Agent Interviews

Elizabeth Strout
John Irving
John Fowles

Tolkien, Gabaldon, Eowyn Ivey, Matthew Desmond, Stephen Lawhead, Jane Austen, Joyce Sidman, Atinuke, C.S. Lewis, Barbara Cooney

Nova Ren Suma, Mindy McGinnis, Laini Taylor, Jason Reynolds, Frances Hardinge, A.S. King, Adam Silvera, Jeff Zentner, Victoria Schwab to name a few.

All my own clients of course; after that I love Jane Austen, Liane Moriarty, Jennifer McMahon, George RR Martin, Lisa Jewell, Naomi Novik, Larry McMurtry, James Lee Burke, Emily St. John Mandel, Anne Tyler, Mo Hayder, Tana French and Kate Atkinson.

Nora Roberts, Tom Robbins, Gena Showalter, Patrick Rothfuss, Luanne Rice, Shannon Stults

Such a tricky question as I'm an omnivorous reader. I like novels that focus on the underdog, or represent working-class people or children going through difficult circumstances and books I have loved in this area include Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal and Boys Don’t Cry by FÍona Scarlett (which I sold to Faber). I used to read a lot of classic horror like Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson and that has influenced my tastes. Growing up, I was a huge fan of anything with a hint of magic, like Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and then later on books like A Discovery of Witches, or Leigh Bardugo and Holly Black. I love a good thriller but I like it especially if there is a really strong, incisive voice, so writers like Gillian Flynn and Jessica Knoll have been firm favourites.

Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Anthony Trollope, and anyone who can make the familiar seem fresh.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Akwaeke Emezi are at the top of my list for their gorgeous prose and big themes. I also love Kazuo Ishiguro, Zoraida Córdova, Laini Taylor, Kristin Cashore, Riley Redgate, Kiersten White, and so many more!

Wow. Tough one. As I rep projects for young readers, here are related favorites. Some. Too many to choose from.
Peter Brown's THE WILD ROBOT series is a favorite for tweens. Deborah Marcero's IN A JAR and Evan Turk's YOU ARE HOME are from a few years back, but they're especially good examples of these creatives' work. IN PRAISE OF MYSTERY by Ada Limon and Peter Sis is gorgeous. Crockett Johnson was a genius. Ditto on Margaret Wise Brown. I like most everything by Cynthia Rylant. Ditto for Mac Barnett and for Kate Di Camillo (I know they are very different from one another. I have broad tastes!). Kelly Barnhill.
I love the work by my clients, whose sensibilities are all over the map, from hilarious to lyrical. I don't take on anything I don't have real enthusiasm for because it's not a good idea for me or for the client.

(Besides my clients:) R A Lafferty, Frances Hardinge, Philip Pullman, Mikhael Bulgakov

Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, E.L. Doctorow, John Connolly, WB Yeats to name a few

John Galsworthy, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Josephine Tey, Agatha Christie, P.D. James, George Eliot, Somerset Maugham, Nick Hornby, Philip Pullman, Hilary Mantel, Adrian McKinty, Brian Freeman, Kate Atkinson, Robert Harris, Erik Larsen, Norton Juster, Kate Alice Marshall, Chris Crutcher, Joan Bauer, E.L. Konigsburg, Babette Cole, William Steig.

Honestly, any who can write amazing historic, suspense, or contemporary with depth but as a clean read. No gratuitous language or sex

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Sarah Addison Allen, Leslye Walton, The Fan Brothers, Kelly Barnhill, Emily Henry, Fredrik Backman, Jesse Q. Sutanto, Lisa Jewell, and Juana Martinez-Neal.

Among some of the authors I have read over the years pleasure are: Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Burns, Hunter S. Thompson, Edith Wharton, David Mitchell, Craig Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Daniel Clowes, Salman Rushdie, Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Palahniuk, Chang Rae-Lee, Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters, Haruki Murakami, Alan Moore, Osamu Tezuka, George R.R. Martin, Guy Delisle, Jonathan Ames, Jacques Lob, Neil Gaiman, Don DeLillo, Henry Miller, Mikhail Bulgakov, Harper Lee, Kiran Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, John Steinbeck, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Graham Greene, David Foster Wallace, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Henry James...

My favorite fiction authors include my clients Jeff Shaara, Ellen Byron and Debbie Babbit. Non-clients include Mick Herron, John Sandford, Dennis Lehane, Frederick Forsythe, Hakkan Nesser and the classic mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers and humorist P.G. Wodehouse. Favorite nonfiction authors are all over the place and too numerous to mention!

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Chris Whittaker, Kristin Hannah, Abigail Dean, Gillian McAllister, B A Paris, Julia Quinn, Emily Henry, Mick Herron, Katy Brent, Lisa Jewell, Shelley Read, Liz Nugent, David Nicholls, Rebecca Yarros, Anita Shreve, Freida McFadden, Marian Keyes, Jodi Picoult

Growing up my favorites were: L. M. Montgomery, Maud Hart Lovelace, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Beverly Cleary, Lois Lowry and Judy Blume.
My favorite contemporary authors are: Curtis Sittenfeld, J. Courtney Sullivan, Tova Mirvis, Celeste Ng, Ruta Sepetys, Jhumpa Lahiri.

How can anyone choose? I love the works of Jane Austen and Zora Neale Hurston, Lawrence Block and Walter Mosley. Dickens, Dostoevsky. On the contemporary side, my authors! And that’s just fiction. With nonfiction my tastes are more current and very varied, short works of smart inspiration or those that make known to us some hidden world; or anything deeply reported and gorgeously written. I am always happy to be taken someplace unexpected by a wonderful crafted hand.

Colum McCann, Donna Tart, Nicole Krauss, Curtis Sittenfeld, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Sheila Heti, Jenny Offill, Meg Wolitzer, Russell Banks, Maggie Nelson, Allison Bechdel, Leslie Jamison, John Irving, Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, Kurt Vonnegut, Frederick Reiken, David Grann, Erik Larson, Colson Whitehead, Junot Diaz, and on and on...

Too many to name and I don't want to name any in fear of missing someone.

Fiction; Andre Norton, JD Salinger, William Goldman, Joseph Heller, Alistair Maclean, Ransom Riggs, Bill Rivers,
Non-fiction: Rick Atkinson, John C. McManus, Keith Nolan, Ian Toll

Way too many to count! Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Alyssa Cole, Johnny Compton, Jesse Q. Sutanto, Erin E. Adams, Ramona Emerson...

That's like asking a mother who is her favorite child.
Outside of our clients, I drop everything to read Tana French, Megan Abbott, Stephen King, Jon Krakauer, David Mitchell, David Sedaris, Simon Winchester, Kelly Link.
I am angry and sad that I won't read any more original David Rakoff.

Aside from my clients? :) I lean more toward favorite books than favorite authors, but Tana French, Stephen King and Alan Glynn have all written multiple books that I've loved and re-read (my highest compliment)

Shakespeare. Cervantes. Joyce. John Rechy. Mark Kurlansky. Chris Knowlton.

All those I represent, and, of living authors:
Emma Cline
Rachel Cusk
Percival Everett
Elizabeth Gilbert
Andrew Sean Greer
Lauren Groff
Miranda Cowley Heller
Patrick Raddon Keefe
Madeline Miller
George Saunders
Merlin Sheldrake
Amor Towles

Which of your "children" do you love the most? That is such a hard question. Anyone who treats people with respect, encourages newcomers, and writes well. Of non clients I've always loved John Dufrene's work, Anne Perry, Dennis Lehane, Robert Goddard, Zadie Smith, Herman Hesse, Arthur Clark. Octavia Butler, J.K. Rowling -- the list is really pretty long. Plus new voices who see the world in ways that helps me understand their take on it and see it fresh myself.

Oh, this question isn't fair. I mean, obviously, my authors who I represent are particular favorites for many various reasons. But beyond that, it's just too hard to pick. I mean, I'm obsessed with Priscilla Oliveras. I adore Rachel Reid's m/m hockey romances. Allie Therin's magical Prohibition-Era series is a delight. Alexis Daria's Latinx romances just feed my soul. I just read Cat Sebastian's latest historical and am hungover from all the swooning. In YA, I just inhaled Tracy Wolff's Crave, and can't wait for the sequel. I'm currently reading Inciendary by Zoraida Cordova and it's so, so good. I loved Erin Hahn's You'd Be Mine and am looking forward to More than Maybe.

Usually, it's whoever I've read last but if I had to choose a top five I would go with J.R.R. Tolkien, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. LeGuin, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yashar Kemal.

- Michael A. Stackpole
- Haruki Murakami
- George R.R. Martin
- Stephen King
- Charles Soule
- Patricia A. McKillip

Jennifer E. Smith
Peng Shepherd
Menna Van Praag
Alice Feeney
Eva Ibbotson
R.F. Kuang
Catherine Steadman

I love Dean Koontz, Karen McManus, Brandon Sanderson, Rob J. Hayes, Rebecca Yarros, Heather Graham, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Sarah J. Maas, Elle Kennedy, Kristen Callihan, Julie Kagawa, Colleen Hoover, J.R. Ward, Lisa Kleypas, Beth Revis, Tahereh Mafi, Vera Nazarian, Vi Keeland, Alice Clayton, Mia Sheridan, Sarah Adams, Katy Evans, Laura Nowlin, Karin Slaughter, Jason Rekulak, Riley Sager, Megan Goldin, Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti, Natalie D. Richards, Richelle Mead, Jennifer Estep, Cassandra Clare, Stephanie Garber, Benjamin Stevenson, Jeneva Rose, Heather Gudenkauf, Jennifer Hillier, to name a few.

I'm a huge fan of my clients' work, including Ruth Emmie Lang's Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance which is the Target Bookclub pick for December 2018 and a finalist for BOMC's Book of the Year, and Marjorie Herrera Lewis's When the Men Were Gone, the inspiring story of Tylene Wilson, one of the nation's first female football coaches. I also love YA and middle grade, including work by my client, Sarah Beth Durst--we have done over 20 books together! But I also read widely and read a lot--some books that I am currently enjoying include George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Leonard Sax's Boys Adrift.

Steven King, Daniel Handler, Daphne DuMaurier, Mary Stewart, Peter Brown, Stacie Ramey, Mara Wells, Sherri Winston, Melody Maysonet, Kerry Cerra, Thomas More, Jan Eldridge, Maya Angelou, Lynne Kelly, Jack Cheng, Kate DiCamillo, Rob Sanders, Donna Gephart, Jonathan Rosen, Dan Santat, Patricia MacLachlan, Amy Dyckman, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Shannon Hitchcock, Caron Levis, Holly Black, Shirley Jackson, Julian Hector, Elizabeth Lim, Casey McQuiston, Shadra Strickland, and all my clients. And many more.

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.

Sharon Creech, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, William Goldman, Aimee Bender, Kristin Cashore, Brenna Yovanoff, Margaret Peterson Haddix, Catherynne M. Valente, Lemony Snicket, and Shaun Tan were all formative authors when I was developing my taste. Some more recent favorite authors include Helen Oyeyemi, Kacen Callender, A.M. McLemore, Naomi Novik, Tamsyn Muir, Courtney Summers, and Nghi Vo.