Literary Agents

Children's and YA agent Alice Sutherland-Hawes has left Madeleine Milburn Agency to launch her own agency, ASH Literary.

The new venture will focus on the children's market, representing both authors and illustrators.

Sutherland-Hawes said the majority of her clients would be following her to the agency, including twice Kate Greenaway Medal-shortlisted Poonam Mistry, debut authors Kereen Getten and Namina Forna, and illustrator of I Am Brown (Lantana), Sandhya Prabhat.

The agency will be represented for translation rights by ILA.

If you're a writer, you know the process of taking your dream of writing a book and making it a reality is not an easy road. While you may have spent countless hours on a manuscript or nonfiction proposal, getting it in the hands of an agent who is the right fit can be one of the hardest parts of the process.

Of course, you can always pitch literary agents the traditional way by sending query letters, though if that's still left your manuscript unsigned, then participating in PitMad might be your next move.

What is PitMad, and how do you submit your manuscript?

While August is traditionally a dead zone for book news, one tiny sect of literary Twitter has been busy. Tobias Literary Agency (TLA), a full-service agency that includes among its recent titles The Candy Cane Caper–a dual mystery-cookbook–and that is explicitly looking for non-white and marginalized voices to publish, has fired former assistant agent Sasha White for anti-trans comments on Twitter.

The news broke on Monday morning after lawyer Anya Palmer laid out the story, of course, in a Twitter thread. “Another woman summarily dismissed by a literary agency for daring to tweet her opinions on sex and gender,” wrote Palmer, including a screenshot of a statement from TLA about White, that reads in part:

A3 Artists Agency has brought in four former Paradigm agents to reestablish a literary division. Veterans Andy Patman and Adam Kanter have come on board as A3 partners and Co-Head of Television Content and Motion Pictures, respectively. They are being joined by fellow former Paradigm agents Katt Riley and Martin To on the lit team, with plans to hire more agents, coordinators and assistants while many talent agencies have been contracting in the face of the coronavirus-related Hollywood production shutdown.

That includes Paradigm, which in late March instituted temporary layoffs for 250 employees. The list included Kanter, Riley and To, sources said, while Patman left Paradigm last week, I hear.