What do literary agents do and how can you find the right one for you? Leading literary agent Emma Paterson talks to Gena-mour Barrett about the value a literary agent can bring to your writing career.
Paterson joined Aitken Alexander Associates as an agent in 2018 after five years at Rogers, Coleridge & White. She began her career at the Wylie Agency.
In 2018, she was selected as a Bookseller Rising Star. Paterson represents literary fiction, a wide range of non-fiction, and some poetry.
Authors from her list include Elaine Castillo, Bernardine Evaristo, Megan Hunter, Chris Power and Sharlene Teo.
Gena-mour Barrett is a freelance writer and creative content producer from London. She was listed as one of 2019’s ‘30 Under 30’ for media and marketing by Forbes.
As a freelancer she has worked for the BBC, The Guardian and The Pool, and she currently hosts the Netflix IXseries on the channel’s YouTube.
In 2018, she was the recipient of the Roxane Gay fellowship for a woman of colour writing fiction with Jack Jones Literary Arts, and is currently working on her first novel.
Her work was anthologised in Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class, published by Dead Ink Books in 2017.