Marissa Brown

Marissa is open to a wide range of children’s book authors, illustrators, and author-illustrators. Across the board, she is on the lookout for stories by traditionally underrepresented and marginalized creators. She is especially drawn to stories inspired by personal experience.  

For picture books, she is interested in lyrical texts with a focus on friends, family, big ideas, or feelings. 

For middle-grade and young adult, she is drawn to fast-paced, high-stakes, voice-driven narratives featuring found family or ensemble casts and poignant coming-of-age stories. She is primarily interested in contemporary stories and enjoys genre-bending elements as long as the stories are grounded in the real world (or a world similar to our own). 

For graphic novels, she welcomes all genres for all ages but has a particular affinity for romance, slice-of-life narratives, or stories with a touch of magic. She’s also interested in spooky action-filled adventures (but not horror or thriller).

She is also open to select fantasy and romance projects with strong world-building, complex dynamics, and characters with a unique voice and perspective. She prefers grounded fantasy with a recognizable world and simple magic systems. She is not currently looking for books featuring dragons or aliens. She enjoys fantasy featuring morally gray main characters that explore the complexity of being alive. As for romance, she prefers character-driven stories with a lot of heart and humor. 

She is not the best fit for rhyming picture books, bug books, books about or heavily featuring cancer, horror, historical fiction, or books created by or heavily featuring artificial intelligence (AI).

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be emailed to https://QueryManager.com/MarissaBrown

I am currently open to queries. Please review my wishlist, and if you’d like to query me after doing so, please submit your query via Query Manager.