Representing Award-Winning Fiction, Non-Fiction, YA Literature, and Children's Books
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
Prior to joining Howland Literary in 2022, Erin Clyburn was an associate agent with The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. She was the general manager and director of collection development for Turtleback Books, a distributor of books to the school and library market, and she has over a decade of experience in magazine publishing, having worked for brands including Food & Wine, Cooking Light, People, and Entertainment Weekly. She received her BA in English Literature from Mississippi State University and her MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her partner, Michael, and three unruly rabbits.
Erin represents middle grade fiction, YA fiction, and adult fiction and nonfiction.
In middle grade, Erin is looking for horror, mystery, grounded stories with a speculative element, magical realism/fabulism, big-hearted contemporary, & adventure stories. Middle grade favorites include The Riverman, Small Spaces, Ghost (The Track series), Hide and Seeker, Greenglass House, and The Canning Season. In YA fiction, she is looking for horror, mystery, thriller, grounded stories with a speculative element, magical realism/fabulism, Southern gothic, and rom-coms (heavy on the com). Young adult favorites include Clown in a Cornfield, Neverworld Wake, The Taking of Jake Livingston, Ace of Spaces, and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.
In adult fiction, she is looking for literary and upmarket projects in speculative fiction, horror, mystery, psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers, magical realism/fabulism, Southern gothic, and rom-coms. Adult favorites include Catherine House, Leave the World Behind, Long Division, The Scent Keeper, The Girl Before, Mexican Gothic, When No One Is Watching, 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 and Lisa Jewell.
In nonfiction, she's interested in intersectional perspectives and is looking for deeply researched narrative nonfiction and deep dives into topics including medicine, pop science, nature/environment, food and culinary history, and pop culture, specifically video games, music, and film/TV. 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, and Finding the Mother Tree.
An Alabamian with Louisiana roots, Erin is particularly interested in Southern literary and upmarket fiction from diverse voices in the above genres. Across the board, she gravitates toward lyrical writing and to works that are strange and genre-bendy. Send her your weirds.
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
After working with Howland Literary and Lookout Books while earning her BFA in Creative Writing and Certificate in Publishing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Zoe Howard is now building her own list of adult literary fiction and adult nonfiction. Zoe is also a literary publicist at Pine State Publicity.
More than anything, Zoe is drawn to writing where language comes first—she would love to see the work of poets-turned-to-prose, lyrical voices, and sentence-level craft that plays (Patti Smith, Ali Smith). She would love to read writing that explores boundaries: deconstructions of the coastal or “convenience store” south & the mountain states of the US, non-traditional narrators, cross-discipline books, and so on.
In adult fiction, she is seeking voice-driven stories that subvert reader expectations of their subject matter. Zoe is especially interested in unashamed characters; characters at their breaking point; literary fiction with speculative elements, especially those that tend dark and underground (Sharks in the Time of Saviors); joyous girlhood; body horror & transformations of the body; and insular settings (small towns, amusement parks, summer camps, hotels).
In adult nonfiction, Zoe is looking for narrative nonfiction, memoir, and essay collections that blend personal narratives with research or questions about the larger world. She would love to see more nonfiction that reads like fiction. Her niche interests include material culture, why & how we use objects, celebrities, pop culture, parasocial relationships, and the connections between people and the places they inhabit.
Send Zoe your off-kilter, heartfelt, lyrical, and literary work. Learn more about Zoe’s wishlist here: MSWL.
Please note: for the time being, Zoe is only reading nonfiction queries. Please submit all queries via Zoe's QueryManager link.
For non-submission inquiries, she can be reached at zoe@howlandliterary.com.