Inside Meet Your Match: Real stories from writers and their agent matches

For many writers, querying literary agents can feel like shouting into the void, carefully writing a pitch, hitting send, and hoping it lands in the right inbox at the right time. That’s exactly why Jericho Writers Meet Your Match event was so popular: to make that process a little less mysterious, and a lot more human.

Across a 24-hour window, Premium Members shared their elevator pitches and genres on Townhouse, where a selection of literary agents could browse and request submissions. Alongside this, our team matched writers with agents we felt could be a strong fit for their work, giving them a clear and confident next step on their querying journey.

In total, we saw 337 pitches and 214 requests from agents. We were genuinely blown away by the quality on display!

Here’s what the winner, runners-up and shortlist had to say about taking part in Meet Your Match and what they gained from putting their work out there.

Duncan Munge, winner of Meet Your Match 2026

This is my second book, and last time, I really struggled with distilling it into a decent pitch. This time round, I decided that I wasn’t going to write anything that couldn’t be articulated in a sentence (I think inspired by one of Harry’s emails). So, it’s fair to say, the winning pitch for ‘Nothing Like the Truth’ has been there since the beginning. It’s an amazing feeling knowing that people seem to think it’s a good idea too. 

And so, my queries have been sent, and I’m trying to line up the Agent One-to-One. Fingers crossed they all like the next 73k words as much as they do that 20.

Ben Gould, second place in Meet Your Match 2026

I’m surprised and delighted to come second in Meet Your Match. As every writer knows, pitching is hard – the skills we use for writing novels don’t automatically make us good salespeople! Competitions like this offer an excellent opportunity for us to hone our pitches and get instant feedback from industry experts. Plus, it’s inspiring to see everybody else’s brilliant ideas. Thank you Jericho!

Karin Dahan, third place in Meet Your Match

Being part of Meet Your Match was such a rewarding experience. Not only did my pitch for Swiping Through LA reach industry professionals, but it also resulted in multiple agent requests. As the self-published author of Secrets We Burn (written under the pen name Florence Wren), I particularly appreciated the opportunity to receive feedback within hours, which is rare in both the querying and the self-publishing process.

Kris Williams, Meet Your Match shortlist

Preparing for and then entering the Meet Your Match event really helped me to refine and hone my pitch, based on advice and skills learnt from taking part in numerous Feedback Fridays.  By reducing it to its key ingredients, whilst making sure the stakes were front and centre, I was able to get to the core of the story efficiently and effectively.

Being matched with an agent was really useful for my forthcoming submission campaign, and reminded me how good Jericho’s Agent Match tool is.  The cherry on top, though, was having four agents ask to see more of my manuscript, not only confirming my pitch is working, but also giving me a real shot of motivation about my writing.    

Vicky Ellaway-Barnard, Meet Your Match shortlist

Without wanting to sound like a complete swot, entering the Meet Your Match event was a no-brainer because I already had my one line hook ready to go. Thank you, Harry Bingham, and your Elevator Pitches masterclass! Genuine top stuff. Receiving interest from five agents on the basis of that one line was quite honestly an exhilarating experience… the buzz still hasn’t worn off and it’s been over a week! Plus, it’s shown me that a) binging all the Jericho Writers masterclasses is totally worth it, b) it pays to be prepared, and c) sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and see what happens.

Emily McKeith, Meet Your Match shortlist

Taking part in this year’s Meet Your Match really forced myself to look at the integral bones of my story and think about what its unique selling points are, and I really enjoyed the challenge of having to condense it into such few words. I’m at a stage now where I’m editing my draft, so getting matched has really made me think about getting ready to query. I’ve added a great name to my query list who I think is a great fit for my project when my submission package is finally ready. It has given me such a confidence boost about my idea that I will carry with me as I continue to write. 

Alice Hall, Meet Your Match shortlist

Meet Your Match was a great opportunity for me to get my pitch in front of agents. I was so excited to see that there was a positive response, and it has encouraged me to keep querying!

Tolu Kehinde, Meet Your Match shortlist

Meet Your Match was a wonderful opportunity to test out my recently re-worked novel pitch. Making it to the shortlist in spite of the numerous intriguing pitches I read on the site was validating and has given me more confidence in my ability to distill my novel’s idea to its heart. 

The process was well-explained and the event running over the course of a day meant people across timezones had reasonable windows to submit their pitches. I also found the agent matches instructive and the pitches being public meant I could learn from my colleagues and observe which submissions generated interest from multiple agents. I am grateful to the Jericho Writers Team and participating agents for their hard work in making the event possible and for shortlisting my pitch. 

Anne Goodwin, Meet Your Match shortlist

Miss Eyre’s Wild Ambition is set in a society where a woman’s success depends on hooking a suitable husband. My decade-long hunt for an agent feels almost as awkward. Following a fruitless first round of queries for this current manuscript, and a one-to-one with an agent commending the writing while doubting its marketability, Meet Your Match provided the impetus to polish my pitch and the opportunity to test it. So I was delighted when an agent already on my wish list invited me to submit. Conscious of the high standard of entries, and that most participating agents bypassed mine, I was amazed to be shortlisted. Thanks to Team Jericho for this wonderful confidence boost and good luck to everyone else on this arduous quest for The One.

Daniella Byroo, Meet Your Match shortlist

Distilling the premise of your book into fifty words is challenging, but is so useful to ensure you really know what your hook is. Getting positive engagement from an agent was a bright spot in what can feel like a relentlessly bleak querying journey. It was also useful to see how hard it must be for agents as I saw so many fantastic pitches from other authors on pitch day!