special section ▪ LITERARY AGENTS57 POETS & WRITERS^when she was in her final
year of the M FA program
at the University of Michi-
gan. On December 17, 2014,
Jezebel published an essay by
Brit titled “I Don’t Know
What to Do With Good
White People” that went
viral. “As soon as that essay
published, I knew that it was
going to be big,” Julia says.
“I think it was already at sev-
eral hundred thousand page
views by the time I read it.
And I looked in the white
pages to see if I could find
her phone number and—I
don’t remember doing this,
but—I apparently left a
voice mail on her mother’s
answering machine in Cali-
fornia. Brit says she was in
a class, and her mom called
her cell phone...so she ran
out of the class to make sure
everything was okay. ‘An
agent just left a voice mail
for you; I think it’s really
important!’ I don’t remem-
ber doing that, but it’s not
unlike me.... I knew that I wouldn’t
be the only agent to reach out to her. I
think nine ultimately did. And I wanted
to make an impression by getting in
early and showing her that I was really
passionate, because at that point I hadn’t
even had one of my client’s books pub-
lished yet. Brit’s book was my first book
to publish. It was not the first book I
sold, but it was my first one to publish.
So I didn’t have a lot that I felt like I
could trade off of other than the power
of my conviction and the passion that I
had for her.”
When the two of them eventually
talked, Julia asked Brit if she was work-
ing on an essay collection. When she
learned Brit was actually writing a novel,
The Mothers, about a seventeen-year-old
whose pregnancy leads to a decision that
shapes her life and the lives of those
around her forever, Julia asked for the
first chapter. “I read that chapter and I
was like, ‘Holy shit. This is amazing.’ Ifelt like that immediate electricity com-
ing off the page, sizzling in my hands,
and I’m like, ‘Okay, where’s the rest?’”
Four weeks later, when Brit sent the full
manuscript, as she had requested, Julia
cleared her schedule and read it the same
day it arrived. She was so blown away
by it that she called Brit that evening
to tell her she loved it and thought she
could sell it. “She was so funny because
Brit is very reserved and very cool and
collected as a person,” Julia says. “She
just was like, ‘Oh, thank you so much
for reading so quickly. Can we schedule
a call to talk about this tomorrow? Right
now is not good for me.’”
Julia figured Brit was fielding offers
from other agents. “I just had to as-
sume that almost everybody who had
two eyes and a beating heart and a brain
would be able to recognize very fast
that this was an incredible talent.” She
scheduled a call with Brit for the fol-
lowing morning and, at the appointedhour, made the case for why
she should be Brit’s agent. It
didn’t go very well. “I just
felt really unsatisfied with
the conversation. I hadn’t
asked her enough ques-
tions,” Julia admits. “And I
remember talking to Mary
Evans’s assistant about
whether or not I should
call her back, because [Brit]
isn’t here in New York, so I
can’t take her to lunch and
show her how cool I am and
find out more about her.”
After much deliberation
Julia did call her back that
same morning, and the two
ended up talking for two
more hours. Even after that
Julia wasn’t confident. “I do
remember that it was this
agonizing stretch of time.
I felt completely convinced
that she wouldn’t sign with
me but that I had done ev-
erything I could. So I could
at least take some small
comfort in that I was going
after the right people.”
But Brit did choose Julia, and when
Julia sent The Mothers out to editors,
right before the 2015 London Book
Fair, Sarah McGrath, vice president
and editor in chief of Riverhead Books,
put in a significant preempt that was
too good to pass up. The novel was
published in October 2016, quickly be-
came a New York Times best-seller, and
was named a finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard
Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham
Prize, and the New York Public Li-
brary Young Lions Fiction Award.
Julia and Brit’s relationship is a great
success story, but it’s also a good re-
minder of the effort that agents often
put into finding their authors. It also
shows that the balance of power is
not always weighted so heavily in the
agent’s favor. While it may seem like
agents hold all the cards, it’s important
to remember that agents hope writers
will choose them, too.Julia Kardon of Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency.tony gale