Alyssa Eisner Henkin is a 1998 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Radcliffe Publishing Course. Before joining Trident, she spent over seven years as an editor in the children’s division at Simon & Schuster where she edited the New York Times bestselling Little Quack, The Theodore Seuss Geisel Award recipient, Henry and Mudge, and the acclaimed The Wedding Planner’s Daughter.
In December of 2006 Alyssa joined Trident Media Group as an agent for children’s books with an emphasis on contemporary middle grade, tween, and young adult novels. She is actively growing her client list, and seeks humorous voices, regional flavors, adventures, school stories, reality-based fantasies, tales of first love, and mysteries.
As an agent, what types of stories are you looking for at this time?
I focus on middle grade and young adult novels, and am also taking on a very select number of grownup projects.
For middle grade I’m seeking hopeful, commercial and plot-driven manuscripts. I’d love to find a textured and character-driven mystery novel in the vein of Elise Broach’s Masterpiece. An adventure novel about kids facing extraordinary circumstances, like Ingrid Law’s Savvy would be exciting to find too. A tween version of The Friday Night Knitting Club, not about knitting, but about friendships made through creative expression is definitely up my alley!
For YA, I’m actively looking for epic romances in the vein of Nicholas Spark’s The Notebook; if they’re set in the South or
For adults, my wish list includes historical romance as well as contemporary-set commercial novels with great hooks in the vein of The Jane Austen Book Club. I also enjoy anything pertaining to mothers & daughters, weddings, food/cooking, and momtrepreneurs—either for fiction or nonfiction/memoir.
What have you seen too much of lately, if anything?
A lot of demon/zombie/vampire stuff has come my way and it’s not so much my thing. I’ve also seen a lot of lyrically written but “quiet”= read not very plot-driven middle grade novels that feel dated.
What is your favorite part of being an agent? Least favorite?
I love seeing the grist in the mill begin to churn—signing on a book that I believe in, doing editorial work with the author, crafting the perfect pitch, and selling it to an editor whom I can just tell will be a great advocate for the project. I also love seeing my clients get great reviews, or the day you find out B&N may take a big floor display for a series you believe in, and of course the day they give out major awards and your client is on the list! Three cheers for my Caldecott-honor winning author Jen Bryant for
My least favorite is probably the lack of control and the “down time” that sometimes ensues, between the time I send out a project and sell it. It’s altogether antsy!
Describe your dream author? And of course....the author from Hades?
My dream author is someone who has matchless ideas, an imaginative way with words, killer plotting/pacing skills, and a desire to market his or her work through innovative and often interactive online formats. The author I would not work well with is likely a legend in his or her own mind, who isn’t receptive to new ideas, even if his or her own ideas aren’t really working.
What do you read for pleasure? Name three of your all time favorite books or
authors. I read a mixture of tween fiction, commercial women’s fiction, and entrepreneurial success stories and biographies.
My favorite titles that I’ve read in the last two years include ELEVEN by Lauren Myracle, WHEN EMMA JEAN LAZARUS FELL OUT OF A TREE by Lauren Tarshish, THE AMERICAN WIFE by Curtis Sittenfeld, and Laura Claridge’s now biography, EMILY POST.
Tell us about a few titles you have coming out you are excited about.
I am very excited about my client Lisa Greenwald’s awesome debut, MY LIFE IN PINK & GREEN, which is already an IndieBound top 10 pick for spring and releases in March. It walks the line between commercial and literary tween fiction with great deftness. I’m very pumped for my client Sarah MacLean’s YA book THE SEASON, a delightful romp in regency England for YA, as well as Sarah’s adult regency set romance trilogy, which we sold at auction to Avon/Harper Collins entitled NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE. I’m also thrilled for my client Carolyn McCullough’s ONCE A WITCH series, a tale of romance, witches, and sisters, which, we sold at auction last spring, and comes out from Houghton Mifflin this fall.
How does one submit to you and do you accept equeries? How about conference you will be attending this year?
I strongly encourage e-mail submissions to ahenkin@tridentmediagroup.com Please include a description of your book, any relevant work, writing, platform-building and promotional experience, a synopsis of your book, and the fist five pages in the text body of the e-mail. If it seems like a right fit I will then request more to be sent as an attachment.
In a year, what is your typical percentage of signing new writers? Do they come from slush or referral or conferences? Roughly 5 to 10%-- I would say about 2/3 of that number come from client and editor referrals or my own research, and the remaining 1/3 is unsolicited.
and our new question section- an absolute take off of inside the actors
studio-adapted for books (how's that for a switch)
INSIDE THE Agents STUDIO
Tell us your favorite movie
It’s a toss-up between When Harry Met Sally, Crossing Delancey, and Gone with the Wind.
Tell us your favorite protagonist-hero or heroine, your choice.
I would go with Madeline in Ludwig Bemelmans’s books. Anna Quindlen says, and I concur, that Madeline will grow up to be “the French Minister of Culture or the owner of a stupendous couture house, sending her children off to Miss Clavel's to be educated” And the fact that you can envision that merely from the way she stands up to the tigers in the zoo, and endures an operation without her parents by her side, makes her quite heroic.
What is your favorite word or phrase?
An ounce of pretension’s worth a pound of manure—Steel Magnolias
least favorite word or phrase?
The next big thing—it’s so elusive and loaded.
If you werent an agent, you would be an entrepreneur like Pleasant T. Rowland who founded the American Girl company________.
Also...agents talk of voice. What kind of voice hooks your attention? One
that makes you laugh, cry--in your own words.
For me, the first sentence of Pride & Prejudice “It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife” is exhibit A. For one thing, I can quote it from memory nearly two decades after having first attempted the novel in seventh grade. For another thing it’s funny and biting, and hooks you--clearly it’s going to be a good story right from the start!
THANKS SO MUCH!!!
BRYNN/ RR SMYTHE
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