New Literary Agent Listing: Larissa Melo Pienkowski
firstwriter.com – Wednesday December 10, 2025
Represents adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction. Handles character-driven books with high personal stakes and strong line-level craft across genres. Seeks original voices, nuanced characters, and compelling narratives in literary plus fiction, grounded fantasy, cozy mysteries, heists, and high-heat romance. Interested in middle grade mystery adventures, slice-of-life stories, and young adult works with queer, feminist, and anti-colonial themes, as well as narrative nonfiction, microhistories, and essay collections exploring justice, decolonization, and contemporary culture.
Eoin Purcell and Blathnaid Healy launch new non-fiction publishing house
thebookseller.com – Sunday December 7, 2025
Former head of Amazon Publishing Europe Eoin Purcell and news editor and former BBC and CNN media executive Blathnaid Healy have launched a new independent non-fiction publishing house called Full Set.
According to the founders, Purcell and Healy are bringing their "influences from traditional book publishing and journalism into this new venture".
Full Set’s initial focus will be current affairs and business titles, both full-length and essay-length books with the aim of "delivering rewarding reads to audiences in all formats".
The publisher – which is based in Dublin – is actively commissioning for its first list, which they expect to launch in late 2026.
In conversation with John Vaillant
martlet.ca – Sunday December 7, 2025
The award winning author on the response to ‘Fire Weather,’ the captivity of the Canadian government to oil and gas, and advice for young journalists
John Vaillant is an American-Canadian journalist and author based out of Vancouver, B.C. He’s written for The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, and Outside Magazine, among others. His non-fiction writing covers topics such as Siberian Tigers in far-eastern Russia, the rare golden spruce of Haida Gwaii, and, most recently, the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfires. He has also published one novel, The Jaguar’s Children.
The Martlet reached Vaillant over the phone to discuss his career in journalism, the challenges and surprises that come from reporting stories on location, and the response to his most recent work, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.
Oxford University Press completes acquisition of Karger Publishers
corp.oup.com – Thursday December 4, 2025
Oxford University Press (OUP) and Karger Publishers are pleased to confirm the completion of the acquisition of Karger by OUP. Announced in early November, the closing of the transaction means that Karger is now wholly owned by OUP and becomes part of the wider OUP organization.
Owned by the Karger family for four generations, Karger Publishers has a long history of high quality publishing in medical and health sciences. The acquisition brings together a shared commitment to quality and scholarly integrity and an opportunity to extend the reach and impact of Karger’s leading academic and research publishing in medicine and health sciences.
Shelf-made men: why publishing still favours the well-connected
nationalworld.com – Wednesday December 3, 2025
In May of this year, it was reported that writing and publishing in the UK is in crisis. There was said to be a “growing marginalisation of working-class people whose stories and experiences are not being heard”, according to the backers of a new literary magazine and platform.
The Bee, edited by Richard Benson, told The Guardian that it was well known the creative industries were “massively skewed” in terms of representation, but that writing and publishing were “even more skewed”.
Their own data describes an industry shaped by the old-school-tie crowd, where opportunity tends to land with the silver-spoon set, and routes into print favour people who already move comfortably inside publishing circles. In simple terms, those born already-inside progress faster than those arriving from estates, factories and night shifts.
In 2014, for example, 43 per cent of publishing staff came from middle-class backgrounds and just 12 per cent from working-class families; by 2019, the middle-class figure had risen to 60 per cent. Sutton Trust research, meanwhile, places only one-in-10 published authors as working class. That is what happens when an entire sector drifts into the hands of the trust-fund brigade and the private-club types who can afford to wait for opportunity.
This matters to me because I know what it feels like to come into writing without wealth, contacts, or the introductions that seem to fall into the laps of toffs and well-connected insiders. I never went to university. I didn’t have family in publishing, teachers who knew agents, or friends who could guide me through the process. Like most working-class people, I had to learn the hard way how publishing works and where someone like me is supposed to stand within it. My success came from long hours of graft and stubborn persistence — the sort of work the Mayfair set rarely has to do.
New Publisher Listing: The Stable Book Group
firstwriter.com – Wednesday December 3, 2025
Collective of independent publishers with offices in California and New York. Publishes fiction, nonfiction, business, self-help, memoirs, and children’s books. Accepts unsolicited manuscripts with synopsis, sample chapters, and author biography. Provides global distribution through major partners and supports titles with shared resources in design, production, marketing, and publicity.
New Magazine Listing: West Coast Review
firstwriter.com – Wednesday December 3, 2025
We accept all types of fiction and art, including the experimental. We aim to publish diverse stories from writers all over the world, to reflect the diversity of the West Coast. Our issues are published once per year, and we accept submissions on a rolling basis. We publish flash fiction, short stories, and any creative prose that falls in-between (this includes creative nonfiction, craft essays, and experimental work).
Andrea Brown Alums Launch Boutique Agency
publishersweekly.com – Tuesday December 2, 2025
Jemiscoe Chambers-Black (bottom), Paige Terlip (top), and Jennifer March Soloway have launched Starling Literary + Media, a boutique literary agency. The trio previously worked at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
“It has been a joy to watch Jem, Paige, and Jennifer grow as agents these many years,” said Kelly Sonnack, president and owner of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, “and we are all cheering them on as they move into this next chapter.”
Starling will represent a broad roster of children’s authors and illustrators, as well as authors of adult fiction and nonfiction.
P.S. Literary Agency launches emerging writers scholarship
quillandquire.com – Tuesday December 2, 2025
P.S. Literary Agency is capping off a month-long celebration of its 20-year anniversary with the announcement of a new scholarship for emerging writers.
The agency turned 20 in November, and announced the creation of the PSLA Emerging Writers Scholarship on Dec. 1. The scholarship includes $1,000 to help cover writing-related expenses and a one-on-one mentorship with a literary agent. Applications for the inaugural scholarship are set to open on Jan. 5, with the first recipient to be announced in summer 2026.
“While our 20th anniversary created a natural moment for reflection, the decision to launch the PSLA Emerging Writers Scholarship was driven by something deeper than the milestone itself,” agency founder B. David Gyulai said in an email. “Over the past several years, we’ve seen a growing need for meaningful support for unpublished and underrepresented writers—especially those who may not yet have access to mentorship, industry knowledge, or financial resources that can help them take the next step in their writing journey.”
2 fiction writers offer different approaches in how-to guides to writing
eu.clarionledger.com – Tuesday December 2, 2025
- Two new books by fiction writers Elizabeth McCracken and Sue Monk Kidd offer different approaches to the craft of writing.
- McCracken's "A Long Game" is skeptical of cosmic inspiration, focusing instead on practical advice and personal experience.
- Kidd's "Writing Creativity and Soul" encourages writers to connect with the supernatural and spiritual for authenticity.
Elizabeth McCracken ends her new book on the craft of writing with what she describes as the mantra of all writers: “I am a genius with much to learn.”
Indeed, this claim describes both her stance toward writing as well as what she expects from those who wish to learn about writing from her.
“A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction”consists of 280 entries, some a sentence or two, some several paragraphs or even pages long, in which McCracken draws on her careers as both a successfully published writer and teacher of writing to write a book that “dispenses advice, composed by a writer of fiction.”
McCracken notes how much she has previously distrusted the entire concept of books on the craft of writing, or even the notion of rules for writing at all. She explains, “Everything that I have ever believed was true and immutable about my work has changed. Only the obsessions remain.” What follows are thoughtful, encouraging insights from her own experiences writing as well as her experiences reading and responding to years of student writing.
As an aspiring fiction writer myself, there is much that I appreciated in this book. At times, it fit the generic conventions that McCracken set out early on a bit snarkily: “chipper, cheerleaderish, generally with an encouraging second-person narrator meant to make the whole exhausting process of writing a book seem possible. 'You can do it!'”
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