Jo Unwin

As a child my head was always in a book, but as a teenager I wanted to be an actress, and at university I started to write things for myself to perform. Gradually I found myself straddling two careers: I was acting a bit, and writing a bit. I wrote for TV (Byker Grove, My Parents are Aliens) and acted in theatre, commercials (remember ‘We Want to be Together‘?) and TV (mostly comedy: Fry and Laurie, Lee and Herring, a series of Casualty).

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But then one day I had the blinding insight that what I really loved was talking about, and being around, books. So I became a scout for Aardman Features, looking to option books that could form the basis of animated feature films, and I went to work at a bookshop. The wonderful woman who ran it suggested I’d make a good agent, and I was lucky enough to meet legendary agent Patrick Walsh soon after the idea had started to take root.

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I joined C&W Literary Agency in 2008 and took to being a literary agent like a duck to water. I was in a shortlist of three for the Bookseller Industry Awards Literary Agent of the Year in 2010, and was picked out as one of the Bookseller’s Rising Stars in 2011.

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I’ve now set up Jo Unwin Literary Agency Ltd, based at Somerset House, and was shortlisted again as Literary Agent of the Year in 2019.

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I represent authors of literary fiction, commercial women’s fiction, Young Adult fiction and fiction for children aged 9+ but not younger (picture books only if written by established clients). I also represent comic writing and narrative non-fiction. Suffice to say I don’t represent poetry or screenplays (unless written by my established clients).

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I’m interested in books that make me consider the world around me in a different way and challenge my received ideas. I like voices that are compelling and unique. I’m drawn to novels that bring out the intimate or domestic in a way that’s entirely personal to the characters but also resonates on a wider human level. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, it’s the personal that I love: I always want to get to know people and to hear their stories, and to feel I have come to understand them.

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I know I’m reading something promising when I have a physical reaction – whether it’s my heart beating faster, my face breaking into a smile, or my throat thickening with a sob.

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Jo is currently accepting submissions

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