Agent Interview: Laura Usselman

Distinctive voice

Marilynne Robinson and Toni Morrison, above all. I will always buy Kate Atkinson, Jennifer Egan, and Helen Oyeyemi in hardcover. EB White, Willa Cather, and Wallace Stegner. Mary Karr and Tony Horwitz. Langston Hughes and Mary Oliver.

I am always reluctant to say that there are things that other agents DON'T do, because I have a lot of respect for my colleagues and also don't sit over their shoulders all day. But I would say that for nonfiction projects I love developing book proposals from the ground up with clients -- particularly for a first book, getting the idea right and then building a compelling package to sell that idea is such a fun part of my job. For fiction, I like to do a lot of editing, with an eye to understanding the book's intentions and making it into the best version of itself.

For fiction, your sample is by far the most helpful thing for me as I make a decision about whether to request more work -- spend less time agonizing about the letter, and more time making those ten pages shine.
For nonfiction, the strength of your idea, and your argument for why you should be the person to write that idea, are the most important things to me, because they will be the most important things to publishers. But I'm much more likely to try to help coax a lackluster idea along if your voice on the page is arresting.

Short and to the point! Don't get too hung up on describing your plot in fiction, and include your best few publications rather than a laundry list of the ones you accumulated in college :) And remember that it's the beginning of a professional relationship, so it should be a professional letter.

No such thing! Every one is its own strange beautiful creature. That is the pleasure of the job.

Including an attachment, or submitting in a genre I don't represent.

Top line prior publications, education (if it's relevant), what drew you to the nonfiction story you propose (or, if it's particularly relevant and the kind of thing that would come up in an author interview, your personal connection to the subject of your novel). I'm not super interested in writers you have studied with or met at workshops.

That totally depends -- sometimes I know that I'm not a good match for the voice within a few pages, and sometimes I read to the very bitter end.

Make sure we're on the same page editorially and in terms of vision for the book, formalize our agreement with a rep agreement, get to work editing! And once we've made it absolutely as shiny and wonderful as we can, share with editors.