Literary Agents Seeking Under Represented and Unique Voices
Literary agents are gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Find literary agents open to submissions from under represented and unique voices in this post. List will be updated regularly.
Literary agents are gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Find literary agents open to submissions from under represented and unique voices in this post. List will be updated regularly.
Literary agents are important decision makers in the publishing process for authors who wish to be published by many of the big publishers. However, all literary agents do not represent all genres. In fact, an agent who claims to do this should be approached with caution. Just as authors tend to specialize in one or two genres, agents find niches and specialize in a handful of genres.
In this post, I've collected recently shared agent spotlights with literary agents who are accepting submissions from under represented and unique voices. This list will be updated regularly with new agents added to the top.
Bibi Lewis of The Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency
Bibi Lewis joined the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency in 2014 as an associate agent and subsidiary rights manager. In addition to her duties as an agent she sells foreign and audio rights for agency clients. As a native New Yorker, she is a fierce patron of the NYPL.
On the adult end, Bibi is most interested in commercial and upmarket women’s fiction, contemporary romance, mysteries, and thrillers. In all ages, she is excited to read more projects from marginalized voices.
Dominic Yarabe of Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency
Dominic Yarabe joined Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency in 2018. As a multiracial second-generation American citizen, she is particularly drawn to characters and stories that traverse the complexities of the immigrant experience. However, she’ll read anything that is keenly observed and transports her outside of her tiny New York apartment.
Dominic graduated Phi Beta Kappa from her honors college at University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a B.A. in English. Before joining the agency, she taught for two summers in China and interned in New York, mitigating her transition from cornfield to city.
Keely Boeving of WordServe Literary
Keely Boeving is an agent with WordServe Literary. After receiving her B.A. in English from the University of Virginia, she went on to attend the Denver Publishing Institute and then began her career in New York working in the editorial departments of Bloomsbury and then Oxford University Press, where she acquired books for the trade history list.
She moved back to her home state of Colorado in 2014 and began her own freelance editorial company before joining WordServe the following year. She lives in Denver with her husband and their twins.
Maureen Moretti of P.S. Literary
Maureen Moretti began her publishing career as an intern with several prestigious literary agencies before joining P.S. Literary as an associate agent. She holds a B.A. from Saint Mary’s College of California and attended the Columbia Publishing Course.
Maureen is actively acquiring both nonfiction and fiction. Within nonfiction she is searching for narrative nonfiction, culture, history, biography, LGBTQ+, cookbooks, and lifestyle. Within fiction she is looking for women’s fiction, thrillers, LGBTQ+, romance, select science fiction, literary fiction and genre-bending unique voices.
Cecilia Lyra of The Rights Factory
Cecilia Lyra holds a Master’s Degree in Banking and Financial Law from Boston University and is completing a graduate certificate in publishing. In 2016, she bid adieu to her life as lawyer and professor of law to become a writer and a literary agent. She blames this heretical career move on her nine-year-old-self, who was bitten by the reading bug and began to dream of the day when she would work with books.
When she isn’t devouring novels—or dessert—Cecilia can be found drinking wine, writing her own novels, and snuggling with Babaganoush, her adorable English bulldog.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
