AgentSpeak: Character-Based Literary Fiction

March 22nd, 2005 · No Comments
by Kassia Krozser

Agent Amy Rennert defines her taste as character-based literary fiction. This is a catch-phrase we actually get, thanks to her helpful examples (and, also, meeting Rennert at a conference). All she had to do was say “Anne Tyler”, and we got it. Why can’t everything in life be this easy? Also, for those of you who still like to debate the Agents Must Be New York Based/Agents Can Work Anywhere issue, here is a topic for thirty-second discussion (with time for rebuttal):

Rennert’s home base is in the headlands of Marin, Calif., but her clients are sprinkled far and wide—from Italy to Pennsylvania—and she’s a native New Yorker, so she finds it easy to keep in touch with the major houses as well as smaller presses like New World Library and Soho Press. Which is really what matters, she says: “It doesn’t matter where an agent lives. What matters, I think, is who an agent is doing business with.”

Vitals: The Amy Rennert Agency, Inc, 98 Main St, #302, Tiburon, CA, 94920. She owns her own eponymous domain (how we’ve longed to type that phrase), but, alas, does not yet possess a website. Sigh.

File Under: Agents