Jessica Sinsheimer

Closed to queries. Please check ContextLit.com for updates. 

Whatever the age group, I tend to love contrast–highbrow sentences and lowbrow content, beautiful settings and ugly motives–the books that are beautiful and scary, heartbreaking and hilarious. I love secrets, scheming, revenge, plotting–and stories that have to be written forward and backward to make sense (I LOVE discovering a very cleverly planted clue that makes sense in retrospect). I love watching powerful people navigate their public and private lives.

More underrepresented characters, please–especially those with power, agency, and happy endings. Wish fulfillment, romance, specialized skills (especially tech).

Show me a world where power is distributed differently and, thus, makes many feel safer.

Upmarket genre fiction (whether for YA or adult) usually works for me. MG adventure, horror, or fantasy is also of interest.

I’m also into the books that are mostly in our world–but then that veer slightly into surrealism (like Aimee Bender) or genre fiction–that really works for me. I tend to love the spooky, ghostly, dark, or pure romantic, fun, and escapist.

But if the voice is wonderful, I can love just about anything.

Also welcome: fictionalizations of historical events.

And new twists on familiar stories. A female James Bond, for example.

I also love characters in love–who try to deal with it all intellectually (like The Rosie Project, Kurt in The Truth About Alice–and one of my books, Love And Other Unknown Variables). I really hope someone writes a book version of the movie Her. Similarly, I loved The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, and loved hating its main character.

If you’re the next Ruth Reichl, I want to hear from you.

If you’re not sure, please go ahead and query. My interests are broad, and I’m happy to hear from you.

TL;DR:

• Feminist historical fantasy
• Rom-coms with underrepresented characters
• YA featuring girls who stop serial killers, or are otherwise chaotic good

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be emailed to QueryJessica@ContextLit.com

Currently closed to queries.

Query letter and first 10 pages pasted in body of email to QueryJessica at ContextLit dot com, please.

Consultations