9 Agents Who Really Want To Read Your Memoir
+ 9 Recent Debut Memoirs To Inspire You
Memoirs are not self-help, but yeah they can feel like it sometimes and so freakin’ what. They can also feel like the gossip section of a glossy celeb mag (wait, isn’t the whole thing a giant gossip section) and yet again I say, so what! At their best (imho) memoirs are as brilliant and beautiful and sexy as Lidia Yuknavitch’s Chronology of Water. At their worst, they are overstuffed with information about how the paint dried in your childhood bedroom as you cried to [insert sad thing]. Gosh, I sound jaded. But it doesn’t matter how I sound because when it comes to the literary industry, the answer to whether or not you should write your memoir and try to query it is a resounding YES!
While some people might feel true hardcore memoirs peaked in the 90s and early aughts, a lot of people feel like they’re only just swinging back into focus while also allowing for some genre-bending, critical, as well as emotional creativity.
In many parts of the world, when other genre book sales struggle, memoir sales skyrocket. At the end of the day, memoir's appeal is timeless. Examining your life is therapeutic - it helps make sense of things. That old chestnut about the "unexamined life" still rings true. In a chaotic modern world, a memoir offers something grounding.
Having said that, generally self-published memoirs don’t really do well. Many times, other genres that are self-published (like sci-fi/fantasy or especially romance, for example) can do extremely well. But with memoirs, you gotta go down that traditional route if you’re really looking to grab eyeballs and stir pots. So, without further ado, here are 9 agents who really want to read your memoir!
This list includes:
The agent & agency they work for
What they are looking for right now
Favorite books/writers where we could find that
Authors they’ve represented
Where to query them
What else do you want to know? If we can find it, we’ll include it.
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