ONE part of my job (and a part that I am constantly trying to find more time for) is e-mailing prospective authors. While the majority of my clients do come to me via the “slush pile”—the unsolicited queries writers send to me—sometimes I write to them first. When articles, essays, short stories, or profiles catch my eye, I make a note to reach out to the writer, expressing my enthusiasm for the work I’ve read, seeing what else they’re working on, and checking whether they’re agented.
I do this for both fiction and nonfiction—which is how I found one of my clients, Nancy Jooyoun Kim. I approached her regarding a nonfiction piece, “Heaven Lake,” about the death of her father, hiking, and the reunification of Korea best-seller (Park Row, 2020). This goes to show how much of what we do is about following instincts with an understanding that this business can be very slow. I asked Nancy to share her own experience of what it’s like to be approached by an agent:
