Your chance to put your questions about the publishing process to literary agents: Clare Coombes from the Liverpool Literary Agency, Davinia Andrew Lynch from Curtis Brown and Marilia Savvides from The Plot Agency.
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 She also co-founded, in conjunction with Faber Children’s, the FAB Prize, which aims to discover unpublished children’s writers and illustrators from Black and Ethnic Minority backgrounds (www.fabprize.org)
Marilia Savvides is a literary agent and the founder of The Plot Agency, which she set up in 2024, with a commitment to centering and championing authors and great stories. She began her career in publishing at Peters Fraser and Dunlop, where she spent eight years, first as international rights agent where she represented and sold translation rights across the agency’s client list, and later as literary agent, building her own list of authors. In 2019, she joined 42MP, where she worked as a literary agent for four years, helping to launch and set up the Book Division. She has a Law Degree from UCL and is a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in New York. She was selected as a Bookseller Rising Star in 2018, and was also a returning member of the faculty at the Columbia Publishing Course at Oxford University, for several years. She is proud to represent an eclectic and talented list of writers and works closely with them on strategy and vision for their books and careers. From editing manuscripts, building pitches, securing the best publishing deals, and exploring book to film opportunities, The Plot Agency is dedicated to building and growing authors’ careers and protecting their rights, always with a global vision.
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.
ACCESSIBILITY: This event will have live subtitling by Stagetext to improve accessibility.
Date: Tuesday 16 April
Time: 7pm-8pm
Online
Tickets: £5 (booking required)
Age guidance: 16+
