literary agents

  • All about Anthologies: A Roundtable Discussion

    All about Anthologies: A Roundtable Discussion

    With Lilly Dancyger, Sari Botton, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, and Christine Taylor.

  • Literary Misguidelines

    If you’re planning on submitting your manuscript to a literary agency, you might want to read Marcy Campbell’s updated guidelines over at Electric Literature first.

  • A Good Literary Agent Is Hard to Find

    Finding a literary agent isn’t easy. It might just be the worst thing ever. Over at Publisher’s Weekly, Ken Pisani looks at the troubling process he went through until he found an agent—one he went to high school with.

  • The Rumpus Interview with Bill Clegg

    The Rumpus Interview with Bill Clegg

    Author and agent Bill Clegg talks about his new novel, Did You Ever Have A Family, grief in fiction and in life, and why there is no finish line except the final finish line.

  • Powerhouse Spanish Literary Agent Remembered

    The New Yorker has a retrospective on Carmen Balcells, a Spanish literary agent who brought writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Jorge Luis Borges to international fame. Balcells passed away last week at the age of 85. Balcells…

  • Secrets of a Literary Agent

    Guernica speaks with literary agent Chris Parris-Lamb, who built a career around selling Chad Harbach‘s debut novel The Art of Fielding for a reported $665,000. Since then, he has sold novels like Wolf In White Van and coming later this…

  • What Makes Editors Fall in Love?

    There is this (correct) notion that the world is speeding up of late, that we no longer have the attention spans to wait for a story to get going. But even decades ago, Elia Kazan, award-winning director and novelist, said…

  • The Ageless Problem of Agents

    The Paris Review blog discovers that in publishing the “sky is always falling.” Every year is an abysmal year for books and a terrific year for books. Editors no longer edit, except when they do; publishers care only for their…

  • Don’t Write for the Money

    At a 2011 panel discussion, Erin Hosier, a writer and literary agent, said that she wrote for the money. She had just gotten a book deal to write a personal memoir, and was looking forward to receiving her advance. In…

  • Literary Agents Are People Too

    Authors aren’t the only ones facing rejection. Literary agents receive rejections after sending out their authors’ writing to editors, and they also get rejected by authors that they want to represent. Over at Plougshares, Eric Nelson reveals a few more insights into life…

  • In Defense of Literary Agents

    The rise of self-publishing and smaller independent presses has left many writers questioning the value of literary agents and their fifteen percent commissions. The collaborative nature of publishing depends on these middlemen though, warns Bethanne Patrick at Beyond the Margins: …agents…

  • White People Everywhere

    White male editors still dominate publishing and white male authors still dominate bestseller lists. Writing over at Plougshares, literary agent Eric Nelson explores the problem: I have frequently presented books as an editor to a room full of only white people.…