Featured Agents at
the 2019 Agents & Editors Conference
The 2019 A&E Conference will include agents from a notable list of reputable literary agencies. Click on the linked agency names to read more about them. More added each week.
Lauren E. Abramo, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret
Reiko Davis, DeFiore and Company Literary Management
Serene Hakim, Ayesha Pande Literary
Kim Lionetti, BookEnds Literary
Kelli Martin, Wendy Sherman Associates
Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency
Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Associates
Paul Stevens, Donald Maas Literary Agency
Kristin von Ogtrop, InkWell Management
Kent D. Wolf, Friedrich Agency
Lauren E. Abramo, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret
Lauren E. Abramo joined Dystel, Goderich & Bourret in 2005. As VP and subrights director, she maintains a small client list and sells foreign and audio rights for the agency. Her interests include humorous middle-grade, contemporary young adult, and upmarket commercial fiction and well-paced literary fiction on the adult side. She’s also interested in nonfiction, especially pop culture, psychology, pop science, reportage, media, and contemporary culture. Her list has a strong focus on books that engage in some way with social justice. In all categories she’s especially seeking authors from marginalized communities traditionally underrepresented in publishing.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: High Concept Commercial, Literary, Women's, Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, Romance, Graphic Novels
Nonfiction: Narrative, Current Events, Pop Culture, Essays, Social Justice
Children's: YA Fiction, MG Fiction
Reiko Davis, DeFiore and Company Literary Management
Before joining DeFiore in early 2016, Reiko Davis was an associate agent at Miriam Altshuler Literary Agency for four years. She grew up in Kansas City, received her BA in Comparative Literature and Art History from Brown University, and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course. She represents literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and middle grade and YA fiction. She is especially seeking books by underrepresented voices, including writers of color, immigrants, women, and the LGBT community. She loves books that aren't afraid to tackle big questions or important emotional truths, and do so through remarkable storytelling.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: High Concept Commercial, Literary, Women's, Short Fiction
Nonfiction: Narrative, Current Events, History, Memoir Pop Culture
Children's: YA Fiction, YA Nonfiction, MG Fiction, MG Nonfiction
Serene Hakim, Ayesha Pande Literary
Serene Hakim has been with Ayesha Pande Literary since 2015. A child of immigrants, she grew up straddling cultures and languages. She is looking for both adult fiction and non-fiction as well as YA (all genres) with international themes or a focus on LGBTQ+, feminist issues and underrepresented/marginalized voices. She is especially interested in stories dealing with the Middle East and is specifically looking for writing that explores meanings of identity, home, family and parenthood/motherhood. Forthcoming projects include Kristen Arnett’s debut novel Mostly Dead Things.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: High Concept Commercial, Literary, Women's
Nonfiction: Narrative, Essays
Children's: YA Fiction
Kim Lionetti, BookEnds Literary
Kim Lionetti is a senior literary agent at BookEnds. Having started her twenty-five-year career in the industry as an editor at Berkley Publishing, she enjoys helping authors shape their works into books their readers will love. Kim’s client list includes women’s fiction, suspense, young adult and romance, and she’s looking for new talent in all of these genres, but she’s especially eager to represent more diverse voices. As an autism mom, she’s most passionate about stories featuring neurodiverse characters, and those with special needs.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: High Concept Commercial, Women's, Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, Romance, Historical
Children's: YA Fiction
Kelli Martin, Wendy Sherman Associates
Kelli Martin has worked in book publishing for twenty years. She started at Simon & Schuster and rose up the editorial ladder at HarperCollins, Harlequin, and Amazon Publishing. At Amazon Publishing, Kelli was the launch editor and public face of Montlake Romance, and Executive Editor at Lake Union (the general fiction imprint). Now as a literary agent, Kelli is passionate about signing authors in contemporary romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, domestic suspense and psychological thrillers. For Kelli, guiding writers, perfecting manuscripts and building a list of beloved books that satisfy publishing houses and readers are the loves of her life.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: Women's, Romance, Domestic Suspense/Psychological Thrillers
Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency
Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts joined Hannigan Salky Getzler in 2017, where she represents a list of literary fiction and non-fiction, as well as select middle-grade and YA. She began her career in the editorial department at MacAdam/Cage, an independent publisher based in San Francisco. Previously at Writers House, she has worked as a literary scout, and was an agent and rights director at the Susan Golomb Literary Agency. She is always on the lookout for new voices and seeks to be a passionate advocate for her clients. Soumeya is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, daughter and their cat.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: Literary, Women's, Short Fiction
Nonfiction: Narrative, Current Events, Memoir, Pop Culture, Essays, Lifestyle, Family Parenting
Children's: YA Fiction, MG Fiction
Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Associates
Raised in California’s Bay Area, Marya Spence studied literature at Harvard, where she was Fiction Editor for the Advocate and specialized in creative writing. She got her MFA in Fiction at New York University, where she also taught, and has worked at The New Yorker, PAPER Mag, Travel & Leisure, Vanity Fair, Publishers Weekly, METROPOLIS Magazine, and more. As someone who values craft from the writer’s perspective, Marya represents a diverse range in fiction and nonfiction, including, but not limited to, literary novels and collections, cultural criticism and voice-driven essays, narrative journalism with a humorous or critical edge, and pop culture.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: Literary
Nonfiction: Pop Culture, Essays
Paul Stevens, Donald Maass Literary Agency
Paul Stevens has been an agent with the Donald Maass Literary Agency since 2016. Before joining DMLA, he worked as an editor at Tor Books for 15 years focusing on science fiction and fantasy. Paul is primarily looking to represent science fiction and fantasy for adults, but he also will consider other genres such as mystery and suspense if they have science fiction / fantasy elements. He represents authors such as Kel Kade, Jeremy Finley, Dan Koboldt, Leanna Renee Hieber, and Sean Grigsby.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Kristin van Ogtrop, InkWell Management
Kristin van Ogtrop is the former editor-in-chief of Real Simple and an agent at InkWell Management. Under her stewardship, Real Simple became the #1 American women’s lifestyle magazine brand with a print and digital reach of 25 million and was nominated for 15 National Magazine Awards. Kristin’s blog, “Adventures in Chaos,” was nominated for a Media Industry Newsletter “Best of the Web” award, and in 2014, she was named by Fortune magazine as one of the “55 Most Influential Women on Twitter.” She is a contributor to the New York Times bestseller, The Bitch in the House and the author of Just Let Me Lie Down, published by Little, Brown. As an agent, she will represent memoir, commercial women’s fiction, humor, lifestyle and big idea books driven by counterintuitive thinking.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: High-Concept Commercial, Women's
Nonfiction: Narrative, Current Events, Biography, Memoir, Pop Culture, Essays, Lifestyle, Family/Parenting
Kent D. Wolf, The Friedrich Agency
Kent D. Wolf is an agent with The Friedrich Agency, representing literary fiction and narrative nonfiction--from novels to story collection to immersive journalism to personal essays. His clients include National Book Award for Fiction Finalist Carmen Maria Machado, New York Times-bestselling essayist Samantha Irby, Barnes & Noble Discover novelist Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and New York Times Notable novelist Martin Seay, among others.
Actively Seeking
Fiction: Literary
Nonfiction: Narrative, Pop Culture, Essays