Clients

Adult thrillers, tending toward the dark and literary.

Jacqueline Faber holds a PhD in comparative literature (Emory University), an MA in humanities (NYU), and a BA in philosophy (UC Santa Cruz). She taught writing and philosophy courses at Emory and NYU and adult fiction after graduation. For many years, she lived abroad—mainly in Italy, Germany, and Brazil. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles with her family and is head of content at NOVICA, an impact marketplace that works with global artisans, where she help craft their stories and lead a communications team.

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Essays, adult contemporary fiction, and young adult contemporary fiction, mainly focused on queer identities and sexuality, the experience of being mixed race, and family.

Tai Farnsworth is a mixed-race, queer writer living in San Francisco with her future wife and their many plant babies. Since earning her MFA from Antioch University, she’s been enthusiastically toiling away in education. When she’s not writing or poisoning young minds with her liberal agenda, she is reading, practicing yoga, and cooking. Her work, which focuses heavily on self-acceptance and queerness, can be found in Sinister Wisdom, Homology Lit, Drunk Monkeys, The B’K, Idle Ink, and forthcoming in Cobra Milk. She was a 2018 We Need Diverse Books mentee.

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STEM and fiction picture books, heavily based on her own experience growing up in the Dominican Republic and becoming an astronomer in the United States.

Rose D. Ferreira is a science communicator and astronomer born and raised in the Dominican Republic. After moving to the US and overcoming things like domestic abuse, poverty, and homelessness, she set out on a journey to gain a better understanding of our universe. When she is not daydreaming about space exploration or spending time with her son, she trains in astronautics and hopes to someday become an astronaut. She also focuses her attention on education access and equity, as well as activism for survivors of domestic, sexual abuse, and homelessness. Rose is an active member of science Twitter, where she has almost 50k followers.

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Nonfiction picture book and chapter book biographies, often cowritten with the subject or a subject’s family member.

After retiring from over forty years as an award-winning coach and choreographer of gymnastics and dance, Mindy Garza returned to school and earned an MFA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University, and she did post-graduate work in Writing Nonfiction for Children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her background in the arts inspires her writing, which has a special emphasis on creative nonfiction stories about individuals who have broken barriers and changed society.

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Middle grade contemporary fiction and young adult contemporary fiction and fantasy, with a particular interest in alternate histories and retellings, often swapping in a majority Black/POC cast.

Marquita Hockaday has a BA in history education, an MED in reading, a PhD in educational leadership, and an MFA in creative writing, which she earned from Fairleigh Dickinson University. After attending FDU, Marquita co-founded Black Fox Literary Magazine. She is currently Associate Editor at Voyage, a young adult literary journal. Marquita has done freelance developmental editing for fiction and nonfiction manuscripts, and, as an educator, she edits and provides feedback for academic papers. Marquita's short fiction is published in Oyster River Pages and The Start Literary Journal.

Adult and middle grade humorous nonfiction, pulling from his education and work studying folklore and the cultural origins of monsters.

Matthew Kessen is the writer, performer, director, and general creator of Reverend Matt’s Monster Science, a series of live comedy lectures on the enormous and varied subject of monsters that discusses prehistoric and mythological monsters and, in doing so, covers a multidisciplinary range of subjects, from history, to evolution, to psychology, and much more. Monster Science has been performed at the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Twin Cities Horror Festival, the CONvergence convention, the Monster Science Ensemble, libraries in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Fringe Festivals in Minneapolis and Tucson, where it won Best Solo Show. Matt livestreams his show monthly at revmattsmonsterscience.com.

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Essays, adult contemporary fiction, and fiction and nonfiction picture books, focusing on Chinese culture, her experience as a Chinese-American child and woman, and food.

Jenny Liao is a Chinese American writer with a focus on food and identity as a means to understand and embrace cultures—both others and our own. Her debut picture book, EVERYONE LOVES LUNCHTIME BUT ZIA, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2023, and a follow up picture book is slated for publication in 2024. Her work can also be found in The New Yorker and Bon Appetit. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.

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Fictional picture books, mainly focused on educating about Black culture, history, and holidays.

Nina Shelton is a television writer, producer, and director. She’s worked on children's shows including Sesame Street and Cyberchase. She has also written for Disney, Cartoon Network, HBO Family, Hallmark Channel, and Shondaland. Nina currently produces short documentaries for the PBS station in Arizona. She’s received eight Emmy-award nominations. More on her background can be found at ninashelton.com.

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STEM and fictional chapter books and picture books, pulling from her education in molecular biology, her experience having muscular dystrophy, and her love of language.

Tracy Smith Schmidt has a PhD in molecular biology from MIT and spent many years writing about DNA and proteins as the editor of the research journal Nature Structural Biology (while also filing away ideas for children’s stories about science, the environment, disability, and silly barnyard animals). She is a member of SCBWI and Julie Hedlund’s 12x12 Picture Book Writing Challenge. She was a #PBParty finalist in 2020.

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Adult contemporary fiction and essays, heavily analyzing Christianity in America, with particular focus on evangelical culture and what happens when one leaves the evangelical community.

Katharine Strange was raised in Missoula, Montana, where she spent eight years as a member of a Christian puppetry troop. She attended Seattle Pacific University just a few years after dancing was legalized there. In 2015, she moved to Seattle, where she works as a writer and anti-racism activist. Her articles have appeared online in places such as ScaryMommy, Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger, and the Seattle Times; her short fiction has been featured in Literary Yard; she is a Moth StorySlam and GrandSlam winner and has been invited to perform on their main stage; and she wrote a monthly column for the now-defunct Fundamentally Free, a blog for #exvangelicals and heretics. She is a member of 2022 Jack Straw Writers.

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Nonfiction picture books about Chinese culture and history and middle grade fantasy in the vein of Rick Riordan that explores Chinese and Indonesian history, folklore, and mythology.

Vivian Tan is the author of illustrated children’s books on Chinese culture and history, written under the pen name Jillian Lin. She holds a master’s degree in publishing studies and has lived in The Netherlands; the UK; and Singapore, where she worked as an educational-book editor. She's now happily settled in Sydney, Australia.

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Fiction picture books and chapter books and middle grade contemporary fiction and mystery, focusing on Indigenous culture, ancestry, family, and friendship.

A youth librarian by day, Stacy Wells gets to buy books that spark the imagination. At night, she dreams up stories. Stacy’s favorite stories to write are those that capture simple everyday moments against the struggles that come with growing up. As a member of the Choctaw Nation, her books center her heritage. She is the author of HOOP DANCER DETERMINATION by Jack Maddox (Capstone 2022) and co-author of STRONGER THAN (Harpercollins/Heartdrum 2025).

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Adult contemporary fiction, essays, and nonfiction; middle grade nonfiction; and fiction and nonfiction chapter books and picture books. Her work pulls heavily from her expertise in health, wellness, and nutrition; her interest in the beauty and food industries; and her experience as a Black biracial girl and woman..

Rachel Werner is a teaching artist for Hugo House, the Loft Literary Center, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop Denver, in addition to being the founder of The Little Book Project WI (a community arts initiative committed to pursuing social justice through narrative). Her literary writing and craft essays have been published by Off Menu Press, Digging Through the Fat, and Voyage YA Literary Journal. A selection of Rachel's recipes are also included in Wisconsin Cocktails (UW-Press, 2020), and her poetry can be found in the anthology Hope Is The Thing: Wisconsinites On Hope and Resilience in the Time of Covid-19 (The Wisconsin Historical Society, 2021). A regular book reviewer for Shelf Awareness, she has contributed print, photography, and video content to We Are Teachers, Highlights Foundation, TheKitchn, Spruce Eats, Fabulous Wisconsin, BLK+GRN, BRAVA, Madison Magazine, and Entrepreneurial Chef. She is the author of Author of Wild Earth Science: FLOODS (Capstone, January 2022) and an untitled picture book slated for publication in 2024, also from Capstone.

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