Celie Gore

Like so many of you, we are gravely alarmed by the present administration’s recent broad ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries. Our hearts ache for the innocent people affected. We also fear the message sent by these bans to people within our country and to those outside of our borders. But we are also heartened by the immediate and widespread opposition these bans have met. And we’d like to do our part!

Literary agents are in a unique position to help contribute to bringing more empathy, compassion, understanding and tolerance into this world through books. We seek out unheard voices so that others can hear them.

We are a group of literary agents having an open call for book submissions by Muslim writers. We all agree that the current political climate demands a need for a greater presence of authors of Muslim heritage in the book marketplace. We are taking action to help make that happen.

Here are instructions for submitting writers of Muslim heritage: (Please note that we cannot respond to queries under the Open Call that do not fit our Muslim heritage criteria)

• For your manuscript to be considered, please include “Open Call” in the subject line of your email.
• Please abide by the individual submission guidelines laid out on our agency websites. For example, many agents do not accept attachments.
• Only submit to an agent if your work is one of the genres they represent. A children’s book agent can’t do anything with an adult memoir submission, etc.

***UPDATE*** The Muslim Writers Club has linked to the individual agents’ submission guidelines here.

Whitley Abell of Inklings Literary Agency is open to middle grade, young adult, and select adult fiction (namely women’s fiction and fantasy).

Lauren Abramo of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret is looking for adult fiction (romance, women’s fiction, thrillers, general, and literary), adult nonfiction (of all kinds, especially social justice oriented), YA fiction (contemporary, romance, thrillers), and middle grade fiction (contemporary, fantasy, adventure).

Jessica Alvarez at BookEnds Literary is looking for commercial fiction, particularly women’s fiction, romance, suspense and thrillers.

Jennifer Azantian of Azantian Literary Agency is seeking middle grade, young adult and adult fiction.

More details