Brent Howard

I’m a highly editorial agent.

If you have a great idea but need help shaping it into a compelling, market-ready proposal, that’s part of what I do.

I work closely with authors to develop projects that can break out both critically and commercially.

#MSWL #nonfiction

If you own your subject and can write the hell out of it, we should talk.

#amquerying #nonfiction

What I’m looking for:

• Authority: you’ve done the deepest work on your subject
• Originality: you’re saying something new and necessary
• Narrative drive: this is a story, not just information
• Platform: you can help this book reach the audience it deserves

#amquerying

I’m especially interested in:

• Narrative history with a strong throughline
• Deeply reported journalism
• Military, political, and international history
• Books that illuminate systems of power
• Fresh perspectives on overlooked or misunderstood events

I know what makes editors say yes—and how to shape a project to get there.

#MSWL

As an editor, I worked with authors like Alex Kershaw, Phillips Payson O’Brien, Jonathan W. Jordan, Daniel Stone, John C. McManus, Tim Mak, and William Inboden. As an agent, I've sold projects to Basic Books, Beacon and Oxford University Press.

#MSWL

Before becoming an agent, I spent nearly two decades acquiring nonfiction at Penguin Random House, with a strong passion for history and politics.

#MSWL

I’m seeking journalists and historians with deeply reported, analytically sharp, story-driven books about power, conflict, and the forces that shape the modern world—projects that can define a subject for a wide readership.

#MSWL

Wish list time: I’m actively building a list of ambitious narrative nonfiction—and I’m looking for projects with the intellectual rigor, narrative force, and the cultural reach of Say Nothing, The Wager, The Splendid and the Vile, The Warmth of Other Suns, and SPQR, etc.

#MSWL

📬5/ If this sounds like you, send a short pitch + proposal or overview to me (email in bio). I read every submission and reply when there's a fit. Please share this with writers you think I should know. Looking forward to hearing from you.

📖4/ I'm not looking for memoir or business books. I’m looking for smart, well-structured nonfiction that reveals how the world works, who holds power, and what’s at stake. Think synthesis, storytelling, and serious ambition. #MSWL

📰3/ Journalists: I’m drawn to books with depth and urgency. If you’re reporting on a topic that matters—climate, surveillance, migration, inequality, power—and can combine a compelling story with rigorous analysis, let’s talk. #MSWL

🕰️2/ Historians: I'm looking for projects that bring the past alive in vivid, accessible prose. If you're an academic with narrative skill and writing for general readers—on war, politics, technology, empire, race, culture, anything big—I want to hear from you.

📚1/ Gramercy Lit is open for nonfiction submissions! I'm especially eager to hear from historians and journalists with big, ambitious book ideas aimed at a wide audience. If you're working on something narrative, deeply reported, and driven by original insight, please read on.

Strong storytelling skills are as important in nonfiction as they are in fiction. Structure and language are key.

Journalists who have deeply covered their field, infiltrated a story and can write about in-depth better than any other person.

For nonfiction, platform is important. Academics who own their subject, who’ve done more thinking and research about it than anyone else, stand out. But your writing chops are what makes it sellable.

FOR NONFICTION, I acquired history for years as an editor. I love big, bold, definitive books that shake up how we think of a person or event.

I don’t represent children’s picture books, but for the sake of my eight-year-old son, I’m open to chapter books for kids and teens. (He loves the Alex Rider series and I introduced him to old school Gordon Korman!)

I don’t represent romance, but would I turn down one that I immediately recognized as spectacular? No. Will I receive many? Not kidding myself.