Agent List XXVIII
Spring querying (the ideal companion to spring cleaning)
Greetings new and returning Bookish subscribers,
Today’s post is March’s list of agents currently accepting queries. February’s is available here. Agent lists are paywalled, but most Bookish posts are freely accessible.
But before the list, a few book recs, two submission opportunities, and some literary miscellany.
Lately I find myself leaning on friends and family more than usual, avoiding the social media vortex as much as possible, and shopping for piffle and piffle-adjacent items (e.g. see below).
I’m reading as often as possible too. Earlier this year, I read
’s novel Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, which I loved (from Be Brief’s jacket copy: A darkly funny meditation on creativity and family, Be Brief and Tell Them Everything tracks the life of a middle-aged author who is struggling to write his next novel while trying to come to grips with his son's disabilities, set against a backdrop of ecological catastrophe and escalating human insanity in contemporary Los Angeles.)Along with writing prose, a Substack newsletter (
) and screen material, Brad hosts Otherppl, the podcast I recommend most often to students and writer friends (it’s excellent—no b.s.), for which he’s interviewed hundreds of writers and publishing professionals since 2011, among them Karl Ove Knausgaard, Leila Slimani, Elizabeth Strout, Hanif Adurraqib, Curtis Sittenfeld, , Tony Tulathimutte, Ayana Mathis, PR and publicity whiz , and literary agent Carly Watters. Recent(ish) episodes with Steve Almond, Teddy Wayne, and Joshua Mohr are especially good on many craft aspects of fiction- and nonfiction-writing, e.g. plot, setting, voice, character, thriller structure.Per Brad’s recommendation from his best-of 2024 fiction episode, I read Alexandra Tanner’s funny, bonkers novel Worry and have another rec from that list on my TBR list, Kimberly King Parson’s We Were the Universe. Brad interviewed both authors for Otherppl last year too.
Two spring releases I’m very much looking forward to:
’s The Satryr in Bungalow D, and ’s, The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood. More on both later this spring.
- Black Warrior Review has extended their semi-annual general submissions deadline to April 1. You can access their Submittable page here and submission guidelines here.
- The Nancy Ludmerer Fellowship for flash fiction and nonfiction is offering 20 fee-free applications (first-come, first-served) on March 20. Recipients will receive a 5-night residency at the Porches Writing Retreat in Virginia. (Hat tip to
via ).- The writer and artist residencies list that I sent out a few weeks ago is one of the most-read posts of the nearly two years I’ve been publishing Bookish. Thank you to everyone who shared or restacked it. 📗
- If you’re in the Los Angeles area next Wednesday, March 12, please join Kurt Baumeister and me for a conversation about his new novel, Twilight of the Gods, at Village Well Books & Coffee, 9900 Culver Blvd., Culver City, 6 PM!
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