Ask an Agent

Your chance to put your questions about the publishing process to literary agents, including Clare Coombes from the Liverpool Literary Agency and Davinia Andrew Lynch from Curtis Brown. 
 
Clare Coombes set up the first Liverpool-based literary agency in 2020 to help address inequality and underrepresentation in the publishing industry. With more than 15 years’ experience of writing and editing professionally, including the publication of two novels, Definitions (2015) and We Are of Dust (2018 – which has received development funding from the Liverpool Film Office for a TV adaptation), she has developed an in-depth knowledge of what commissioning editors and publishers expect to see from a submitted manuscript. With a background in PR and marketing, alongside teaching on creative writing programmes, Clare also has extensive experience in pitching and promoting writers. She also works as an editor with Jericho Writers. Clare would love to see historical fiction, crime fiction, psychological thrillers and women’s fiction, but as a new agent, she is open to all great writing with a strong hook in any area (excluding non-fiction, children’s and YA). She actively encourages submissions from writers who have been traditionally under-represented. 
 
Davinia Andrew Lynch joined Curtis Brown in 2023 and represents a growing list of commercial adult fiction as well as children’s/YA writers and illustrators across the genres.  
A complete 90s child with a love of film and TV, she has been shaped by the storytelling of the time – big, bold and pacy but with characters you can’t help but love. She is looking for stories that smack you between the eyes, capture your heart, make you laugh (no matter the story or genre) and genuinely reflect the world in which we live. Above all, she wants to give writers and illustrators the space to tell the stories that they want to tell. Prior to joining Curtis Brown, she founded and ran the boutique literary agency Andlyn and was formerly a film/TV agent. She also co-founded, in conjunction with Faber Children’s, the FAB Prize, which aims to discover unpublished children’s writers and illustrators from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds (www.fabprize.org) 
 
Note: this event will take place online as a Zoom webinar. A link to access the event will be sent to you the day before the webinar takes place.