Armed with an MFA from Ohio State and a partial manuscript for her first novel, this author describes to Carmen Sheidel how she landed an agent and scored a book deal:

You wrote parts of your book at writers' colonies. What was that experience like? When I first moved to New York, I had no money, at all, and I had gotten out of a grad program where I had been treated as a writer, then I was in the city and I was treated like a temp. I moved to New York in October and I went to Yaddo in early November, and it was just so nice to be among these other great writers and great artists -- and not even have it be a question that I was one of them. I was at Yaddo in the winter, which is very, very small, there were like 12 people, so it was me, and Susan Cheever and Oscar [Hijuelos], whose name I can't say, and Andrew Sean Greer, who was a writer who I had known and read for years. It was interesting to be there and have the experience and be treated as a writer. McDowell was very similar. That's where I finished the book. At McDowell they have little plaques in every studio and you sign your name, and so I was in the studio where Alice Walker hand been, and Jonathan Franzen and Michelle Herman who was this professor I had in grad school. It was really interesting, Leonard Bernstein had been in my studio. It was like, "Oh, wow!" And they trusted me with this place!

How did you support yourself when you came to New York from the Midwest?
I was doing a lot of freelance work for the National Enquirer. I was really fortunate in that I got nice grants to Yaddo and McDowell. Basically I did whatever I could find. I poured wine for Wine and Spirits and wrote women's magazine stories for the lesser known women's publications. I just scraped things together.

More here, for AG members.