Writers: I want all your quirky coming of age (adult) novels. If it’s slipstream, speculative, weird, dreamy, send it my way. I want witches. I would like to see anything that gets weird in similar ways to Daisy Johnson. If it feels like a punch to my face, great! #mswl

@emme_lund novel, The Boy With a Bird in His Chest (see above) is EXACTLY the type of book I want to represent (and do!)

Send me your weirdos! Send me salacious gossipy nasty unreliable voices. Make me feel uncomfortable like a Moshfegh book. Put lots of sex in it!

Other things I love and want in my inbox: the dirty south, secrets, poetic language, TOXIC relationships, folklore (especially non-western folklore), legends, retellings, fairy tales, characters I love to hate, URGENCY in narrative drive, backasswards societies!

Things I don't love: books that tell me what the big climactic moment is in the beginning, an imbalance in flashback and current narrative, books without emotional reckonings or lacking interiority of women characters. <3

DO NOTE: I am ALWAYS looking for marginalized voices, #ownvoices, voices in translation, first-gen writers, immigrants, writers living through homelessness or poverty, LGBTQIA writers, writers from not often represented geographical regions, and religious diversity! PLEASE SEND.

Since I can go on, I think I will: SEND ME YOUR MOODY BOOKS. Shirley Jackson, Carmen Maria Machado (if you also use slick 87 times, I’m probably into it), VC Andrews—books that feel ahead of their time because they’re morally ambiguous, eerie, raunchy, SCANDALOUS!

I am OBSESSED with Kelly Barnhill’s Dreadful Young Ladies and it feels like NO ONE is writing something in that insect vein, but if you are, this is the billboard: I WANT IT.

Okay, last one: if you’re writing a book that makes you so nervous about what it contains, or a book that scares you because your spilling your very blood on those pages, sendittome—those are the ones ONLY YOU can write, and I want to HONOR THEM.

Of course I used the wrong your. Life is too hard right now, y’all.

Oh, PS: Submissions(@)howlandliterary(.)com

Query letter (short synopsis--7-10 sentences--main character/conflict+theme, comp titles (books, movies, music, video games), bio).
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Opening twenty pages (or a good stopping point a few pages before / after).