First Pages Mini Critiques with Bonus Tips!

The first page is the most important page in your manuscript. If your first page is not strong, it’s likely your reader will not continue reading the second or third page. So how do you ensure your first page is strong? Submit your first page for a possible mini critique!

This webinar begins with a brief lecture packed with practical tips & techniques to strengthen your first page (and second and third, etc). Most of the webinar will be devoted to verbal mini critiques of first pages submitted by the webinar’s attendees. Those who submit their first pages will remain anonymous. All are welcome to sign up and submit a critique or just to listen and learn. If there are more first pages than can be reasonably critiqued, priority will be given to Golden Gate Fest registrants.

After registering for our virtual event, you may submit your first page (around 200 words) via our form by Sunday, March 1st, 11:59 PM PST.

Submit Your First Pages Here!

Emily Jiang is the author of Summoning the Phoenix, published by Shen's Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books. Listed among The Best Children’s Books of the Year at Kirkus Reviews & The Huffington Post, Summoning the Phoenix was the winner of The Best Book of the Year Award from the Chinese-American Librarians Association and a Eureka! Honor Award for Excellence in Nonfiction from the California Reading Association. Her novels-in-progress have won 1st Place in YA category in the Focus on Writers Contest, Honorable Mention in the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing, and the Sue Alexander Award for Most Promising New Manuscript. Her poetry and prose have been published in Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, among others. She holds a BA in English from Rice University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California, where she received the Fiction Teaching Fellowship and the Agnus Butler Scholarship. Currently, she serves as Co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI California: San Francisco/South Region.