Meet Leticia Gomez
Leticia Gomez is the Editorial Director for Dafina Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp., which focuses on high-quality fiction and non-fiction that centers on race, identity, and its impact on our experiences. Dafina’s carefully curated list is a home for dynamic stories that innovate and amplify voices too long ignored through books that entertain, challenge, and inspire. Launched in 2000 as the first African American imprint, Dafina has led the market for more than twenty years in highlighting voices of color.
Prior to joining the Kensington family, Leticia was a prominent literary/film/television agent who specialized in bringing culturally diverse voices to the forefront. She has helped her clients secure deals with the largest publishers in the world and has seen several of her projects successfully optioned for TV and film rights. As a literary agent, she placed more than 200 books with independent and mainstream traditional publishers.
Leticia will be teaching “Traditional vs. Independent Publishing” and participate in Wednesday evening’s “First Page Read – Love It or Leave It.” She is also on the Query Letter/First Page Critique team.
Wishlist
Leticia is actively seeking to acquire multicultural fiction and nonfiction in all genres. She is interested in Upmarket Women’s Contemporary Fiction, Family Dramas, Historical, Mysteries, Romance, Suspense Thrillers, Street/Urban lit. She’s also actively on the prowl for nonfiction with a focus on authors of color (BIPOC) as well as specific projects for marginalized communities. The genres she’s most interested in the nonfiction arena are: prescriptive Self-Help, historical or contemporary Narrative Nonfiction, Memoir, True Crime, and Political/Current Affairs.
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Q&A with Leticia
MWW: I’m excited about your session on Traditional vs. Nontraditional publishing. Do you find that certain types of writing, topics, or genres lend themselves
more to one type of publishing than another?
LG: While traditional publishing has remained steadfast, nontraditional or what is now being referred to as “independent” publishing has certainly come a long way. We are living in an “information overload” society and there is a great demand for riveting fiction novels in all genres for all ages and informative, yet entertaining nonfiction books whether they are publishing by a traditional publisher or self-published by the author. In other words, the sky is the limit. I’m not really seeing that nontraditional publishing has the limitations in terms of genres, marketing opportunities and distribution channels it had five or ten years ago.
MWW: In what ways has nontraditional publishing changed the way the publishing industry works, or has it?
LG: Thanks to book TikTok and other social media platforms, authors who opt to forgo the traditional publishing route and independently publish their work are experiencing a great deal of readership and financial success which is causing traditional publishers to take notice of their popularity. This has enticed more traditional publishers to reach out to highly successful authors who are on their radar to offer them traditional publishing deals. Whereas, years ago, self-publishing your work was considered taboo and hindered an author’s ability to eventually land a traditional publishing deal, nowadays it is no longer the case.
MWW: What advice would you give writers about how to know when their work is finished and ready to be pitched or queried?
LG: Whether an author chooses to pursue a traditional book deal or go ahead and independently publish their work, he or she really needs to spend the time to make sure the manuscript is as polished as it can be. This may entail performing several reads and round of edits on the manuscript or recruiting the help of a professional editor with a proven track record. Joining a critique group in your area can also be very helpful in identifying objective beta readers to review your manuscript before beginning the querying and submission process.
MWW: What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?
LG: Earlier this year, I acquired a memoir titled My Beautiful Sisters by Khalida Popal for DAFINA which is the BIPOC imprint I am the editorial director of. It isn’t every day that a powerful story about a young woman who possesses a pure feminist heart and whose self-sacrificing and noble actions were instrumental in helping to orchestrate international efforts to get more than 350 female soccer players out of Afghanistan where they faced the imminent possibility of execution for refusing to stop playing the sport when the Taliban returned to power comes along.
Khalida Popal started playing soccer at the age of sixteen. Twenty years later, she helped to found–and later became captain ofthe Afghan Women’s National Soccer Team. Due to her courageous acts, she became the subject of death threats and assassination attempts. She exposed the sexual abuse that became prevalent among female soccer teams, forcing FIFA and Interpol to act against the former president of the Afghan Football Association and was bullied out of her own country because of it.
In 2021, she faced her toughest test yet. As Kabul fell to the Taliban, from her new home in Denmark, Khalida managed an international team working tirelessly around the clock with the objective of saving her beautiful sisters by getting them out of the country safely. It wasn’t something she didn’t have to do—she had already managed to SAVE HER OWN SKIN. But she just couldn’t turn her back on her beautiful sisters.
Now safely tucked away in Australia, the UK and Portugal, today Khalida’s sisters have the ability to make choices for themselves, free from tyranny and oppression in their homeland.
Without Khalida, they’d likely be dead.
Meet Aubren Kubicki, Leticia’s Agent Assistant
Midwest Writers Workshop likes to include interns, mostly college students majoring in English, to coordinate and facilitate the agents’ pitch schedules. You’ll be hearing from them regarding your appointment time, and they’ll help you meet the agents in the Zoom room when it’s time for your pitch.
Aubren Kubicki is a graduate student at Indiana University South Bend. They are currently working on getting their MA in English. They graduated from IUSB with their BA in English with a literature focus and a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies in 2021. Aside from reading and writing (of which they do plenty), Aubren also enjoys drawing, knitting, and playing video games or table top roleplaying games with friends and family. They also love their family dog, Penny, and all other dogs (although they consider Penny the best dog of them all).
MWW Success Stories
Finish an essay, a book, a paragraph? Have something published? Tell us about something exciting you’ve done with writing and/or publishing in the past year. Bonus points if you can tell us how MWW has made an impact on your writing.
Send your success stories to midwestwritersworkshop@gmail.com and we’ll post it on the new tab on our website landing page!
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