Bryony Woods
Before co-founding DKW in 2012, Bryony worked at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency, and spent several years working in specialist bookshops and libraries. She has worked with top publishers both in the UK and abroad, and loves negotiating publishing contracts to an almost absurd degree. She represents an eclectic mix of talented and award winning writers, including Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers, with a list spanning from quirky children’s fiction through to YA and adult fiction and non-fiction.
Bryony has an MA in Publishing from University College London and a BA in English Literature from the University of Reading. She previously volunteered as University Liaison Officer for the Society of Young Publishers, where she visited universities across the UK giving talks and workshops to help graduates break into the publishing industry. Bryony was selected by The Bookseller as one of their Rising Stars of 2013, and was a winner of the London Book Fair Trailblazer Awards 2016 and the Young Stationers’ Prize 2016. Through organisations such as the Stationers Company and the WoMentoring Project, she has mentored aspiring writers, agents and editors from a variety of backgrounds to help them gain access to the publishing industry.
For Bryony, protecting authors’ rights, ensuring their careers flourish and championing their work all around the world is more than just a career: it’s a personal passion, along with the belief that the right book at the right moment can truly change the world.
See the full list of Bryony’s clients here.
Submissions
Bryony says:
I’m open to books in almost any genre, whether for adult readers, young adults or children from age 7+. My reading taste is fairly eclectic, and covers commercial to literary and everything in between.
At the moment I’d particularly love to find some beautifully written, upmarket contemporary novels; books about friendships and platonic love; thought-provoking sci-fi or richly imagined fantasy worlds; brilliant, sweeping love stories on an epic canvas; found families, or novels about finding love in unexpected places; something that truly makes me laugh; fairy tales, or anything darkly magical; books that surprise me; books that will break my heart; books that are full of hope.
I tend to avoid anything particularly gritty or depressing, so crime novels or harrowing psychological thrillers are likely to be a no. I also don’t represent children’s picture books, or poetry collections. The non-fiction side of my list is small, but I have been known to fall for a beautiful memoir or a moving collection of essays.
Aside from my own list, authors I’ve particularly enjoyed reading over the last few years include Ted Chiang, Naomi Novik, Eva Ibbotson, R F Kuang, Maeve Binchy, Alice Oseman, Octavia Butler and Gabrielle Zevin, among many others.
As an agent, people always ask me what I’m ‘looking for’ in a manuscript. I hope the above gives you a good idea, but the honest answer is that I never truly know until I’ve found it. All of my favourite books are ones I didn’t know I was looking for, but once I had found them, I simply couldn’t imagine my life without them.