Danya Kukafka, Agent, Trellis Literary Management
Danya works as a literary agent for one reason: she loves books. She loves reading books, she loves editing books, she loves the people who write them. She loves the business of publishing, and she comes to both her writing and agenting careers with a sense of dedicated focus. She approaches every novel—her own and her clients’— with a determination to elevate the technical aspects of the story, to edit thoughtfully and carefully until each book shines. At Trellis Literary Management, she works closely alongside Michelle Brower. For more information about her wishlist and the submission process, please visit trellisliterary.com.
My Client List
Jacquie Pham
My Current Wishlist
As a reader, I’m naturally attracted to literary fiction with particularly propulsive storylines. I am seeking mostly fiction, with a preferential eye toward very high-brow thrillers, literary suspense, speculative fiction, and experimental fiction. I’m interested in true crime that feels attuned to today’s cultural conversations, as well as upmarket literary fiction you can read in one gulp. I’m less interested in historical fiction, short story collections, YA, and memoir, but will of course consider these genres for particularly compelling and dynamic work. I’d like to see more underrepresented writers published in all of these spaces, particularly in the crime sector.
Here are a few of the books I wish I could represent:
Crime fiction with a literary bent
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Dare Me by Megan Abbott
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
The Secret Place by Tana French
Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Dark coming of age
Marlena by Julie Buntin
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman
Speculative fiction
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Hefty, expansive literary fiction
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Experimental work:
Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Into the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Fun and sophisticated upmarket fiction
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
True crime/nonfiction
The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg
Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe
The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino