London Writers' Salon

#209: Literary Agent Rachel Mann — What Makes an Agent Say Yes, Navigating the Submissions Process, and the Tension Between Art and Commerce

Episode Summary

CAA literary agent Rachel Mann on what makes her say yes to a manuscript, how to navigate the submissions process without losing control of your career, and why cutting is the work that makes prose land.

Episode Notes

CAA literary agent Rachel Mann on what makes her say yes to a manuscript, how to navigate the submissions process without losing control of your career, and why cutting is the work that makes prose land.

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About Rachel Mann

Rachel Mann is a Literary Agent at CAA and represents a broad range of work – largely fiction, with some non-fiction — from commercial to literary, in adult, young adult, and middle-grade markets.

Her clients include Eliza Clark, Caleb Femi, Jade LB and Aisling Rawle, and have won and been listed for major prizes, including the Granta Best Young British Novelist, the Forward Prize for Poetry, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, The Bookseller Discover Prize, and the Carnegie Medal.

She spent ten years editing and commissioning fiction for young people at houses including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and was global publishing director at the Roald Dahl Story Company. She became an agent in 2018 and joined CAA in 2023.