Submitting to Howland Literary

Howland Literary is moving to Query Manager for all query submissions! 

As of May 5, 2022, please note that Carrie Howland is closed to queries while Howland Literary moves to Query Manager. She plans to open for fiction and nonfiction submissions again soon!

If you would like to query Victoria Dillman or Erin Clyburn, please use their personal Query Manager link, as listed below. 

*If you have already submitted a query to Victoria or Erin via our submissions email, you do not need to submit again. 

*Send the initial twenty pages of the manuscript for fiction, or attach the proposal / initial twenty pages for nonfiction. If you have to go a little under or over on twenty pages to find a good resting place, that's totally fine.

*We do not have a preference on sending pages as an attachment or pasting into the body of an email, however body of an email is easier for us to read. We would encourage you to choose fonts that are easy to read (Times New Roman, Garamond, etc). If your pages involve specific structural things that would be messed up in copy and paste, do attach.  

*Try to remember that a query letter is a business document. Although we love a charming voice in that initial letter,  we hope it doesn't take over what you're trying to say about your work. 

You can find our submission requests and wishlists under "About Us" 

We also often post on our individual Twitters: Carrie's Twitter, Victoria's Twitter, and Erin's Twitter.

You can find more information about each of us on Poets & Writers, QueryTracker, MSWL, and Duotrope as well.

We are always looking for voice-driven books, and because we each have a background in writing, we love beautiful sentences. We are also especially looking for manuscripts with own voices, marginalized voices, and people who honor the stories that come from their lives, ancestry, culture, and history.

Initial Queries:

We try to respond to initial queries within a sixteen weeks. We make a point to read the entire query, including letter and first twenty pages. We do our best to respond to every single query that comes through our inbox, however we do not respond to queries which do not adhere to our guidelines, particularly genre.

A grammar error or misspelling will never dissuade us from reading a query. We know that emails are pored over, like books, and yet we still miss things in the copyedit.

Please understand that a pass on an initial query does not mean the book is bad or will never sell, but instead, we may not be able to best represent that manuscript, and think another agent would be better suited.  We do our very best to offer personal feedback when we can. 

Full Manuscripts:

If we have requested a full manuscript, ideally we would love to get back to you within six weeks, but it has taken up to four months. We read an entire manuscript if we request it and give detailed feedback either way. 

Please give us a nudge if you have gotten other offers, haven't received a response from us in several months, or have news to share about your manuscript (pieces of the book have been published, the manuscript is a finalist for a book prize, you've been on a podcast, etc). We love good news!