MEET THE AGENTS AT HOWLAND LITERARY

Industry veteran, Carrie Howland, has over twenty years of experience as a literary agent. She founded Howland Literary, LLC in 2018.

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.

Carrie has been actively involved in animal rescue for decades. Her passions include parenting, psychology, 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, and cookbooks. 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 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 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. After five years in Wilmington, NC, she's looking for the next place to call home. 

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. Her recent deals (including Morgan Day's The Oldest Bitch Alive, Lauren Haddad's Fireweed, Sara Maurer's A Good Animal, & Maria Pinto's Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless) are representative of that intersection. 

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), surprising iterations on perspective and form, new representations of familiar settings, novels embedded in a subculture, broken archetypes. Surprise her! Other favorites include: Idaho (Emily Ruskovitch),Who Will Run the Frog Hospital (Lorrie Moore), Swamplandia! (Karen Russell), Cowboys Are My Weakness (Pam Houston), The Pisces (Melissa Broder), Girl Meets Boy (Ali Smith), see MSWL for more. 

In adult 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: Lesbian Love Story (Amelia Possanza), Wintering (Katherine May), Monsters (Claire Dedderer), The Ugly History of Beautiful Things (Katy Kelleher), Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir (Lauren Slater), M Train (Patti Smith). 

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.

Gabriela Laracuente Sanchez had the opportunity to join the Howland team as an intern while completing a BA in English: Editing, Writing, and Media with a minor in Women’s Studies from Florida State University. She was also the Editor in Chief of The Experience and Editorial Assistant of the Kudzu Review during this time. These experiences led her to help authors navigate building a business and speaker brand alongside a book. 

Gabriela has since rejoined the Howland team and represents adult fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Dickinson, Texas. 

In adult fiction, she seeks literary, upmarket, and women’s fiction with genre elements and strong cultural influences—especially from Latine backgrounds. She wants to see works exploring cultural identity, complex family dynamics, womanhood, and characters adapting to new spaces. She is also interested in multilingual projects that utilize code-switching, elements of magical realism and speculative fiction, or elements of food writing. 

In adult nonfiction, she is looking for books on food, food culture, and nutrition. 

Please submit all queries via Gabriela’s Query Manager link.

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

Rebecca Angus began her publishing career as an editorial intern at Entangled Publishing, and moved into an agent role shortly after, building her list of authors. After a few years away to take care of her family during the pandemic, Rebecca is excited to return to publishing. Rebecca’s previous focus was on KidLit and Contemporary Romance, but during her time away from publishing she realized that her mindset and wishlist had changed.

As a reading teacher at a Title-One campus in San Antonio, Texas, Rebecca primarily works with at-risk youth with limited access to books, and little motivation to read outside of the classroom. She hosts a monthly book swap for students and families in her school’s surrounding community which works to put hundreds of books in the hands of at-risk-youth and teens. When talking with her students, she realized their biggest reason for not actively reading is because of the lack of accessible books available to them featuring Latinx, or diverse characters relatable to their life experiences. They didn’t see themselves in books, and their language, culture, and traditions were not represented. This was the primary reason Rebecca was motivated to return to agenting. With the changing demographics and rising number of students who have immigrated to America from Latin American countries, there needs to be accessible books for students they can connect to their life experiences or else we are going to lose an entire generation of readers. Rebecca is on a mission to change this issue, and as she rebuilds her client list, her focus will be on marginalized voices within picture books, middle grade, and adult spaces. 

Additionally, as a member of the LGBTQIA community, she aims to be a champion for books with queer or diverse characters, as well as disability representation, and feminist voices in fiction. 

Rebecca holds a master’s degree in education with a focus on reading instruction, and she is finishing her doctoral degree in curriculum and instructional design for reading language arts. She is also an author of Adult Speculative fiction represented by Weaver Literary Agency. 

Please submit all queries via Rebecca’s Query Manager link.

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