M
Y FIRST full-time job in
New York, after months
of freelance proofread-
ing and temp jobs, was at
W. H. Freeman, an imprint of Mac-
millan. On my first day, when I walked
through Madison Square Park to the
black skyscraper that held my modest
cubicle thirty-seven stories above Mad-
ison Avenue, across from the iconic
Flatiron Building, my heart did a little
somersault. I had made it. It didn’t last
long—I left that job after eight months
or so—but it was still a great moment.
I’m in a hurry as I walk through
Madison Square Park this afternoon,
but every time I’m in the neighborhood
I can’t help but look up at that black
building to find the window—not mine,
I never had one—through which my
former boss, Erika Goldman (now the
publisher of Bellevue Literary Press),
saw the city’s skyline. After a quick
look I pick up the pace, fast-walking a
couple of blocks west to the restaurant
at which I’m meeting Kent Wolf, an
agent at the Friedrich Agency. When
he suggested Maysville for lunch, I had
to look it up to see whether we needed
a reservation. It took me thirty seconds
to discover that we would be eating
lunch two days before the Southern-
inspired eatery and bar that boasts 150
different American whiskeys is sched-
uled to close, for good. Two questions:
Does this mean the place will be empty
or crowded, and does the drink menu
suggest I’ll get a taste of those inebriat-
ing publishing lunches I’d read about?
The first question is answered the
moment I step inside: It’s neither packed
nor deserted, which is not a great sign
for a Manhattan restaurant on a Friday
afternoon, hence, I assume, the closing.
The answer to my second question takes
longer, but in the end: No, those days
appear to be over. It’s a couple cans of
cold soda for me and Kent, who is from
Illinois—he attended Illinois Wesleyan
University in Bloomington—and has a
delightfully sly sense of humor. At one
point in the conversation he directs my
attention to a gentleman wearing an im-
pressive mullet (business in the front,
party in the back), a hairstyle we both
recognize from our days in the Midwest.
Before moving to the Friedrich
Agency, Kent was an agent at Lippin-
cott Massie McQuilkin. He got his start
in publishing on the editorial side, at
the independent press Dalkey Archive,
before working as a literary scout at Mc-
Inerney International, then moving to
Harcourt, for which he was the subsid-
iary rights manager until 2008, when
he lost his job as a result of Harcourt’s
merger with Houghton Mifflin.
“This is a very relationship-based
business,” Kent tells me after we get
settled and I ask him if agents are a par-
ticularly competitive bunch. “Whether
it’s me or somebody at ICM or some-
body at, God forbid, the Wylie Agency,
we’re all good at our jobs; we all have
the same relationships, but sometimes
authors look for different kinds of ex-
perience, and some prefer being at a
boutique agency like the Friedrich
Agency because we’re very hands-on,
and you don’t have to go through lay-
ers of nameless assistants—you know,
like [email protected]—to
get to me, Lucy Carson, Heather Carr,
or Molly Friedrich,” he says, referring
to the sole members of the Friedrich
Agency team. “But some authors pre-
fer someone in accounts payable who
processes their checks, or the allure of
a foreign-rights team, or an agency that
has their own book-to-film division,
and those are things we can’t provide
as an agency. But if you look at our track
record, it speaks for itself.”
This is true, and among the agency’s
impressive roster of clients, one in par-
ticular jumps off the page: Carmen
Maria Machado, who is represented by
the guy sitting across from me.
Just as Julia Kardon reached out to
Brit Bennett after reading an essay
she had published online, Kent got in
touch with Carmen in 2015 after read-
ing a piece she’d written for the Rumpus.
Throughout our conversation Kent
drops a number of references to literary
magazines—Ploughshares, Guernica—
that he scours, looking for new talent.
I ask him if he can list more of his fa-
vorite journals. “If I tell you, then other
agents will start reading them,” he says,
which makes me think my earlier ques-
tion about competition among agents
was on point. Saturdays and Sundays,
he says, one can find him in the read-
ing room of the Center for Fiction, just
around the corner from where he lives
in Brooklyn, reading stories and manu-
scripts. He found another of his clients,
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, after reading
a story of hers in Guernica. Her debut
novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, was
published by Doubleday in July 2018.
Doubleday, of course, is a part of the
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,
which is itself a part of Penguin Ran-
dom House, the multinational con-
glomerate formed in 2013 from the
merger of Random House, owned by
German media conglomerate Bertels-
mann, and Penguin Group, owned by
British publishing company Pearson.
Carmen’s story collection, Her Body
and Other Parties, did not find a home
at Penguin Random House, or any of
the other publishers comprising the Big
Five that currently dominate the com-
mercial publishing market. As a mat-
ter of fact, close to thirty publishers,
including some small indies, declined
before Kent found an editor and a press
willing to take a risk on the debut story
collection. “Graywolf was our last port
of call,” Kent says. “It’s difficult to say
special section ▪ LITERARY AGENTS
JULY AUGUST 2019 58
Friday
1:30 PM
Maysville
17 West 26th Street
▪ Avocado egg salad
sandwich: mixed greens,
crispy shallots
▪ Cobb salad: romaine, grape
tomatoes, avocado, hard-
boiled eggs, blue cheese
▪ Cajun spiced nuts: garlic,
rosemary
▪ Diet Coke, ginger ale
