Propped my phone up on a tote bag to get a shot of my author’s book on a whole billboard!!!!!!! Big Big Leicester Square!!!! Needless to say I went into full Kris Jenner mode.
Told my man I was stressed about uni and eating right/my weight and this guy fucking cooked all my meals for a week straight, put them in boxes and told me to come back when they’re empty so he can do refill. Pls.
Told my man I was stressed about uni and eating right/my weight and this guy fucking cooked all my meals for a week straight, put them in boxes and told me to come back when they’re empty so he can do refill. Pls.
Literary agents at Curtis Brown are on a mission to find brilliant new writing talent. They will be offering £3,000 and representation to one winner, with a whole leap of writing courses & mentoring for runners-up!
Writers on my tl, get involved:
I am getting lots of lovely comments about this, thank you all very much for reading, am so glad it is resonating. While I have your attention I would like to say, the ability to be still was just as necessary when I was starting out as an assistant, learning as an intern.
"I no longer want to give so much of myself to the job that I forget to live, or chase after those moments in life that I forget how to find joy in even the most mundane aspects of work. I want to have balance",
@sileloquies
on protecting stillness:
I love writing this, and I hope that it is received exactly as intended. I would not have been able to write this without the incredible support I’ve received and the love that surrounds me. If this one resonates with you, I see you and you are not alone💖
Congratulations to our very own
@sileloquies
who has been shortlisted for the 2021 Trailblazer Awards!! The award recognises young, outstanding professionals with a flair for innovation and ambition in the book industry. 🤩🥳🎉
I am so pleased to be able to partner with
@AvonBooksUK
to find brilliant new writing talent. We will be offering £3,000, a two-book deal and representation to one winner, with a seminar to demystify the industry for the longlist!
.
@AvonBooksUK
has joined forces with agent
@sileloquies
at
@MushensEnt
for Avon x Mushens Entertainment Prize, a competition to find a new commercial writer of colour, with the winner handed a two-book deal! See more here:
I am sober enough to say something so buckle up! The first is congratulations, that’s an incredible list of achievements. The second is, it’s highly likely that you would not have been at the Harper party if that agent had signed you.
(a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own "privilege.")
"I no longer want to give so much of myself to the job that I forget to live, or chase after those moments in life that I forget how to find joy in even the most mundane aspects of work. I want to have balance",
@sileloquies
on protecting stillness:
So so pleased to be able to talk about this absolutely brilliant book! As soon as I read her viral essay, I knew Yewande would create a brilliant and necessary book. It’s been such a pleasure to watch her grow throughout this process and I can’t wait for everyone to read it!
"Reclaiming, is an important, enlightening, celebratory book about being who you are, not who you are expected to be, and there has never been a better time for this message than now",
@CoronetBooks
bags
@yewande_biala
's debut!
I am open for submissions here
@MushensEnt
!!
See our submissions page to find out what I am looking for and how you can send me your book ideas and manuscripts👀👀:
I’m finding myself increasingly Twitter tongue tied because I can’t express my rage or sadness accurately enough, and the funny stuff just isn’t funny enough to say right now. So before I delete the app for a little bit, I just wanted to say it’s okay to disengage sometimes.
"This is the lesson I learned from lockdown. That it is okay, and even good to be still, and that those moments of stillness can reap dividends."
Literary agent
@sileloquies
on how she's working differently post-lockdown (even during
#FBM21
):
Btw - kind, talented people who make mistakes are not actually kind if they react violently and aggressively to being told they’re in the wrong. This extends to people who try to defend them by being equally as [passive] aggressive.
Imposter Syndrome has been such a huge part of my working life that even acknowledging that I’m not majorly f*cking everything up is an achievement in and of itself.
"Being riddled with doubt and questioning whether I belong in the rooms I gained access to has become so ingrained in the way I work that I regularly forget to tell myself I am doing a good job."
@sileloquies
on imposter syndrome in publishing:
This is not it, respectfully. Anyone not in the job market for junior level roles shouldn’t be commenting like this on job postings based on what their personal experience was. Especially not from an account/platform that has a lot of influence in the industry.
I know we typically share entry level roles but I just want to say JESUS, WHAT A SALARY
For context, when I joined PRH as a Press Officer in the year 2018 my salary was £25,000 (less than a starting salary now)
Thank you
@PRHCareersUK
@PenguinUKBooks
Some big news today: the brilliant
@sileloquies
is joining
@MushensEnt
as a literary agent building a list of non-fiction and select fiction. Her first day is Monday and I am so excited for her to join our team!
@lizadeblock
Really pleased to have my first article in
@thebookseller
be about this absolutely fantastic novel that both triggered me and validated so many of my experiences.
"The novel is a window into what it is to survive as the only Black girl in a predominantly white space. I found myself laughing and cringing in equal measure..."
@sileloquies
on how she hopes
@zakiya_harris
's
#TheOtherBlackGirl
will change the book trade
No actually, I didn’t forget world book day again. Everything she is wearing is off a sales rack. Yep. I paid at least 65% maybe even 66% less than the full price of that outfit when I brought it, sooo she is dressed as…a high discount clause. Yeah.
Closed 2 deals today, finished editing a proposal, reading a client manuscript and actually filed my expenses. I have also had 2 cheese toasties and a slice of cake bigger than my head in the 40 minutes I’ve been home for. Are all of these things related? Couldn’t possibly say.
I cannot believe it has already been a full year of working
@MushensEnt
but time flies when you’ve found your calling and working with wonderful colleagues and brilliant brilliant authors etc
I am rarely able to contain my excitement when an author accepts my offer of representation - thrilled to have signed a brilliant romcom (think THE HATING GAME meets BEACH READ) by an equally brilliant author who matched my energy 😂
Organised my thoughts and frustrations on the industry workforce survey into something semi-coherent.
There really aren’t any excuses left for why we aren’t seeing the attraction, retention and progression of ‘BAME’ groups in publishing.
"The way that publishing has changed quickly to cope with the pandemic shows me that we are capable of swift and decisive action. Now is the time to change from our core."
@sileloquies
calls for the book trade to build on its current momentum and be bold
Absolutely over the moon to have signed the ever quotable and completely darling
@lawrenrae_
& her wonderfully funny and affirming book I’M NOT A WRITER 🥳🍾
I have proclaimed far and wide that I’m not one of the historical fiction girlies but trust the one and only
@kuchengcheng
to make me eat my words! The very first sentence of her novel The Library Thief had me desperate for more and I’m still absolutely in awe of it (and her!).
"Kuchenga has the kind of voice that electrifies you from the first page."
@BooksSphere
has acquired The Library Thief, a gothic mystery by début author
@kuchengcheng
.
Read here:
Welcome
@sileloquies
to the ME team as our new non-fiction agent! She starts on Monday and we couldn’t be more excited to see the brilliant books she represents 💫💫💫💫
I actually have so much to say about this, and if I speak they will tell me I’m being too loud, so what I will say is that finally being in a place where I can thrive rather than merely surviving has made me a better, happier person, and therefore (shockingly) a better agent.
Reminder for publishing and every other industry - they should be able to live on that is not an acceptable approach to salaries/one-off payments. Survival is a starting point, not an aspiration.
I'm absolutely delighted to share that I signed with the hottest young agent in town,
@sileloquies
at
@MushensEnt
, last week. She loved my memoir
#Daffodils
and has such amazing ideas for it. Together I hope we can set the literary world on fire. (Only metaphorically, of course.)
Three people have sent me this today and I still cannot believe that is *my* headshot on a post with some of the most incredible women in this industry 🥺
To the trailblazing Black women making indelible marks in UK publishing, we celebrate your achievements and resilience, we see you and salute you! Your voices resonate, inspiring us and generations to come.📚🎉
Apropos of nothing, a notion I would love more people to take into 2022 is the assurance that you don’t always have to tear something down to uplift something else 💗
For my birthday last year, I got the coat I had been pining for (for about three years), this year I got a bag to match and that is the story of how I came to be sitting in my living room with a fully packed bag wearing a coat in 20 degree weather at 11pm.
I am delighted to have signed Rhiannon for her brilliant, twisty and utterly addictive novel about two women who are linked by a tragic accident but have never met, until a chance encounter puts one of them in grave danger…
🌟 I am beyond excited to announce that I am now represented by
@sileloquies
at
@MushensEnt
. It still hasn’t quite sunk in yet, but I am so happy to have found the perfect person to champion my writing. 🌟
When mediocre, privately educated, cis-het, caucasian men get published and promoted it is assumed that they are there on merit, rather than being there because they belong to the small privileged section of society that somehow dominates the arts.
Why does being asked/told to do something that you are literally about to do anyway burn so much? Like yes, I was about to pick that up but now you have asked me to I want to leave it on the floor until the second coming???????
Over the moon to have signed the fabulous
@LauraJaneClark_
!! The absolute Queen of making beautiful homes on a budget, I cannot wait to share what she’s been working on 👀🏘📚
In a fighting mood so I want to ask, in an industry that’s overwhelmingly women, why don’t we have have better maternity/paternity/parental leave provisions and help with nursery in publishing??????
Can we stop this snobbery pls like look at the range of titles/genres here and the amount of backlist books getting face out placement in a bookshop. Newspapers aren’t the only valid charts/measure of a book’s success x
Not the big bookseller account too😭 the response to this article has been incredible. This piece was written for everyone in the industry, and beyond, who has ever been made to feel inferior. You’re not, and it’s on all of us to make sure it stops.
"Survivorship bias leaves out the vital voices of those who have struggled to thrive in the industry or who have left altogether".
Read
@sileloquies
's important article on why we need to fight survivor bias so tangible changes can be made in publishing:
Absolutely delighted to have signed Anna after reading her insightful, poignant project tracing the evolution of unlikeable female characters🥳🥳
She is just brimming with ideas and I’m so excited to get started!
⚡Personal news alert⚡Ecstatic to have signed with
@sileloquies
@MushensEnt
to rep me on all literary projects. Already practicing for my pretentious author portrait.
Not a single pronoun!! Shakes also never mentioned gender either - no characters asking to be unsexed, no characters masquerading as the opposite gender as an integral part of plots, no ironic jabs at the fact that men played all the parts onstage in the text itself. Classics!
Shakespeare didn’t walk around putting pronouns in his plays.
That’s why they’re classics.
Imagine if this dude wrote “My name is Macbeth and my pronouns are they/them”.
SMH.
We love it! Kuchenga has such a way with words and I am so privileged to be able to work with her on them. Remember her name, you'll be seeing it e v e r y w h e r e 🥳😍
“Call My Agent!”
Yep, I’m gonna be saying this all the time. I’ve been conducting a little X Factor for representation in my Gmail inbox and
@sileloquies
is the winner! 🥳🤩🥳🤩🥳🤩
Really enjoying this being thee most read piece on The Bookseller’s site, especially today. I hope people are reading it and seeing that sweeping toxicity under the rug is very 200and late. We’re collectively supporting each other and healing now 💖
I love writing this, and I hope that it is received exactly as intended. I would not have been able to write this without the incredible support I’ve received and the love that surrounds me. If this one resonates with you, I see you and you are not alone💖
This week’s
#CookbookCorner
features
#Plentiful
by
@denaimoore
, and I love it, I love it, I love it!
Read all about it and get her recipe for Crispy Rice Salad with Crunchy Green Vegetables and Salted Cashews here:
Being at the same bouji ass industry parties as someone who made it their mission to ruin me is so satisfying! Like wow bestie we’re both here look at us! 🫶🏾
If you’re at the HarperCollins party, you’ve had a great start to your career as an author and mentioning to an agent that they rejected you is not a flex and will likely just end up with an awkward conversation with someone who still doesn’t remember you. (4/4)
I am so excited for this! I will do a live-critique on a a few real query letters, and give some feedback. Then I’ll be staying for their onstage SNL which was so much fun last year, and meant I found a fantastic new author 🥺
Literary agent Silé Edwards
@sileloquies
will be joining us at this year's London Festival of Writing!
Silé will be showing us how to perfect our query letters.
Tickets are available now:
#LFOW24
We have to fill in a nursery feedback form and I asked my daughter what her favourite part of nursery is expecting her to say circle time or playing with friends etc. This girl said “I like snack time and leaving”. She’s just like me fr 🥺
Love my subconscious sending me a “you haven’t revised for the most important exam of your life” dream before the book fair. Idk who I contact but I’d like my stress dreams to be a bit less obvious pls
Sometimes my job involves delivering genuinely life changing, dream accomplishing news to someone I love and it is truly humbling, wonderful, warming, affirming shit that makes me bawl my eyes out. Today has been one of those days and I’m so grateful.
Absolutely devastated to announce that I have forgotten what a *good* passion fruit martini is supposed to taste like. I will not be taking questions at this difficult time.
One of my lovely colleagues has just sent me a picture of this in the bookseller, and I’m surprised my screams didn’t carry all the way over to Germany. THRILLED to be able to talk about the *incredible* deals for the most wonderful, fun novel.
From the Samantha Jones to Regina George and every “Unlikeable” female character in between, with an Annalise Keating reference or two which I am sure is just for me, Anna has written an INCREDIBLE book about how women are portrayed as unlikable on screen and why we love them❤️🔥
Um hi hello I wrote a book!! UNLIKEABLE FEMALE CHARACTERS traces the evolution of "unlikeable" women in film, TV and music. Out with
@Sourcebooks
in the US on 9 May and in the UK on 9 June.
✨PRE-ORDER HERE✨