Note: this virtual session will take place on June 11 at 4:15 Eastern Daylight Time. 

Lou Aronica will take part in a virtual manuscript critique session with the winning bidder. The critique can be for any story or excerpt up to 5000 words.

Aronica spent more than twenty years working for major book publishers, including gigs as Deputy Publisher of Bantam Books (where he was founder of the Bantam Spectra imprint) and Publisher of Berkley Books and Avon Books.

Eventually, Aronica left the corporate side of publishing behind to sit on the other side of the desk. His first novel, The Forever Year, came out in 2004 with his first nonfiction book, A Million Thanks (a collaboration with Shauna Fleming) coming a year later. Twenty-seven more books have followed, including the New York Times bestsellers The Element and Finding Your Element (both with Sir Ken Robinson), and the national bestsellers The Culture Code (with Dr. Clotaire Rapaille), Blue, When You Went Away, The Journey Home, Anything, and Leaves. The republished edition of The Forever Year hit the USA Today bestseller list.

In the late aughts, he found himself pulled toward the other side of publishing again and, with literary agent Peter Miller, launched the independent fiction house The Story Plant. Aronica is a former president of Novelists Inc. and a winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Editor.