My long-time agent, Carrie Pestritto, has been such a wonderful friend and advocate. I started out as her intern, and then was thrilled when she agreed to represent my picture books. Over the years, Carrie has sold many books for me and provided invaluable feedback for my career.
In the last year, though, my projects started to shift away from Carrie’s focus as an agent. Carrie and I started discussing a *friendly* break up.
This was absolutely terrifying. Before I started writing picture books, I had written and shelved three YA novels after hundreds of rejections from agents. I knew how hard it was to find a new agent, and especially to find one in the picture book market. Carrie had been my agent for seven years and my friend and colleague for much longer.
I wax poetic a lot about the importance of building a community of writers–and how impactful the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) has been on my career.
Well, here’s a story to show the proof in my poetic waxing.
When Carrie and I first started talking about maybe splitting, I reached out to my picture book author friends to ask how they felt about their agents. Some of these friends came from SCBWI, some from Pitch Wars (yes, that was for novels, but a few of us write picture books, too!), and some from debut and marketing groups. My friend Christine Van Zandt recommended a webinar about “Breaking Up With Your Agent” put on by the San Fransisco North and East Bay region of SCBWI. I never would have found this without Christine, as I’m in Maryland! Thank you so much to the panelists Natasha Yim, Nadia Salomon, and Jennifer Lynn Alvarez, and moderator Brenda Buchanan. They gave me the courage to realize that it was time to split, and that I’d be ok when I did.
So Carrie and I parted ways, with promises to stay friends.
Then, enter my magical friend, Hema Penmetsa. Hema and I met during Pitch Wars, when we were both working on novels. Somehow, we found out we were both working on picture books too, and became critique partners. Watch out for Hema’s debut picture book, “A Language All Our Own,” coming out from Abrams in 2027! Hema thought her agent might like my books–and even better, her agent loves horses just like I do!
Sure enough, it was a perfect match.
I am so pleased to announce that I am now represented by Elizabeth Rudnick at the Gillian MacKenzie Agency. I honestly can’t believe how quickly this happened. I’m so excited to work with Elizabeth to bring funny, heartfelt books for kids into the world! And some about horses, of course!
Stay tuned!
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