Deconstructing Upmarket Fiction

Have you ever wondered what upmarket fiction is? Are you a writer who thinks that your writing may be upmarket fiction? At 5 PM this Friday, March 23^rd, the Women’s National Book Association and NYU are co-sponsoring a panel of literary agents who will discuss upmarket fiction.

This panel, titled “Deconstructing Upmarket Fiction,” will feature agents Caroline Eisenmann, Allison Hunter, Duvall Osteen, and Renée Zuckerbrot in a panel moderated by professor and poet Harriet Shenkman.

Caroline Eisenmann is an associate agent at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency, where she represents literary and upmarket fiction and non-fiction. She joined the agency in 2017 after spending four years at ICM Partners; prior to her time at ICM, she worked in marketing at the digital publisher Open Road Media. Caroline grew up in the Boston area and attended Wesleyan University, where she obtained an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in literature, history, and philosophy.

Allison Hunter is a literary agent at Janklow & Nesbit, and former agent at InkWell Management. She has worked with Anne Helen Petersen, Katie Heaney, Swan Huntley and Lena Dunham, among others. She represents literary and commercial fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir and pop culture. She has a B.A. in American Studies and Creative Writing from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

Duvall Osteen is a literary agent at Aragi Inc., where she’s had the opportunity to work with a long listof distinctive authors,including Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, Denis Johnson, Nathan Englander, and Anne Carson. She represents fiction, narrative nonfiction, graphic novels and select humor projects. Her literary interests include writing rooted in place, especially the South, multigenerational storytelling, music, literary suspense and humor. Duvall holds an MA in Southern Cultural Studies from the University of Mississippi.

Renée Zuckerbrot worked as an editor at Doubleday beforebecoming a literary agent.Her authors include Kelly Link, Dan Chaon, Daniel Wallace, Shawn Vestal, Eric Sanderson, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, M.O. Walsh, and Andrew Malan Milward, among others. They have won or been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction, the National Magazine Award, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, B&N Discover Great New Writers Award, the Story Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus, the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Pushcart, among others.