Kelsey Evans

Kelsey is a publishing professional with a background in communications, marketing, and editing. After a decade helming marketing strategy and content development for agencies with major clients like AAA, Dannon, and Target, she transitioned into publishing. She began as an editor, helping writers shape their work through developmental feedback, query critiques, and revision guidance. Later, she moved into agenting, interning with Triada US and Creative Media Agency (CMA), where she gained hands-on experience in manuscript evaluation, submissions, and client development. Passionate about championing authors, Kelsey now combines editorial insight with marketing expertise to help writers navigate both craft and career. She is especially excited to seek out independent voices by tracking breakout self-published successes, surfacing under-the-radar talent, and scouting the indie authors whose sales, platforms, and craft signal they’re ready to leap into traditional publishing.

General likes: Immersive settings (fantasy or otherwise), jaw-dropping plot twists, distinctive voice, tight plotting, high concept hooks, emotional character journeys, slow burn romances, top-tier banter.

For Adult

Nonfiction: 

• Anything science-related, specifically physics, is a yes for me! Think Brian Greene and Carlo Rovelli, making complex topics accessible to a wide audience. 
• Personal women’s rowing or basketball stories like The Red Rose Crew or In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle. I’d also love a larger look at the WNBA and growth of women’s basketball as a whole. 
• Nature-based nonfiction like The Hidden Life of Trees or quiet, uplifting stories like Raising Hare.
• Heartfelt, funny, compelling cooking stories. Everything from Calvin Trillin’s The Tummy Trilogies to Marissa Ross’s Wine, All the Time. Coming from a food background, I’d love personal insights into the world beyond The Bear. Think: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry; The Making of a Chef; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; A Homemade Life; Tender at the Bone; On Food and Cooking. 
• A deep dive into the recent “tradwife” phenomenon, specifically as it intersects with social media, capitalism, economic precarity, and right-wing ideology. 

Romance: 

• Sports (anything but hockey or football). Send me lacrosse stories, basketball rivals, rowing books — especially if they’re queer. They can be witty, snarky, and fun (Cleat Cute) or deeply moving and compelling (A Sharp Endless Need). 
• Formula 1 or English Premier League stories!
• Grounded, laugh out loud grumpy x sunshine stories like Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks.
• If you’re a fanfic writer and have banter chops like DMATMOOBIL or Lionheart please (please please) send stories my way! 
• Action/adventure romps like Pirates Of the Caribbean or National Treasure with a romance through-line.
• YES to dark academia and gothic aesthetics. I’d love to see these trends explored more deeply in the Romance space, especially with emotional complexity and immersive (but accessible) atmospheres (Spells for Forgetting, for example). 
• Speculative Romance (think The Dead Romantics from Ashley Poston). 

Horror: 

• CULTS CULTS CULTS
• Mike Flanagan-esque stories or anything that mixes religion or spirituality with horror, like Hell Followed With Us or Black Sheep or Archive 81. 
• Slow unfolding horror with an unreliable narrator like Meg Smitherman’s Thrum. 
• BIPOC-centered stories like The Only Good Indians or Kindred. 
• X-Files. Twin Peaks. Give me weird and creepy and a slow-burning fire. 

SFF: 

• Supernatural investigators like Dresden Files or Constantine, or an aged-up heist story like Six of Crows. 
• I like a good Romantasy but very selectively. It has to be a fresh take on the genre and not a rewrite of SJM or RY. 
• Cozy fantasy is a yes, especially if it has some romance and a bit of mystery. Think The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst or The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields. If I could live inside Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle I would be the happiest camper. 
• I’m really interested in branching out to sci-fi. This can look like the creepy corporate world within Severance, the isolated, character-driven stories of Andy Weir, or something more expansive and adventurous in the spirit of Firefly or Doctor Who — helmed by a complex lead (Malcolm Reynolds and the Tenth Doctor, be still my heart). 

Suspense/Thriller/Mystery: 

• A super dry, superbly paced English or Scottish standalone like Dept. Q, a series like Slow Horses by Mick Herron, or a multi-timeline, interwoven mystery like Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.
• Sticky, evocative books like Bright Young Women and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 
• Compulsive page-turners a la Freida McFadden, The Devil in the Dark Water, We Solve Murders/The Thursday Murder Club, Killers of a Certain Age. If you have a novel where the trio from The First Wives Club solve a mystery, I’m BEGGING you to send it to me. 
• Tense thrillers in the vein of My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, protagonists like Olivia Pope in Scandal. 
• Atmospheric suspense stories like The Cloisters by Katy Hays. 

Misc requests for any genre: 

• Family dynamics of White Oleander or Yellowstone (I’d love a ranch setting)
• My Dark Vanessa should be required reading for everyone, ever. If you have an angry, heartbreaking, unputdownable story — please share it. 
• Make me sob like the last 100 pages of House of Earth and Blood. I mean it, break my heart)

For YA

Fantasy: 

• A twist on a myth we haven’t seen before, complete with social commentary and a badass female heroine (Lore, Legendborn)
• If Lex Croucher would approve, I want to see it. Gwen and Art are Not in Love and Not for the Faint of Heart are two of my favorite reads in this area. 
• Give me grounded fantasy with coming-of-age struggles like The Mediator series by Meg Cabot. 

Misc. requests for YA specifically: 

• Books that tackle hard subjects like Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn and Dreamland by Sarah Dessen. 
• Magical Realism like Weetzie Bat or Every Heart a Doorway.
• Stories about the pressures of being an elite student-athlete. Specifically focused on the balance required to excel at both, the day-to-day of what that looks like, the complicated teammate/friend/rival relationships that are formed, and the harsh truths about competing at the level.

Submission Guidelines

Please use the QueryTracker link provided. Fields marked (required) are required, all other listed fields are encouraged. I respond to every submission I receive.

Note: I will not accept queries emailed to me directly.

I look forward to reading your submission! ☺

Guidelines & Details