About Howland Literary

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

Before Howland Literary, Victoria Dillman was an assistant and foreign rights associate at Sobel Weber Associates and an intern at Linda Leith Publishing, as well as a reader for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Awards. She holds a B.A. in English from McGill University, and an MFA in Fiction from The New School. Her pronouns are she/her. 

Victoria is most interested in adult literary/upmarket fiction and narrative and expert-driven nonfiction. She would particularly like to hear from underrepresented communities including neurodivergent, queer, and BIPOC voices. 

In fiction, she looks for a well-paced plot with a strong, distinctive voice. She is fascinated by complex and nuanced characters with conflicting desires. She especially loves literary fiction with a speculative or magical element. She is also intrigued by hybrids of literary-genre fiction: pieces that work to subvert genre conventions. She will always be captured by family relationships, particularly the complexities of sibling dynamics and intergenerational trauma. As someone who grew up internationally, Victoria is drawn to narratives exploring transitory homes and cultures. 

In nonfiction, she is looking for projects that have a passion for and in-depth knowledge of niche topics. She is drawn to narratives that focus on the individual and offer fresh perspectives on our world. Some of the topics she is interested include social justice, climate change, mental health, cults, true crime, and counterculture. 

Please submit all queries via Victoria's Query Manager link. 

For non-submission inquires, she can be reached at victoria@howlandliterary.com  

Prior to joining Howland Literary, 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 four unruly rabbits.    

Erin represents middle grade fiction, YA fiction, and adult fiction and nonfiction. In MG and YA, she is looking for horror, mystery, thriller, big-hearted contemporary, and grounded stories with magical or speculative elements. In adult fiction, she is most interested in upmarket and literary fiction, and she gravitates toward the dark and strange: horror, thriller, mystery, and grounded stories with speculative or magical elements. Send her your weirds. In nonfiction, she's interested in intersectional perspectives and is looking for narrative nonfiction, memoir, and deep dives into topics including pop science, nature, food and culinary history, and sports and adventure. An Alabamian with Louisiana roots, Erin is particularly interested in Southern literary and upmarket fiction from diverse voices in the above genres. A more in-depth wishlist can be found on her website.   

Please submit all queries via Erin's Query Manager link.   

For non-submission inquiries, she can be reached at erin@howlandliterary.com.

Cassie Mannes Murray is a writer, agent, and publicist. Born and raised in the American south, she is a graduate of North Carolina State University and has an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of North Carolina Wilmington where she was a publishing fellow with Ecotone Magazine and Lookout Books. She currently runs her own publicity firm, Pine State Publicity, where she works on mid-list and independent press titles, as well as poetry collections. Before joining Howland Literary and was a high school teacher in rural North Carolina. 

Cassie is seeking genre-b(l)ending work in both adult nonfiction and fiction. In fiction, she is looking for work that feels left-of-center, magnifies voice, and would be considered "weird without the world building." She is always looking for stories that have been purposefully left out or pushed aside in publishing. Please send her fiction that's stellar at dialogue, humor, and/or atmosphere.

In nonfiction, she is interested in pop culture analysis, sociocultural histories, biogoir and backdoor memoir (not really traditional memoir in the sense of "life story" without something more to it), science and natural histories, hybrid texts, and essay collections. She is most inspired by work that blurs boundaries, begets new structures and traditions, and has influences in poetry. She does love a good plot though, and her favorite thing to help with is the structure of a narrative.

Her MSWL does a good job of explaining exactly what she would like to see in her inbox. 

Cassie is on query manager, and you can query her there.

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 that lingers—on language, on character development, on the subtleties of character relationships, on place, on a niche subjects—and makes the details discovered there pop. Zoe would love to read writing that explores boundaries: poets writing prose, region-specific writing about the coastal or “convenience store” south and the western United States, non-traditional narrators, unhinged women in fiction, and so on.   

In adult fiction, she looks for voice-driven stories that subvert reader expectations of their subject matter. She is especially interested in joyful books about girlhood, off-putting and unashamed characters, women breaking social expectations, LBGTQ+ characters, grounded magical realism and speculative elements, and insular settings (small towns, amusement parks, summer camps). Please note that Zoe is not seeking books that feature eating disorders or self-harm in young characters. 

In adult nonfiction, Zoe looks for narrative nonfiction, memoir, and essay collections that blend personal narratives with research. Her niche interests include internet culture, celebrities, pop culture, religion/spirituality, para-social relationships, material culture, and the relationships between people and the places they inhabit.   

Send Zoe your off-kilter, heartfelt, lyrical, and literary work.

Please submit all queries via Zoe's Query Manager link. 

For non-submission inquiries, she can be reached at zoe@howlandliterary.com.