Emma Leong

Emma is a literary agent and actively acquiring literary to commercial fiction, with a focus on upmarket literary/book club fiction, romantic dramas, thrillers and suspense.  She is drawn to fiction that balances wide commercial appeal with deep artistic merit – a writer with their own signature blueprint, that can provoke as well as entertain. Regardless of genre, she’s always on the lookout for stylish and elevated writing, with relationship-driven, unforgettable characters that speak to the everyday truth and experience. Currently, Emma is on the hunt for sensuous family dramas, glossy beach reads, complex female friendships, subversive love stories, campus novels and thrillers with adaptation potential… though is happily surprised to fall in love (as she often does) with anything in-between.

Emma studied Psychology and Law before starting her publishing career at Janklow & Nesbit in 2019, swiftly establishing her own list before being made a primary agent in 2024. Her clients include Chukwuebuka Ibeh, Dr. Ally Louks, Grace Murray, Olivia Petter, and American bestsellers such as T.J. Payne and Liana Cincotti.  She also represents novelists such as Emmy-Award winning writer Aisha Muharrar, Women’s Prize longlistee Dawnie Walton, two-timed New York Times’ Editor Choice Hermione Hoby, and Book of the Month’s Darrow Farr in the UK on behalf of her New York colleagues. She loves championing new writers and their craft, nurturing long-term careers at every stage, and finding the perfect publishing home to launch their work. 

My Current Wishlist:

I’m drawn to family dramas that explore the complexities of love, loyalty, secrets, and how past events influence choices characters make in the present. Whether that’s in books with a darker, suspenseful undercurrent such as THE PAPER PALACE by Miranda Cowley Heller and LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE by Celeste Ng, or as beautifully poignant and moving as HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano. 

I’m also actively looking for love stories that subvert traditional tropes, as Gabrielle Zevin’s TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW did by exploring deep platonic bonds, or HEART THE LOVER by Lily King graced us with the idealised permanence of first love, or how Taylor Jenkins Reid in ONE TRUE LOVES deconstructed the myth of a single soulmate. I am always a sucker for a love-triangle, I love to read how early choices in a relationship echo across time, and – as similar to the books above – a modern and/or clever take on the “who will they pick?”.

I’m on the hunt too for high-concept novels that explore alternate realities or choices, à la “sliding doors”, that offer a new way into the power of circumstance, such as THE NAMES by Florence Knapp or Matt Haig’s THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY.  I recently loved THE HUSBANDS by Holly Gramazio too for all its humour and biting social commentary on our dating culture.

I’m also looking for anything that can be defined as your “go-to” summer escape, whilst tapping into emotional themes around female desire, ambition, self-discovery, and so forth. I’m a fan of a “glossy” setting, think Elin Hilderbrand’s mystery-filled sun-soaked dramas or Coco Mellors’ high end metropolitan aesthetic. If it has that element of nostalgia I’d love to see it too, think Jenny Han’s THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY or EVERY SUMMER AFTER by Carley Fortune (how many times can I mention summer?!). 

If you have a thriller/suspense that focuses on dark atmospheres, mysterious disappearances, and jaw-dropping twists, please send it my way. Some of my favourites in the psychological thriller space are Alice Feeney and Lisa Jewell, though I am also drawn to more upmarket narratives like YESTERYEAR by Caro Claire Burke (I especially loved its critique on motherhood). I also love when a thriller weaves a romantic plot in, for example, books like THE MAN WHO DIDN’T CALL by Rosie Walsh or Colleen Hoover’s VERITY.  All super twisty and each page keeps you guessing. 

As always, I am drawn to voice-driven novels that “haunt” and play with unreliability or memory, bringing a psychologically fractured view of the past, that speaks to something of universal importance.  Whether that is in the more contemporary literary works of Julian Barnes’ THE SENSE OF AN ENDING or Ian McEwan’s ATONEMENT, or leans more into the dystopian/speculative such as in Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO.  I am very keen to find a campus novel, whether it’s as delectably precise and luminous like in THE LAST OF OUR KIND by Sigrid Nunez or as commercially propulsive in its dark academia setting like in IF WE WERE VILLAINS by R L Rio.

Please do not send me anything that has been written, or assisted, by AI.