Isabel Kaufman

I began my publishing career as an agency intern in 2012 and have been an acquiring agent at Fox Literary since 2021. Current clients include Emery Robin (EMPIRE WITHOUT END Duology, Orbit 2022/25), C.K. Chau (GOOD FORTUNE, Harper Via 2023), and Wen-yi Lee (THE DARK WE KNOW, Zando 2024).

Across the board I am drawn to strong characters driving the story and convincing you to stick with them (whether you’re enthralled, horrified, or a bit of both), and I welcome speculative elements across all genres. I like prose with a confident literary bent even in genre—why not have your style match your scope?—and I love setting-as-character in both real and invented worlds.

I am actively looking for:

• Fantasy and space opera with lush, vivid worlds and complex political intrigues with deeply personal stakes. Always enjoy: deadly decadent courts, intricate religious orders, knife-to-throat romance. Especially eager for epic/historic fantasy worlds with cultural inspirations outside Europe from authors who know their way around those cultures and histories (Egyptian! Aztec! Ottoman!)
• Thematically driven, stylish horror. Always enjoy: gothic heroines, cults, eating the rich (literally?), anything that marries the seductive to the grotesque. Open to anything from Alison Rumfitt’s body horror to Silvia Moreno Garcia’s incredible wealth of genre crossovers. The dream project: F/F Hannibal.
• Voice-driven literary fiction with a clearsighted social perspective and a sense of wit. Send me your Selins.
• Fun, escapist beach reads with great characters and chemistry, like THE PAIRING, THE FRIEND ZONE EXPERIMENT, and THE VIEW WAS EXHAUSTING

I am selectively considering:

• Retellings: myths, fairytales, twisty histories. Am a sucker for: any Bluebeard, any Goose Girl, any Melusine, any angle on Helen of Troy, and any take on Shakespeare, but I am particularly looking for unexplored or under-explored cultural contexts and a strong sense of time and place.
• Dark academia with an angle: from locations outside Oxbridge (or Europe/US in general), disenchanted by the ivory tower, and/or willing to get darker, à la the original bacchanal in THE SECRET HISTORY. Grad students like the Lyctors in THE LOCKED TOMB are grad students.
• Romantic fantasy where the world is as vivid as the romance (a la THE HURRICANE WARS)
• Upper/crossover YA with interesting style that uses genre elements to scaffold big emotions (SCAPEGRACERS; IF YOU COULD SEE THE SUN; VIOLET MADE OF THORNS) or contemporary coming of age stories that play with heritage and setting (LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI; DEAR HAITI, LOVE ALAINE)
• Select historical fiction in the vein of Hilary Mantel or Sarah Dunant
• Creative and platform-driven nonfiction – particularly drawn to decolonial travel writing, thoughtful and diverse food writing, and incisive cultural perspectives on luxury and beauty (think Arabelle Sicardi or Jia Tolentino)

Submission Guidelines

Please email a query letter and the first 5 pages of your manuscript in the body of the email to submissions@foxliterary.com, with my name in the salutation and title of the email (i.e. ATTN: ISABEL).