Aashna Avachat

I am excited to build my list in a variety of different categories and genres! I am currently only open to submissions by authors/illustrators of color. Within submissions by creators of color, I am especially interested in queer representation, religious diversity, and disability representation in all age categories.

My goal as an agent is to champion diversity in publishing, to uplift creators of color and marginalized communities. I have pretty commercial taste across the board, from kidlit to adult, fiction and non-fiction.

Picture Books:

• Author-Illustrators only!
• Laugh out-loud funny books with clever illustrations (think: Meet the Dullards, The Paper Bag Princess)
• Family, culture, SEL, nature/environment themes
• NOT currently looking for food-based books or rhyming books!
• NOT currently looking for PB non-fiction or biographies. Fiction only, please!

Illustrators:

• Artists interested in picture books, chapter books, or covers, whether children’s books or adult

Graphic Novel:

• Author-illustrated graphic novels for children, teens, or adults
• I am open to GNs in the genres listed below
• Also open to GN memoirs and historical GN

Middle Grade:

• Primarily contemporary MG with a strong hook
• MG featuring queer characters, characters with disabilities
• Spooky MG
• Some MG favorites: Almost Flying, Clues to the Universe, From the Desk of Zoe Washington
• NOT looking for anthropomorphic books

Young Adult:

• Romantic comedies where both leads are POC
• Mysteries/thrillers
• Contemporary spy/heist novels in the vein of I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You or a YA Portrait of a Thief
• Palace intrigue: NON-magical, NON-dystopian, royalty-based stories in the vein of The False Prince or Liar’s Kingdom (but without faeries, haha!)
• Mythology/fantasy retellings with twists, and so long as the fantasy elements are very light (think YA Kaikeyi or YA Song of Achilles)
• Plot-driven horror
• Modern retellings of classics
• Pre-modern historical novels in the vein of June Hur
• Speculative fiction with very light sci-fi/fantasy elements (think These Violent Delights)
• cross-over into New Adult under the same genres
• Dark academia with political critique of academia
• Cozy fantasy (light fantasy)
• Witches in a light fantasy setting

Adult:

• Romantic comedies where both leads are POC
• Mysteries (not looking for police/organized crime focused mysteries)
• Epic mysteries in the vein of God of the Woods; All the Colors of the Dark
• Domestic thrillers in the vein of Stacy Willingham, Lisa Jewell, Emiko Jean
• Funny contemporary in the vein of Anxious People and The Wedding People
• Literary-ish books like Everything I Never Told You, Such a Fun Age, Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow
• Plot-forward horror
• Cozy fantasy (A Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches)

Non-Fiction:

• Pop culture criticism
• Gender/feminist criticism & journalism (The Right to Sex, Girls & Sex, How to Date Men When You Hate Men)
• Accessible pop science (Everything is Tuberculosis)
• A deep dive into a niche area through narrative journalism style
• Unique cookbooks
• Some of my non-fiction favorites: Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks; Perfect Victims; Just Mercy

Ultra-specific MSWL:

• The Clique but about girls of color
• OCD representation where OCD is not the only primary plot (Think: Turtles All the Way Down)
• YA wilderness camp horror/mystery
• Something like Yellowjackets 

I am NOT currently looking for:

• Sci-Fi
• Fantasy (I have very very few, specific exceptions to this; see above!)
• War novels
• Novels in-verse/poetry
• Short story/essay collections
• Oppressor-oppressed romances
• On-the-page sexual violence/child abuse
• Vampires/werewolves/faeries
• Board books
• Dystopian
• Chapter books
• Epistolary formats
• Children’s non-fiction
• Erotica

Submission Guidelines

Please submit your query via Query Tracker! Please note that I am currently only open to queries by creators of color!

Picture Books:

Please submit the entire PB text in the writing sample section & include your dummy/art samples in the “upload sample artwork” section.

Graphic Novels:

Please submit the first 10 pages of your script in the writing sample & include 10 sample pages in the “upload sample artwork” section.

Illustrators:

Please submit a query with information about the kinds of projects you’re interested in illustrating along with any experience. Please link your website and submit a sample portfolio in the “upload sample artwork” section.

Novelists:

Please submit the first 10 pages of your MS and include a synopsis.

Non-Fiction:

Please paste your entire proposal in writing sample section. A proposal should include a pitch, your author platform/bio, comparative titles, a manuscript overview/outline, and sample pages. For an excellent non-fiction proposal overview, please see here.

Guidelines & Details