Kerry-Ann Bentley

The Good Literary Agency UK

My Manuscript Wish List®

The Good Literary Agency can only accept submissions from British Citizens or UK Residents.

Kerry-Ann Bentley is a literary agent at The Good Literary Agency, building a list of adult fiction (literary, commercial, upmarket) and narrative non-fiction (memoir, essay collections, social/cultural journalism), and is taking on some YA and select poetry.

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.

For 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 love books that explore contemporary issues by investigating recent histories from an unexpected lens and uncovering something new and underrepresented about modern living. Writers I admire are Elena Ferrante, James Baldwin, Eileen Myles, Maddie Mortimer, Sarah Manguso, Toni Morrison, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Monica Heisey, Charmaine Wilkerson, Jessica George, Liv Little, Casey McQuiston, Jasmine Guillory, Angie Thomas, Sally Rooney, Brandon Taylor, Ocean Vuong, Marlon James, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Yrsa Daley-Ward, and Safiya Sinclair.

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 non-fiction 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 Nicole Fleetwood, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Isabel Wilkerson, Cathy Park Hong, Bessel van der Kolk, Samantha Irby, Sarah M. Broom, Melissa Febos, Hafizah Augustus Geter, Natasha Trethewey, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Rachel Aviv, Jia Tolentino, and Allison P Davis.

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

She started in publishing as an intern for Janklow & Nesbit’s New York office, before joining in 2020 as literary associate to PJ Mark, working closely editorially with him and his list of award-winning writers. Kerry-Ann graduated from the University of Essex with a First-class degree in English & United States Literature and earned her Masters with Distinction in  Caribbean Literature & its Diasporas from Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in London.

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