Three of the UK’s leading literary agents — Madeleine Milburn, Abigail Bergstrom and Juliet Mushens — on what happens after an agent says yes: building a writing career that lasts, turning an idea into a distinct author brand, and moving forward after both success and disappointment.
Three of the UK’s leading literary agents — Madeleine Milburn, Abigail Bergstrom and Juliet Mushens — on what happens after an agent says yes: building a writing career that lasts, turning an idea into a distinct author brand, and moving forward after both success and disappointment.
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About the Guests
Madeleine Milburn has been on the committee of the Association of Authors’ Agents (AAA). She has appeared on The Bookseller’s list of the 150 most influential people in the book trade every year since 2017. Since founding the agency in 2012, Madeleine was awarded Literary Agent of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2018 and was shortlisted again in 2020. She has been responsible for discovering some of the highest-selling and award-winning contemporary authors who consistently hit the bestseller lists in the New York Times, including Nita Prose (The Maid), Costa Book Award winner and multi-million copy bestseller Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine), Ashley Audrain (The Push), Elizabeth Macneal (The Doll Factory) and Holly Bourne. She represents multiple bestselling crime and thriller brands, too, including C.L. Taylor, C.J. Tudor and Mark Edwards.
Abigail Bergstrom is a Welsh writer who has written for national magazines and broadsheets, including ELLE, Sunday Times Style, the Telegraph and Refinery29. Having worked in publishing for over a decade, she is an industry leader and an expert in navigating the cross-section between digital and print. She’s edited some of Britain’s most prominent feminist voices, was nominated for Literary Agent of the Year 2020, and was listed in The Bookseller 150. An intersectional feminist campaigner, she co-founded the campaign ‘This Doesn’t Mean Yes,’ which was covered in the media internationally. She founded Gleam Titles and now runs Bergstrom Studio, a literary agency and publishing consultancy, and writes the Substack newsletter Something to Say. She is the author of the novels What a Shame and Selfish Girls.
Juliet Mushens is the founder of Mushens Entertainment and has been a literary agent since 2011. More than a dozen of her clients are Sunday Times bestsellers, with more than half a dozen reaching the number one spot. Her clients include million-copy no. 1 bestseller Jessie Burton, multi-million copy NY Times bestseller Taran Matharu, and record-breaking multi-million copy no. 1 bestseller Richard Osman. The Times ran a piece recognising her as the first agent to represent the number 1, 2 and 3 UK bestsellers in the same week: ‘Star literary agent first to top the charts three times’, a feat she has since repeated. Juliet sits on the advisory board of Book Brunch, is President of the British Fantasy Society and sits on the board of the Women’s Prize Trust.