Five agents at Martin Literary & Media Management seek new authors: Adult fiction & nonfiction, plus Picture books, MG and YA

When Day is Done by Natalee Creech,
illustrated by Robert Dunne,
represented by Martin Literary

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Martin Literary Management, founded in 2003, is a full service literary and media management agency. They focus on adult fiction and nonfiction and children’s books, including picture books, middle grade, and young adult fiction and nonfiction. . Their clients’ books have appeared on the New York Times bestseller and other national bestseller lists, earned strong reviews, received many awards, and garnered national media attention. Many of their clients’ works have been optioned and developed for film and television projects.

Britt Siess, Associate Literary Manager

17 August 2020 - Update: Britte Siess is no longer with Martin Literary; she's founded here own agency. Britt Seiss Literary Management, specializing in graphic novels, comics, and illustrations. See here.
​​Britt tweets publishing tips, news, and tidbits about her life as an agent here

Natalie Grazian, Associate Literary Manager

Natalie is actively building her client list in adult fiction. She considers contemporary, historical, and speculative projects.

 Natalie’s interests include (but are not limited to) complicated families, immigrant identity and experience, powerful character transformations, questions of fate vs. free will, and dark comedy that still carries a beating heart – because at the end of the day, she looks to books to find humanity.

She hopes to be immersed in unfamiliar realities and less-explored points in history. In science fiction and fantasy, she prefers subtle magical undertones, surreal twists in contemporary stories, and feminist retellings of legends and fairytales. More than anything, she looks for assured prose, a strong sense of place, finely-tuned plots, and smart, distinctive characters who make the unrelatable relatable. If those elements are present, any genre is welcome. 

Examples of Natalie’s current and enduring favorites include: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, City of Thieves by David Benioff, Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt, Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour, and The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti.   

Natalie has a BA in English and Minor in Spanish from Santa Clara University. Upon graduating, she worked as a sales representative for W. W. Norton and interned for two literary agencies: Kimberley Cameron & Associates and Martin Literary Management. For two years, Natalie was the Fiction Editor of The Santa Clara Review, the oldest literary magazine on the West Coast. 

Natalie is happiest outside, with (you guessed it) a book. She is distrustful of any purse that can’t fit a slim paperback.

To learn more about what she’s looking for, follow her tweets here.

Query Natalie at Natalie@MartinLit.com

In the "Subject" line of your email, please write "QUERY" followed by the title of your work. Full submission guidelines here.

Adria Goetz, Literary Manager

Adria Goetz with one of her clients,
picture book author Tina M. Cho

​Adria Goetz is a Literary Manager, currently accepting queries for picture books, middle grade, and young adult, plus lifestyle books, quirky gift books, graphic novels, cookbooks, adult nonfiction, Christian Living, and devotionals. She represents books both for the general market, and the Christian market. 

Adria is a 2016 graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in New York City, a six-week intensive course on all aspects of book, magazine, and digital media publishing. She is also a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle with a B.A. in English with a creative writing emphasis. 

Adria worked for the Pierce County Library System for two years. Prior to becoming a Literary Manager, Adria fostered her knack for developing creative work during her three years as an intern and assistant at Martin Literary & Media Management.

 Adria is specifically looking for:

Young Adult: Adria loves anything from slice-of-life contemporary realistic stories to fantasy stories with richly built worlds. She trends toward the speculative side, or books with just a dash of magic.

Please send her anything creepy, as she is known to be a true crime junkie who has read nearly every Wikipedia page on every known serial killer. Right now she is specifically looking for a sweet YA romance in the vein of When Dimple Met Rishi, a funny, voicey contemporary realistic YA in the vein of Robyn Schneider’s work, a lush, atmospheric mystery in the vein of Truly Devious, a thriller in the vein of One of Us is Lying, and magical realism in the vein of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.

Above all else, Adria loves an atmospheric setting-driven book where the author draws the reader into the rich world they’ve built—whether that world is the bakery down the street, or an island in the sky. It’s also important that the cast of characters reflects the beautifully diverse world we live in.

Middle grade: In middle grade fiction, Adria mostly wants to embark upon a fantastical adventure. She’d also love a summer camp story, an epistolary novel, mystery, and historical fiction.

Picture books: She’s looking for anything from a fun, poppy, commercial picture book (Dragons Love Tacos), or a dazzling lyrical picture book biography about a lesser known person from history (The Noisy Paintbox). Some of her favorite recent picture books have been The Night Gardener and virtually anything else created by Eric and Terri Fan, Miss Hazeltine’s Home for Shy and Fearful Cats, and The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

If you’re not sure if your project is right for Adria, she hopes you send in a query anyway because she would love to take a look at your labor of love!

Adria lives in an old Victorian home in the Seattle area with her husband Alex and their two darling kittens, Maple and Mulberry. She tweets here.

Query Adria at Adria@MartinLit.com

In the "Subject" line of your email, please write "QUERY" followed by the title of your work. Full submission guidelines here.

Clelia Gore, Literary Manager

​It was when Clelia first read Charlotte’s Web in the first grade that she got hooked by the magic of books. Her love of children’s books carried through adulthood and she is delighted to dedicate her life to bringing quality books and stories to young (and whimsical adult!) readers.  

Clelia is originally from the suburbs of New York City. She has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Boston College. She received her J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law, and practiced law as a corporate litigator in New York City.  

In 2011, she decided to dedicate her career to books and reentered graduate school at Emerson College, where she received a master’s degree in Publishing and Writing. While she was studying publishing and taking creative writing courses at Emerson, Clelia gained firsthand experience in the publishing industry working in the children’s book division at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and in academic books at Oxford University Press.  She also taught academic writing and research courses to freshman students as a graduate student faculty member at Emerson College. 

Clelia acquires picture book, middle grade and young adult books. She is particularly interested in developing her nonfiction clientele. At this time, Clelia is no longer accepting new adult fiction queries. 

To find out more about Clelia, check out her blog at www.cleliagore.com. She also tweets tips, news and musings related to writing and publishing here.

Query Clelia at  Clelia@martinlit.com

In the "Subject" line of your email, please write "QUERY" followed by the title of your work. Full submission guidelines here.

Sharlene Martin, President

In 2003, Sharlene took her passion for great stories and their authors and her years in the entertainment industry, to form Martin Literary & Media Management. In the years since that time, her rise in the publishing industry has been demonstrated by a growing list of nonfiction sales to such renowned major publishers as Random House, Rodale, Harper Collins, St. Martin's Press, Penguin Putnam, Hachette, Simon and Schuster, as well as to a host of boutique publishers for specialized genre books.

She has represented numerous New York Times bestselling nonfiction books, including: Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six by Anthony Flacco; Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story by Shanna Hogan; Notes Left Behind by Keith & Brooke Desserich; Raffaele Sollecito’s book, Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox;  HLN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell's memoir, I Want; Suzanne Hansen’s You’ll Never Nanny in this Town Again; MaryJo Buttafuocco's Getting It Through My Thick Skull; and The Goldman family’s If I Did It, based on the OJ Simpson murders of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson.

Sharlene Martin accepts Adult Nonfiction queries only. She is interested in acquiring highly commercial nonfiction including true crime and pop culture. She also likes breaking news, issue-oriented, and celebrity-driven books. She is particularly interested in works that are adaptable to the screen.  Please do not include your manuscript or proposal in your nonfiction query. Sharlene will request those items from you if she is interested.  

 Query Sharlene at Sharlene@MartinLit.com

In the "Subject" line of your email, please write "QUERY" followed by the title of your work. Full submission guidelines here.

Author Tanaz Bhathena

For people interested in Writing for Children & for Young Adults, Brian Henry will lead a mini-conference with  Yasemin Uçar, senior editor at Kids Can Press, children’s author Kira Vermond, and YA author Tanaz Bhathena, Saturday, Sept 22, in Oakville (see here).

He'll also lead a Writing Kid Lit weekly course on Friday afternoons, Oct 5 – Nov 30 in Toronto (see here) and a Writing for Children & for Young Adults workshop Saturday, October 12, in Sudbury (see here).

For updated listings of Writing for Children & for Young adult workshops and for weekly Kid lit classes, see here (and scroll down).

If you’re interested in getting published, soon or somewhere down the road, don’t miss the upcoming How to Get Published workshop Saturday, Nov 17, in Mississauga with literary agent Stephanie Sinclair (see here). 

For updated listing of How to Get Published workshops, see here (and scroll down).

Also coming soon: Writing and Revising, Saturday, Sept 29, in St. Catharines (see here), How to Build Your Story, with author Hannah Mary McKinnon, Saturday, Oct 20, in Kitchener (see here), and How to Write a Bestseller with New York Times #1 bestselling author Kelley Armstrong (see here). 

 

The wrap-around porch off the dining room at Arowhon Pines in Algonquin Park

Two weekend writing retreats :

November at the Briars Writing Retreat, Friday, Nov 2 – Sunday, Nov 4: three precious days of writing bliss. Details here.

Algonquin Writing Retreat, Friday, May 31 – Monday, June 3, 2019: four days in the luxurious isolation of Arowhon Pines Resort to get down to some real creative growth. Details here.

In both these retreats, you’ll recharge your creative batteries and get some great writing tips – all in the supportive company of your fellow writers.

This September, Brian is leading a full roster of courses, Introductory to Intense (Details of all six courses here):

Tree at the Briars Resort

Welcome to Creative Writing, Thursday, afternoons, Sept 27 - Nov 9, in Oakville. See here.

Writing Personal Stories, Thursday evenings, Oct 4 – Nov 29, in Burlington. See here.

Writing Kid Lit, Friday afternoons, Oct 5 – Nov 30, in Toronto. See here.

And Intensive Creative Writing, offered in three locales:

Tuesday afternoons, Sept 25 – Nov 27 (first readings emailed Sept 18), in Burlington. See here.

Wednesday evenings Sept 26 – Dec 5 (first readings emailed Sept 19), in Georgetown. See here.

Friday mornings Sept 28 – Nov 30 (first readings emailed Sept 21), in Toronto. See here. 

See details of all six courses here.

To reserve a spot in any workshop, or weekly course, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Read reviews of Brian’s courses, retreats, and workshops here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule here,  including Saturday writing workshops,weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, New Tecumseth, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Navigation tips: Always check out the Labels underneath a post; they’ll lead you to various distinct collections of postings. Also, if you're searching for a literary agent who represents a particular type of book, check out this post.