A magazine ran a series of my investigative pieces, which attracted the attention of a major publishing house. Matthew Gallaway lives in Washington Heights and is the author of the forthcoming novel The Metropolis Case. I had two conversations with an editor, who floated an advance figure that sounded reasonable and I figured, why even bother with an agent? In short, my agent wasn’t critical, he was a joke. This meeting, which lasted perhaps 90 minutes, is one I’ll always refer to as my “Boot Camp MFA” because it was all about how to make the novel work better as a novel or story, i.e., Bill pointed to places in the manuscript where he “lost touch” with the characters, and identified specific passages that he liked (or didn’t like) stylistically, because as he pointed out, I needed to cut back on the “coloratura.”, Not once did he say anything about changing anything because he thought it would or wouldn’t “sell” — in fact, he dismissed the whole idea as beyond anyone’s control — but focused entirely on the integrity of the novel as a work of art. He publishes literary fiction, thrillers, and narrative non-fiction. This is to say, she wasn’t my agent just yet. Creative Artist Agency. Want to contact Jin Auh directly? How much of the book was actually written when your agent started working with you? Not once did my agent ever ask to see my work, and what became clear very early in the process was that both my agent and my publisher lacked both editorial and marketing savvy. A few meetings over beers, three revisions and nine months later, I had a novel that clocked in at a sleek 290 pages but retained the language, weirdness and tone that imbued the original draft with whatever shadow of promise my agent saw in it. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1989), a M.Phil. I really wanted help to refine my viewpoint and I thought my editor would offer some insight, something like: “here’s where your argument is flawed” or “here is something that’s missing.” Well, there was none of that. I still don’t know how you do that. T. +44 020 7908 5900 F. +44 020 7908 5901 E. mail@wylieagency.co.uk I found an editor at a small press on my own a few months later, at a panel we were on together at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (communities matter, is a lesson to the side here) and when, to my shock, he said he wanted to publish it, he referred me to someone we’ll call Agent 2, who drew up the contracts. Short Stories Application process details coming winter 2020-2021. London. In early February, I received a second note from Bill, saying that he admired the work but was unwilling to represent it in its current form; on the plus side, he did offer to look at it again if I’d be willing to cut the manuscript from its present length (almost 1000 double-spaced pages) to something in the 500–600 range. in 20th-century English Literature and Culture from Oxford University (Balliol College, 1993) on a Marshall Scholarship, and completed a year’s coursework toward a Ph.D. in English Literature at Yale University. How to Convert to Kindle So I bit the bullet and called a contact over at a large agency, which let’s just say was the most expensive phone call I ever made. This has been very helpful. David Carter grows up happy in post-WWII Coventry, England, until, at age 22, he learns from a mentally ill family friend that he was adopted as an infant, and struggles to comprehend how such a lie had been incorporated into official history as he begins his adult life. function clearDefault(el) { It was all about keeping the relationship between the publisher and the agent smooth. In retrospect, this was NOT a good idea, because when their reactions were not quite what I expected because they didn’t “get” the work in some important (at least to me) way, it led me to doubt what I was doing. Some people, for instance, probably want an agent who is a really good editor, but that’s not something that has made a difference to me up to this point. In addition to her work in the humanities, Bennett has studied at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and traveled to Moscow in January 1988 to visit and assist Refuseniks. | Anything less than that? I didn’t need representation and instead just kept her card. Why Can’t Anyone Clean It Up? I’ve been with her ever since and she’s the best. My advice on letters, though, is be succinct, respectful, and do not say crazy things in a query like “I look forward to working with you,” though if you make that sort of mistake you’re not going to listen to my advice. How to Create an ePUB I am writing to you because a friend of mine recommended you as one of a handful of agents who handles “big-concept” fiction, which is definitely where my work falls on the literary spectrum. How did Severance make its way to you? My current agent was also an introduction from a friend; she’d been very successful on the publishing side but had taken a break from it for awhile and was making her return as an agent, so she was looking for a whole new stable of clients. Jin Auh is a literary agent at The Wylie Agency, which has offices in New York and London. I really respect her opinions. Your support will help us: Aspen Words Celebrates Literature by Latinx, Hispanic & Latino-identified Authors + Poets. He has edited the work of Nicola Barker, Philip Caputo, Dan Chaon, Dennis Cooper, Ian McGuire, Hannah Nordhaus, Justin Taylor, Simon Van Booy, and many others. In November, I had drinks with an acquaintance who kindly offered to show the manuscript to a friend of his who was a fiction buyer at a big publishing house. — that while “operatic” in intent do not exactly scream “commercial success.” In short, it was an intense but invaluable meeting that left me both exhilarated and wanting to throw up at the idea of doing yet another revision, which of course I did anyway, because I knew Bill was right about making the novel a better, more compelling piece of fiction. Which isn’t to say you can’t sound like a real person; in retrospect, I think the above letter was probably a bit too dry, but I would say it’s better to err on the side of caution than to offer any whiff of “zany,” because you have to figure most agents are getting hit with a LOT of crazy, so their tolerance is going to be pretty low on that front.]. She represents narrative nonfiction, memoir and fiction and has a particular interest in books on pressing social and political issues. | So if you’ve finished your novel and are looking for an agent, don’t give up: even if you don’t know anyone, there’s always hope that you’ll get a break and find your match. Previously, he worked at HarperCollins Publishers. I look like this: I hope you found your visit to my website to be productive and pleasing. Track Agents' Deals It had been rejected 24 times over two years, and she had really tried. Create a Profile She just walked up to me, complimented me on it — I recall even apologizing to her for it — and then gave me her card. Prior to becoming an agent, she was a publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A math prodigy who is being groomed by her parents to attend Oxford at the age of fourteen, Rumi is firmly set on the path of a gifted child; but as Rumi gets older and the family’s stark isolation intensifies, numbers start to lose their magic for the young teenager, deepening the rift between generations.