I’d LOVE a thriller, I adore Lisa Jewell type writing for the domestic thriller brilliantly written (highly recommend Five by Ilona Bannister and It’s Not What You Think by Clare Mackintosh), and I am searching for something that has the fast-paced vibe of The Bourne Identity, and anything that cleverly winds in AI is a winner. I'm actually starving for a thriller I must say, so please thriller writers, send in your work! An epic love story would grab me, along the lines of Maybe Next Time by Cesca Major or Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, but a quieter and more profound love story like Three Days in June by Anne Tyler would also hit the spot. I really enjoy creepy reads too. I’d adore to see something like Stranger Things in book form, but I am also talking about subtly, cleverly creepy books such as Strange Houses by Uketsu. I am open to everything, really – perhaps not hardcore sci-fi – I have a very open mind about books. The writing is most important of all so feel free to try it out on me.

I do love a question or a cliffhanger. Something that makes me NEED to read on to find out what on earth could possibly happen/did happen! Or an instant insight into some delicious character I would love to get to know. The first few pages must tantalise and give us a good flavour of your writing and a sense of anticipation.

Good writing is key. Really interesting characters. Distinctive voice. The voice is critical to me. I think a plot can be improved fairly easily if it’s not quite there, but I think a voice is hard to fake. The voice has got to bring me in straight away, I need to believe in it and feel like I am inside the head of the character or in the centre of the story. The characters don’t need to be good, or ‘like me’ or even very understandable – they just need to be believable, interesting, present. I can always tell when an author doesn’t quite believe in their own characters, it shows. I need to have an idea quite soon of where the story is going, where it might sit in the market, but most of all I just need to have that feeling of "Oh goodness, I need to find out more!". To that end, I am quite a fan of opening with a scene that entices or enthralls or shocks.

I represent a huge breadth of fiction (and non) and what they all have in common is a talent for storytelling. Trend-wise, we are seeing a big demand for ‘feel-good’ fiction about real people with all their flaws, such as Virginia Evans' The Correspondent and Anne Tyler's Three Days in June; clever suspense/mystery books (think Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke and Five by Ilona Bannister); writing that tackles or highlights diversity/feeling out of place (think Abi Daré's The Girl with the Louding Voice and Candice Carty-Williams' Queenie). I love all the above and I do adore a spooky tale, too – I have two fabulous ones coming out soon: The Residency by C D Major and The House of Cursed Daughters by C J Cooke. Female rage is also fascinating, not necessarily the comic murdering-people type (there's a lot of that nowadays) but something more subtle and psychological like Lucy Rose's The Lamb.

A book that holds me at arms’ length is not going to do it for me. I also really dislike dialect in writing. This could be because I am deaf so I cannot ‘hear’ it in my head – this is my issue, not the author's, but I cannot get into it. It puts up a barrier between me and the story.

Alex’s third book, The Midnight Guests, is about to be published. It is set in 1926 and is a glossy, dark, page-turning mystery to rival The White Lotus, and unfolds over twenty-four fateful hours in London's most lavish hotel. We have also found Alex a new and additional home with HarperVoyager in the UK and Grand Central in the US for his huge and ambitious grounded fantasy, The Majesty. It's the best of both worlds, two parallel writing careers, and has been great fun.

At Curtis Brown, we've always championed debut authors and new writing, as well as established brand authors, and we represent a wide variety of bestselling and prize-winning writers across adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction. To note some recent highlights this year: we were delighted to see Katie Kitamura’s Audition being longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Anthony Shapland’s A Room Above a Shop nominated for the Gordon Burn Prize, and A Family Matter by Claire Lynch winning the Nero Book Awards Gold Prize.

As an agency, we're very committed to inspiring, seeking out and supporting new writers, especially from underrepresented backgrounds. We work closely with the Discoveries Prize, which invites unpublished and unagented women writers in the UK and Ireland to submit the opening of a novel, and in 2023, we launched Project North to expand our connections with the northern literary and publishing communities.

A really useful exercise is to to write yourself a short pitch to clarify where your story is going, and to keep yourself on track. Don’t start rabbiting off down little detours. You MUST know what this story is, and keep that vision. If you don’t know what you are writing, I don’t know what I am reading. THE PITCH NEEDS TO BE GOOD. 
Persevere.
Write something every day even if it is only 10 words.
When it flows, let it flow (even if it's rubbish and you delete it later).
Be brave. Enter your book! What have you got to lose? Nothing! Even if you just gain some encouragement, that is invaluable in itself. And anyway, there is no such thing as failure here! Remember that each time you enter a competition or submit a story or a piece of writing for anything, you are getting closer to your dream, step by step. 
So:
Get that opening truly dazzling. Does it draw us in? Does it compel?
Read your work again, out loud if you can bear to, so it is in the very best shape you are able to get it to.
Be sure of what your book is. Be able to tell someone what it is about in a few lines. Draw a whole scene in just a brushstroke – leave something to our imagination. And keep reminding yourself, “SHOW, DON’T TELL.” Show that the character is heartbroken or ecstatic. Don’t just tell us.
And remember: be brave!

This is not my first rodeo as a judge and it’s something I always love! Over the last few years, I’ve judged both the Curtis Brown & UEA novel prize and Aesthetica short fiction prizes twice, as well as repeatedly being part of the team for Discoveries, the Women's Prize and the Curtis Brown writer development programme.

Agents are known for having a head for numbers and negotiation and, though that’s of course a key part of the job, it’s also a very creative role! So we really get stuck in early on, and I particularly love the earlier stages of working with an author on their manuscript and the back and forth of sharing ideas to shape the very best story. This is the moment where anything feels possible and there’s something about this sense of potential that is especially exciting.

We’re also a big agency that covers so many areas aside from books – everything from media rights and unscripted, to podcast, branding and live events - and, where possible, I also love joining up with other agents in the building to think about how we can get a book out there. We also work really closely with the agents over at UTA in the States who are brilliant at championing our books in the American market and are always helpful for giving us the lowdown on what’s hot on other side of the pond!

As I’ve now been at Curtis Brown for the best part of a decade (that’s flown!), I have authors working on their second or third books, and authors who have had their books optioned for film and TV and won a whole host of prizes.

I read really widely so don't like to be too prescriptive – one of the things I always love to be surprised by is a submission that offers something new in terms of its approach to character, voice or narrative. I’m always drawn to thorny stories about families and relationships like Heart the Lover by Lily King, Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors or Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting.

I also definitely have a soft spot for brilliant historical fiction which offers a really fresh (and often distinctly modern) lens into the past. I’ve recently read and loved The Pretender by Jo Harkin and Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon.

I’ve been on the hunt for a while for a really gripping thriller with a fresh hook as well so would love to find something in that vein! I know Alice has a particular soft spot for horror and I’m definitely partial to a bit of that too, especially on the more grounded end of things. 

All these things are important, but I think voice has to come first and foremost. A confident and original voice is ultimately the thing that will carry a propulsive plot and will shape our sense of the character on the page. The voice of the protagonist on the page always hooks me in too. The narratives of Clodagh in Caroline Palmer's Workhorse, Lampo in Ferdia Lennon's Glorious Exploits or June in Rebecca F Kuang's Yellowface all jump off the page and absolutely demand your attention – in fact, as a reader you almost believe they are real… And then, of course, the writing itself needs to be really standout!

Don’t overcomplicate things – a good synopsis is about confidence and clarity! Two hundred words is a fairly short summary, so get to the meat of the novel, the character dynamics and dilemmas. In short, why are we going to want to dive into this book? Sometimes, I think the inclination can be to focus on the themes that underpin the story rather than actually the plot itself. It’s all well and good saying your novel is about love, trauma or hope, but without a clear and enticing plotline, these can sound a bit generic. If it’s a good story, well told, then the themes will naturally emerge – you can trust the reader to discover them. The synopsis is your moment to really whet our appetites, so allow your excitement about the story to come through on the page – if you’re confident in your work, we’ll feel that too!

I’m currently mid-way through Caro Claire Burke’s debut Yesteryear, which has rightly been dominating the hardback bestseller charts for the last few weeks. It’s written in such an assured voice that grabs you from page one and so perfectly taps into lots of very current preconceptions around femininity, tradition and power dynamics in a really original way. I also recently devoured A Family Matter by Claire Lynch, a precisely written story of family secrets and silence unravelling. I have to also give a shoutout to Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon – a completely surprising and seriously funny historical that shouldn’t work but really does – and Lucy Rose’s cannibal romp, The Lamb. Going back a few years, I also remember being blown away by Colin Walsh’s Kala.

I think I end up recommending Kate Atkinson more than any other author, both the Todd novels and her Jackson Brodie series. For anyone writing a thriller, you just have to read The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell and Our House by Louise Candlish, which are so brilliantly plotted and full of jaw-dropping twists and turns.

I also love shorter, jewel-like books like Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday. I’m just back from a holiday where I read Seascraper by Benjamin Wood – a slight novel with such a compelling sense of character and place that I had to read it on one sitting. Like Claire Keegan’s writing, there’s so little fat; every word is pulling its weight and serving a purpose.

And because sometimes you need to laugh at it all, I’m always pressing David Sedaris books into people’s hands as no one is better on obsession, the surrealness of everyday life and writing.

A couple of weeks ago we launched Fran Fabriczki’s utterly brilliant debut Porcupines (which won the Curtis Brown & University of East Anglia prize a few years back). From the eye-catching, cool package that Fig Tree (PRH) made for the book, to the reviewer and reader response so far, it’s been quite the ride. Fran is definitely one to watch!

I also have a few gorgeous literary debuts coming out later this year that I’m really excited about. In July there is The Windhover by Lorna Elcock, which is a story that transports you to 1950's rural Scotland as one family falls apart, and then in November Joe Bond’s Hope House (which I sold on behalf of one of my colleagues at UTA) about a ragtag group of boys in a youth home looking for direction and a future.

Make sure you really know what your novel is and that you can explain it in a way that is absolutely clear and compelling. Test out your synopsis on a family member, or on a friend down the pub. Do they immediately understand what the story is about? If not, you probably need to go back to the drawing board.

If you have time, put the manuscript in a drawer for a few weeks, and then read it again with fresh eyes.

It can feel like a daunting step to put your work out into the world but if you’re excited about your writing then we would love to see it!!