Alice Feeny or Gillian Flynn).

• Retellings, or a modern spin on an old classic, similar to Circe by Madeline Miller or The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah.

• Voice driven YA Suspense with a fresh hook (loved The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart).

• YA Fantasy with a high concept, like the Caraval series by Stephanie Garber, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, or anything by Sarah J. Maas. (High concept means it has an original, identifiable premise--like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins--and wide audience appeal.)

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Katie will be listening to pitches at Writing Away Refuge 2025. Her workshop topic for the 2025 retreat will be "I've Signed with a Literary Agent, now what?"

Your founder and host, Lee Ann Ward, will be delivering the keynote speech, The Power of Paying it Forward. 

​Obsessed with love and kindness, Allison is a loveaholic. In fact, she's the original creator who coined the word "loveaholic."
 
Allison was born and raised in Taiwan and arrived in the U.S. at twenty-two as a university student. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and writes in both Chinese and English, both fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and the HuffPost and has won both national and international literary prizes. Her debut memoir, NINETY-NINE FIRE HOOPS, launched in September 2021 and continues to win book awards.
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Allison is a keynote speaker, an instructor, and a panelist at various writer's conferences both in the U.S. and in Asia. She also appears on TV, radio, and podcasts; in magazines, newspapers, and journals.
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Allison's workshop topic for our 2025 live retreat will be announced shortly.

MaxieJane Frazier is writer, teacher, editor, and retired military veteran from Riverside, WA. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Booth, SoFloPoJo, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, Bending Genres, The Ekphrastic Review, The Bath Flash Fiction anthology, and other places.
 
MaxieJane holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and co-founded Birch Bark Editing where she is a co-editor for MicroLit Almanac.
 
Now MaxieJane brings her workshop
"In a Flash: Pint-size Stories with Punch" to Writing Away Refuge.

We encourage all of you to get to know our staff and attending agents, but when you choose your actual pitch sessions, please make sure that the agents you pitch represent your genre of writing. It will better your chances of getting read requests. Thank you, and we look forward to meeting you soon!