Kerry-Ann Bentley

Kerry-Ann Bentley is a literary agent at KAB Literary where she represents established and debut writers. She is building a list of adult fiction (literary, commercial, upmarket) and narrative non-fiction (memoir, essay collections, social/cultural journalism). She represents select children’s authors (middle-grade, YA) as well as some poetry. Clients include award-winning author Alex Wheatle MBE, Yvonne Bailey-Smith, Gemma Weekes, Karla Neblett, Lela Burbridge,  Jackson King, and Dominique Palmer.  

Kerry-Ann graduated with a First-class degree in English & United States Literature from the University of Essex. Then she earned her Masters with Distinction in Caribbean Literature and its Diasporas from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her agenting career began in 2020, in the New York office of Janklow & Nesbit where her notable deals include The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward, Decent People by Jessica Ramirez Guel and William by Mason Coile. 

She is Jamaican-born and has lived in the Caribbean, the UK and the U.S., and is particularly drawn to writers of a similar transatlantic experience. She would like to work with writers who explore race, class, gender, queerness, and the legacies of colonialism on family–especially mother-daughter relationships—love, sex, culture, and nation.  

I enjoy a broad range of fiction, style, and prose, and I am looking for writers with a strong command of voice and tone, and who have razor-sharp focus and insight into under-represented facets of humanity and culture. Writers I admire are Elena Ferrante, James Baldwin, Eileen Myles, Octavia E. Butler, Michelle Cliff, Toni Morrison, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Monica Heisey, Charmaine Wilkerson, Casey McQuiston, Angie Thomas, Sally Rooney, Brandon Taylor, Ocean Vuong, Marlon James, Yrsa Daley-Ward, and Safiya Sinclair.  

Right now, I am looking for fiction that is transporting, gripping, and compulsively readable from the first sentence to the last page. In literary fiction, I admire beautiful language and voices that feel singular, urgent, and fresh. I appreciate lyrical, poetic sentences as much as sparse or formally inventive ones, but there must be vivid, inhabited characters and smart dialogue. For upmarket and commercial fiction, I need an exhilarating premise, tight plotting, loveable characters, and humour. I want books that explore contemporary issues by investigating recent histories from an unexpected lens and uncover something new and underrepresented about modern living.   

I love fiction that plays with space and time, and has time-slips, sliding-doors, and multiverses. Books that are representative of this are Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Berry, The Ministry of Time by Ka Bradley and One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. Film/TV like this are About Time, Midnight in Paris, The Time Travellers Wife, Being Erica and Dirk’s Gently. I’m drawn to stories with contemporary settings inflected with genre elements such as magical realism, sci-fi, fantasy and the supernatural, but I do not represent high-fantasy or hard SFF.  

I am also on the lookout for fun psychological thrillers, murder-mysteries, and amateur sleuth series. I would like to see these stories with protagonists that are BIPOC and/or LGBTQ and from working-class writers. If these stories blend romance and speculative elements, all the better! Books in this space are Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon, The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner and A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske.  

I love to read women’s fiction with protagonists that are dark, strange, and even dangerous; literary confessions from female protagonists about the modern pitfalls of being a woman in today’s society, and I am especially excited by fiction dealing with sex and relationships under a patriarchal society. Books in this space are Boy Parts by Eliza Clark, I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel, My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie, A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, The Absolutes by Molly Dektar, The Lagos Wife by Vanessa Walters, and How to Kill Men and Get Away With It by Katy Brent. 

I also like to read about race, class, and gender from male writers who are grappling with these issues using a satirical lens. I enjoyed If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour, and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. I especially would like to read novels centring queerness in the Black and Brown gay communities that wear their hearts on the sleeve like Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh and Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson. 

I want more romance fiction. I am on the lookout for sweeping, epic, love stories like Atonement or The English Patient, and commercial rom-coms with settings in Scotland, Cornwall and Bristol. But also take me somewhere stunning I’ve never heard of! I want romance centring BIPOC and /or LGBTQ characters such as the works by Jasmine Guillory, Tiffany. D Jackson, Alexa Martin, Taylor Dior-Rumble, and Liv Little. 

In children’s literature, I mainly read ages 12+. I am on the lookout for kid-lit with horror, sci-fi/AI, speculative and romance elements. As usual, I want to read about characters that are BIPOC and/or LGBTQ. I represent MG and picture books on a select basis.  

For poetry, I would like to work with multi-disciplinary writers who work with prose fiction and/ or non-fiction. Unutterable Visions, Perishable Breath by Otamere Guobadia is a perfect example of this. I enjoy the works of Michelle Cliff, Anne Sexton, Claude McKay, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Nikita Gill, Sylvia Plath, Nayyirah Waheed, Warsan Shire, Eileen Myles, Caleb Femi, Derek Owusu, Ocean Vuong, and Safiya Sinclair. I do not represent poets who have not been previously published.  

In memoir and narrative non-fiction, I like to read about people and places on subjects of a wider social resonance. I also love to read works by journalists, critics, and academics who are zeitgeist voices with their fingers on the pulse of modern issues. Writers that reflect my non-fiction taste are Travis Alabanza, Billy Ray Belcourt, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich, Aniefiok Ekpoudom, Eileen Myles, Olivia Laing, Nicole Fleetwood, Kiese Laymon, Isabel Wilkerson, Cathy Park Hong, Samantha Irby, Sarah M. Broom, Melissa Febos and Allison P Davis. I really want an excellent book on PMDD and menstrual health/illness. I am also interested in astrology and tarot and books that make these subjects fun and accessible to readers. 

Kerry-Ann lives in London.  

Instagram: @KABLiterary 

Submissions should be emailed to submissions@kabliterary.com