You may have seen her at some of Chicago’s literary hangouts: having lunch at one of the cozy tables at Sayat Nova or sipping a beer at the Billy Goat.
She’s a handsome woman in glasses, often reading but just as often lending an attentive ear to some writer who is detailing stories and books yet unwritten.
Her name is Caroline Carney and she is, in a very real sense, a prospector. She is a literary agent, one of only a handful here, and the first anybody can remember who moved here to become one.
“I had made some trips to Chicago in connection with book projects,” she says. “I realized there was a tremendous load of talent and stories that we in New York and L.A. just didn’t know about.”
Carney had spent about 15 years in the publishing business in New York, working for McGraw-Hill Cos., Times Mirror Co. and Simon & Schuster, before moving here and opening her Book Deals Inc. office on the western edge of the Loop in 1997.
She has made some deals and met dozens of authors and been so taken with the city’s literary potential that she decided in March to start the Great Chicago Stories Contest.
It is no altruistic move: The contest should, of course, aid Book Deals in making book deals. It is open to any and all writers. The only requirement is that the books have a strong Chicago tie.
The deadline for submissions is Oct. 8, 1998, the anniversary of the Chicago Fire. A panel of judges, not yet selected, will choose a winner in fiction and non-fiction categories, and those winners will receive $1,000, which is not bad. They will also get a meeting with an editor from Random House’s Ballantine Books and a representative from Harold Ramis’ Ocean Pictures.
“The contest was announced in April (with a press release and a story in New City),” says Carney. “And we’ve already had 125 requests for guidelines.” (If you want a copy, call 312-372-0227.)
Carney and her associates are eager to start reading completed manuscripts, hopeful of finding those literary diamonds that may now be sitting in desk drawers or lurking in a writer’s dreams.
