Julian Hayes

Biography

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.

She reads for voice first — the sentence that could not have been written by anyone else — and then for structure, ambition, and the argument a book is making with the world. Her list spans quiet literary novels, sweeping historical fiction, and nonfiction that reframes a familiar subject.

Julian works closely with editors across the UK, the United States, and the Commonwealth, and oversees Gracewell's translation and territory rights programme personally. She is a frequent panellist at writing conferences and mentors emerging agents through the agency's assistant programme.

Agency philosophy

“An agent’s job is to make the book as good as it can be, then to put it in front of the person most likely to love it — and to keep doing both for as long as the writer keeps writing. Everything else is administration.”