Holiday Closings: Howland Literary will be closed Nov. 22-24 & Dec. 20 - Jan. 3
Carrie Howland, President
Carrie Howland founded Howland Literary, LLC in 2018, after thirteen years as an agent, most recently at Empire Literary.
Carrie holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Albion College, where she was the Poetry Editor of The Albion Review. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals and magazines.
She attends several conferences, both nationally and internationally, throughout the year. Her craft talk from the Adirondack Writers Conference, "Beyond the Query Letter," is available on the Howland Literary website.
In her spare time, Carrie volunteers as a foster for a local dog rescue and is an active member of the Junior League. Her passions include music, pop culture, and the Midwest.
She has been featured in several publications discussing her work as an agent including Poets & Writers, SCWBI insight, Akashic Books, and Slice Magazine.
Carrie is accepting submissions for: adult literary, upmarket, and commercial fiction as well as memoir, narrative and prescriptive non-fiction. Please submit your query via Carrie's Query Manager link.
For non-submission inquiries, she can also be reached at carrie@howlandliterary.com
Erin Clyburn, Agent
Erin Clyburn joined the Howland Literary team in 2022 after four years with boutique New York–based agencies. She was previously the director of collection development for Turtleback Books and has over a decade of experience in magazine publishing, most recently with Food & Wine. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Mississippi State University and an M.A. in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her partner and a few unruly rabbits.
Erin represents middle grade fiction, YA fiction, and adult fiction and nonfiction.
Across the board, she gravitates toward lyrical writing with a strong sense of place and works that are strange, genre-bendy, atmospheric, and often dark. Erin is particularly interested in Southern fiction and nonfiction from diverse voices in the below genres. She loves works about the human body, whether a gory body horror or a nonfiction work about endurance athletes. Her favorite books are literary in style but with genre elements (horror, fabulism/magical realism, mystery, thriller), and she loves books set in our world but with a speculative twist. The stranger, the better. Send her your weirds.
In middle grade fiction, Erin is looking for everything, but has the biggest soft spots for horror and mystery. Middle grade favorites include The Riverman, Small Spaces, Ghost (the Track series), Hide and Seeker, Greenglass House, The Westing Game, and The Canning Season. In YA fiction, she is looking for horror, mystery, thriller, grounded fiction with speculative elements, and magical realism/fabulism. Young adult favorites include Clown in a Cornfield, Neverworld Wake, The Taking of Jake Livingston, Ace of Spades, Midwinterblood, and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.
In adult fiction, she is looking for literary and upmarket works in speculative fiction, horror, mystery, psychological thriller, domestic thriller, and magical realism/fabulism. Adult favorites include Catherine House, Leave the World Behind, Long Division, The Thin Place, The Scent Keeper, Mexican Gothic, Never Let Me Go, The Elementals, The Age of Miracles, Baby Teeth, and Every Bone a Prayer. She is also looking for commercial psychological and domestic thrillers in the vein of Ruth Ware, Alyssa Cole, and Lisa Jewell.
In nonfiction, she's interested in intersectional perspectives and is looking for voice-driven, deeply researched narrative nonfiction and deep dives into topics including food and culinary history, nature/environment, the ways we interact with the outdoors, medicine, pop science, athletics and the human body, and pop culture, specifically horror movies and video games. She’d love to see nonfiction in the vein of The Radium Girls, Cultish, Hurts So Good, Tacky, Taste Makers, The Book of Eels, Hidden Valley Road, A Philosophy of Walking, and Finding the Mother Tree.
Please submit all queries via Erin's Query Manager link.
For non-submission inquiries, she can be reached at erin@howlandliterary.com.
Zoe Aline Howard, Associate Agent
Zoe-Aline Howard joined Howland Literary while earning her BFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Certificate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has had the privilege to work across publishing in multiple capacities, including an internship at Lookout Books, and her current role as a literary publicist at Pine State Publicity. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Zoe represents adult fiction and nonfiction.
In both adult literary and upmarket fiction and adult nonfiction, Zoe is interested in writing that centers place (and especially how place informs an author’s or character’s perspective); and voice.
In adult fiction, she is looking for voice-driven and/or character-driven literary and upmarket projects, especially books which take familiar elements (whether structurally, thematically, or otherwise) and subvert them: girls who reveal something larger about the human experience (Dogs of Summer), speculative elements (Sharks in the Time of Saviors), body horror & transformations of the body, new representations of familiar settings, novels embedded in a subculture, broken archetypes. Surprise her! Other favorites include: Red at the Bone, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Swamplandia!, Cowboys Are My Weakness, The Pisces, Girl Meets Boy (see MSWL for more).
In nonfiction, she is looking for deep dives. She’s especially interested in narrative nonfiction, research-driven books with memoir elements, and essay collections that blend cultural criticism and a sharp authorial perspective with other elements. She has a soft spot for nature writing, pop and material culture—what we engage with, and why—and the connections between people and the places they inhabit. Favorites include: Wintering, Monsters, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things, Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, M Train.
She wants the wildest, weirdest, and most heart-felt.
Please submit all queries via Zoe's Query Manager link.
For non-submission inquiries, she can be reached at zoe@howlandliterary.com.