Robin Dellabough

Johanna V. Castillo is a Senior Agent at Writers House Literary Agency. A seasoned professional in the publishing industry, Castillo was formerly VP, executive editor at Atria Books/Simon and Schuster and editorial director of Atria Español for nearly 15 years. Her clients include Isabel Allende, Samanta Schweblin, Ana Castillo, Justin Baldoni, Victoria Alonso, Reyna Grande, Armando Lucas Correa, and others. While at S&S, Johanna discovered and edited New York Times bestseller It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, as well as 14 of her other titles. She was featured as a “Mujer on the Move” by Latina magazine, named a […]

Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie (Penguin Press, March 14, 2023. Editor: Virginia Smith. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman). Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of the novel The Portable Veblen, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize; a collection, Stop That Girl, shortlisted for The Story Prize; and the novel MacGregor Tells the World, a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and was recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts. […]

Rafael Frumkin’s second novel is Confidence (Simon & Schuster, March 7, 2023. Editor: Carina Guiterman. Agent: Barbara Jones, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency). Rafael Frumkin is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of the novels The Comedown (2018) and Confidence (2023) and the short story collection Bugsy (2024). His fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Guernica, Hazlitt, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. He is a professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University. How did you find your agent? I found my former agent, Ross […]

Sara Birmingham joined Ecco in 2018 after stints at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Oxford University Press. She primarily acquires literary fiction, especially debut, as well as memoir, narrative nonfiction, and essays with a contemporary focus. Is it important for an agent to have preexisting contacts or relationships with editors before submitting a manuscript, especially when it comes to debut fiction? When writers are considering agents for representation, to what extent is this track record of previous sales with particular editors or publishers important, and what does this mean when considering new agents or agent assistants building their own lists? […]