Some industry news: my marvelous agent, Faye Bender, formerly of the Faye Bender Literary Agency, is forming a partnership with three other fabulous agents, Julie Barer, Brettne Bloom, and Elisabeth Weed, to form a new literary agency. They’re called The Book Group. ((1) Isn’t that a great name, and (2) how was that name not taken???) Together, these four women represent a broad diversity of literary interests, including fiction and non-fiction, literary and genre fiction, and middle grade, young adult, and adult literature. Check out some selected titles. And here are their submissions guidelines.

And, children’s writer Rebecca Stead will be joining them as an agent! Faye and Rebecca are two of my favorite people so it’s hard for me to be all objective and reporty about this. You will have to take my word for it that it’s going to be GREAT. Aw, look at this picture of Faye and Rebecca. *melts*

Here’s one of the press releases. And here is the agency’s new website! Shiny.

Faye has been a joy for me to work with from day one, and she tells me that her partners have a similar approach to their authors and to the industry… which makes me think that The Book Group is going to be wonderful for its writers, and just a little bit of an industry powerhouse 🙂

Congratulations, guys, and godspeed as you set out on this exciting new venture.