Beth Phelan

OPEN TO QUERIES DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF EVERY MONTH.

Beth Phelan has been working in publishing since 2010. A lifelong reader, she’s been caught reading by flashlight in hotel closets while on vacation and finishing stories in lieu of returning friends’ calls. She is a winner of the inaugural CBC Diversity Outstanding Achievement Award, a Publisher’s Weekly Notable Person of the Year Reader’s Pick, twice-nominated for The Ignyte Community Award for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre, and a Publisher’s Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She’s been a literary agent at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency since 2017 and is a member of the AALA.

Beth is also the Founder and was President and Executive Director of DiverseVoices, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization that operated from 2019 to 2023. She created #DVpit, a pitch event for marginalized creators, in April 2016, and DVcon, a free virtual conference for marginalized book creators (2021 & 2022).

Most of her time is spent reading, editing, and playing with her ugly dog Beefy.

Submission Guidelines

Please note that I am only seeking to represent MG and YA fiction (and just the right nonfiction project for those age categories). I’m interested in contemporary, fantasy, magical realism, speculative, romance, horror, and thriller/mystery. I’m not the best fit for verse or graphic novels.

I am not a good fit for books about: school shootings, self harm, disordered eating, animal cruelty, copaganda. Please include content warnings if any of the above are even incidentally mentioned and definitely content warnings for anything about suicide.

I’m looking to be swept away by new worlds, dynamic characters, compelling relationships, and absorbing settings. My favorite stories will have something important to say without necessarily needing to be said aloud, will touch on bittersweet humor, and enrich the shelves. I feel deeply, and I want books that meet me there. I’m in particular interested in championing intersectional, marginalized voices, pushing boundaries, and seeing if we can shake things up a bit.

For more specifics of what I’m looking for, please visit my website.

To send me a submission, use the form on QueryManager here. This is the primary method of querying for me. However, in cases where accommodations due to disability are needed, I accept queries by email at querybeth@galltzacker.com. Just send me your query letter and first 10 pages, both pasted in the body of the email. For your subject line, please put your book title and the category and genre of the work you are submitting, i.e. [TITLE]: [Category] [Genre].

[Headshot credit to Adrianne Mathiowetz]

Guidelines & Details