is lovely, knowing the author was masterfully weav-
ing things together to bring the reader to a very specifi c
point in the story.JOHNSON: I love observations that make you realize
how strange everyday things are: descriptions, whether
cutting or guileless, that make us look askance at the
mundane. I just fi nished Elif Batuman’s Th e Idiot, so the
example that comes most readily to mind is when the
narrator Selin lists the many various extra-moisturizing,
damage-control conditioners in her relatives’ shower,
and how concerned she therefore is about the state of
their hair. It wasn’t a fl owery, eff usive paragraph, but
made me wonder what Selin might make of my own
bathroom cabinet (all those eye creams!). Human behav-
ior captured on a small scale is more interesting to me
than grand pronouncements about the state of the world,
though I fi nd that in the most satisfying novels, those
tiny personal moments accumulate to that grand pro-
nouncement on their own.WARNOCK: I’d break it even further down to the sentence
or word. Even a single word, when used as only a certain
author can, makes me pause. I want someone who has
their own relationship with the language.WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE LITERARY
NOVELS?
CAPRON: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is my favorite novel
of all time. It is weird and risk-taking and immersive and
utterly compelling. Among my own clients (though I love
them all, of course!), a few literary novels that represent
my taste include Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie
Yanique, Th e First Rule of Swimming by Courtney Anglea
Brkic, and Th e Great Eastern by Howard Rodman.
HYDE: How much time do we have? Without going
into classics, here are some off the top of my head: Th e
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Nobody’s
Fool by Richard Russo, Th e Hiding Place by Trezza
Azzopardi, Th e Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman, Th e
Widow Nash by Jamie Harrison, Breath, Eyes, Memory by
Edwidge Danticat, Th e Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
& Clay by Michael Chabon, Th e River by Tricia Wastvedt,
Th e Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, Motherless
Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, Th e Eyre Aff air by Jasper
Fforde, Th e Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, Logic by
Olympia Vernon, Deafening by Frances Itani, Th e History
of Love by Nicole Krauss, Catalina by Liska Jacobs, A
Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Th e Time
Tra v e l e r’s Wi f e by Audrey Niff enegger, Let the Great
Worl d Spin by Colum McCann, and Th e Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver.
Some of these are clients, some I was an editor or
assistant editor for, and some you might say seem more
“genre” or “commercial” than literary! And I know as
soon as this interview is over I’ll want to add 20 more ...JOHNSON: I am an evangelist for Ben Lerner’s Leaving the
Atocha Station and Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store
Woman, both of which (like Th e Idiot) capture so much
about the pain and ceaseless eff ort of making your-
self translate to other people, and vice versa. Recently,
also, I’ve loved Anne Enright’s Th e Green Road, Jamie
Quatro’s Fire Sermon, and Catherine Lacey’s Nobody
Is Ever Missing. And Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women
is like rainy day comfort food for me—a short and
immensely funny book about human longing and loneli-
ness, the way our small worlds are so important to us.WARNOCK: I’m going to cheat and pick authors because
for me, it’s less of a matter of falling in love with a book
and more a matter of falling in love with a voice. Justin
Torres, Lidia Yuknavitch, Lance Olsen, Carole Maso,
Brian Evenson, Matt Bell—each of these are wildly diff er-
ent, and when you read one of their books, you’ll want to
read the rest of them.WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR IN A LITERARY FICTION
SUBMISSION THAT YOU MAY NOT CARE AS MUCH
ABOUT WITH OTHER WORKS? IN OTHER WORDS,
WHAT ARE SOME SPECIFIC PITCH TIPS RELATED
TO LITERARY FICTION?
CAPRON: For me, it’s truly about voice. I have to fall in
love with the voice and the style in the fi rst few pages.HWANG: Since so much of the “action” in literary fi ction
is internal, I always look for the source of central tension
running through the work, the heartbeat and pulse of the
story itself. What is it? And is it strong enough to sustain
and compel the reader from beginning to end? As an
agent who represents both literary fi ction and nonfi ction,
I’m always considering platform, though the word “plat-
form” means two very diff erent things in literary fi ction
compared to nonfi ction. In nonfi ction, platform is all
about statistics (how many followers, velocity of growth,
how many views, etc.). In literary fi ction, “platform” is
more about prestige. For instance, oft entimes in a literaryWritersDigest.com I 35