Marguerite Ellery
Literary Fiction
Writes spare, tidal novels about coastal families and the work that keeps them together.
Independent Literary Agency · Est. 2014
Stories Worth Representing.
Gracewell Literary Agency represents distinctive voices, compelling stories, and ambitious books.
Our Mission
A career, not a single book.
Gracewell exists to find writers whose work could not have been written by anyone else — and then to do the unglamorous work that turns a manuscript into a publishing career. We read widely, edit closely, and submit strategically.
We represent our authors professionally in every room they cannot be in: with editors, with foreign publishers, with production and adaptation partners. And we plan for the decade, not the season.
More About GracewellWhat We Represent
Categories across fiction and nonfiction
Select a category to see the books, authors, and agents associated with it.
Featured Authors
The writers we represent
Rohan Mehta
Fantasy
Builds epic fantasy with strict rules, bad bargains, and cities that feel genuinely lived in.
Adaeze Okonkwo
Historical Fiction & Memoir
Historian and memoirist writing about harvest, migration, and the record families keep of themselves.
Mei-Ling Chen
Mystery & Thriller
Writes precise, cold-water suspense about institutions that would rather the truth stayed buried.
Callum Brody
Narrative Nonfiction
Financial historian turning archival ledgers into propulsive stories about money and power.
Valeria Solano
Romance & Young Adult
Writes warm, sharply funny romance and young adult fiction about ambition and first devotion.
Featured Books
Recent and forthcoming titles
The Salt Hours
Marguerite Ellery
Literary Fiction
Three generations of a harbour family reckon with a drowned boat, a disputed inheritance, and the tide that keeps returning what they hoped it would take. A novel about labour, silence, and the cost of staying.
Nine Crowns of Ash
Rohan Mehta
Fantasy
In a city where crowns are forged from the ash of the last dynasty, a guild archivist discovers that the succession she has spent her life documenting was never legitimate. Epic fantasy with a merchant's eye for consequence.
The Quiet Tenant of Marlow House
Mei-Ling Chen
Mystery
A retired coroner takes a room in a grand house full of people who all claim to have arrived that week. When the landlady disappears, every tenant's story becomes a version of the same lie.
Sweet Ruin
Valeria Solano
Romance
A pastry chef with one failed restaurant and a critic with one unforgivable review are given six weeks to save the same struggling bakery. Neither of them intends to fall in love on a deadline.
Daughters of the Long Harvest
Adaeze Okonkwo
Historical Fiction
Across four decades and two continents, the women of a farming family carry a land dispute, a marriage of convenience, and a secret ledger of everything they were owed.
The Gilded Ledger
Callum Brody
Nonfiction
The forgotten story of the clerks, auditors, and forgers who built the modern financial system — and of the single ledger that exposed a decade of respectable fraud.
Why Gracewell
How we work with our writers
01
Thoughtful Representation
We take on few writers each year so that every list stays deliberate. Each project is read, discussed, and championed by an agent who knows its market.
02
Editorial Partnership
Our agents work at the level of the sentence and the structure. Manuscripts leave Gracewell in the strongest possible shape.
03
Strategic Publishing
Submission is planned, not scattered: the right editors, the right season, the right terms — negotiated with care and transparency.
04
Long-Term Careers
We plan second and third books alongside the first, across territories, formats, and adaptations, so a career compounds.
Our Founder
Julian Hayes
Founder & Literary Agent
Julian Hayes spent fifteen years in editorial and rights work before opening Gracewell Literary Agency in 2014. She built the agency around a simple conviction: a writer is not a title on a list, and a career is not one book long.
Submissions Open
Have a story to tell?
We welcome distinctive writers and compelling projects that align with our agents’ interests.
4 literary agents · representing worldwide