Polly Nolan

What Polly is seeking: Outstanding writing for readers up to YA. She is open to most genres and is always looking for those rare and wonderful novels in which she can lose herself completely. You know: the types where you start by thinking, I’ll just read this for 10 minutes and suddenly hours have disappeared. Original, compelling story is key, as is uniqueness of voice. She is after novels that pull at the heartstrings, make her care deeply about characters that feel real but that also make her think. She believes that exceptional novels confound genres and so finds it easier to list what she isn’t searching for than what she is. So: please do not send Polly ‘cross over’ novels or books where the protagonist is a talking bird (though she does love a good animal story). She wouldn’t jump on sci-fi (particularly ones with aliens, for middle grade readers) and she avoids stories that feel didactic or earnest in their message. At the moment, she isn’t looking for dystopian YA or fantasy YA. Polly represents a very small number of picture book authors but only where they also illustrate their work. However, if you have an exceptional story to tell and can do so in a distinctive way, she can’t wait to hear from you.