Elise Dillsworth

  • Elise Dillsworth, Literary Agent

    Elise Dillsworth became a literary agent in 2012. Previously she was a commissioning editor at Virago Press, an imprint of Little Brown Book Group. She co-founded the Diversity in Publishing Network in 2004, which received the New Venture Award from Women in Publishing in 2005. She represents literary and general fiction and non-fiction – especially autobiography and memoir, with a keen aim to reflect writing that is international. Her authors have won or been nominated for many awards, including the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Caine Prize, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Edge Hill Prize, Forward Prize, International DUBLIN Literary Award, Republic of Consciousness Prize, T. S. Eliot Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction.


  • For more information about Elise and her authors please visit www.elisedillsworthagency.com.

 

Traci O’Dea

  • Traci O’Dea, Poet
 

Traci O’Dea is a Senior Lecturer of English at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College O’Dea and the author of two poetry collections: Waving (Assure Press, 2021) and Restricted Movement (Scotland Street Press, 2021). The audio book for Restricted Movement, narrated by the author, was released in 2022. Her poetry has appeared in the following places: Poetry, cellpoems, Literary Matters, The Hopkins Review, The Jersey Evening Post, BBC Radio Jersey, Gallery, and elsewhere. She also serves as a poetry editor for the international poetry review Smartish Pace.

Zola Mashariki

Zola Mashariki, Producer

Zola Mashariki is a senior executive, independent producer, and Hollywood industry
veteran with over twenty years of experience creating award-winning content for film,
television, and audio. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Ms.
Mashariki spent 15 years at Searchlight Pictures (formerly Fox Searchlight), where she
was Senior Vice President of Production, developing and producing indie, niche, and
prestige films, including The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Secret Life of Bees, The
Last King of Scotland (in which Forest Whitaker won the Academy Award for Best Actor),
Denzel Washington’s directorial debut, Antwone Fisher, and acquisitions Slumdog
Millionaire (winner of 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture) and 12 Years a
Slave (winner of 3 Academy Awards, including Best Picture). As Head of Original
Programming for BET/Viacom, Zola was responsible for managing the development,
production, finance, and business affairs teams for all scripted and unscripted content,
and executive produced The New Edition Story, BET’s highest-rated miniseries of all
time. She later served as Chief Content Officer of One Community LLC (formerly Good
Films), a co-financing and media company dedicated to producing content with a social
impact. Most recently, Ms. Mashariki was Head of Audible Studios at Audible/Amazon,
acquiring and creating distinct podcasts, as well as making content deals with Plan B
(Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner), Smokehouse (George Clooney and Grant
Heslov), Higher Ground (Barack and Michelle Obama), Kenya Barris, and many other topnotch
creators.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Zola is a graduate of Dartmouth College and
Harvard Law School. She lives in Los Angeles, California, holds a black belt in Tae Kwon
Do, and is a wife and mother of twins.

Celeste Mohammed

  • Celeste Mohammed, Writer

    CELESTE MOHAMMED is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer and the author of “Pleasantview”(Ig, Jacaranda, 2021; Ouida, 2022) which won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the UK Society of Authors McKitterick Prize for Fiction. Celeste holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her short stories have won numerous awards including a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. 
    Celeste’s goal is to dispel all myths about island life and island people and to highlight the various points of intersection between the Caribbean and the wider world. A Different Energy is Celeste’s Non-Fiction debut.