Larissa Melo Pienkowski

I joined Azantian Literary Agency in 2025 after five years with Jill Grinberg Literary Management. Across age groups, my list spans the spectrum of literary and commercial in both fiction and nonfiction. I’m proud to represent brilliant, creative, conversation-sparking clients who have gone on to become USA Today bestsellers, Indie Next picks, Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections, and winners of the Nebula Award, GLAAD Award, and National Indie Excellence Award, among others.

As a queer, mixed-race Latina who grew up hungry for stories that mirrored my own and those around me, I believe books are a critical tool in the ongoing fight for liberation. Given my passion for books that challenge the status quo and make people feel seen, my list centers BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, international, and other historically marginalized authors.

Adult Fiction

I gravitate to books where the personal stakes are high, the writing is sophisticated and confident, and characters’ desires and motivations are both unique and propulsive enough to drive the plot. A well-developed voice is paramount. And while my MSWL errs on the side of specificity, I’m always excited to fall in love with something new and unexpected.

Some of what I’m looking for:

• Literary family sagas with a strong commercial hook that span decades of evolving relationships
• Genre-blending fiction (e.g., historical speculative, horror + romance) with sentences I want to write down and remember
• Twisty, high-stakes heists, cons, and scams that critique power and the systems that create and perpetuate it, much like Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
• Knives Out-esque murder mysteries and thrillers about spies, assassins, and other clandestine characters, with a warm tone and lots of humor
• Literary/book club fiction about BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ protagonists reckoning with entry into glamorized, predominantly white/cishet spaces like museums and the fine arts, academia, the beauty industry, etc.
• Feminist pursuits of revenge, justice, and power, especially in response to patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and other systems of oppression
• Fantasy that leans more whimsical than cozy, with grounded characters and relationships that feel profoundly human
  • Themes I appreciate: books about books, language, and writing; cultural and archival memory; diaspora and displacement; and resistance to oppression, patriarchy, and colonialism
  • I would love to see more South American-inspired SFF
• High-heat romance with punchy banter, sophisticated writing, and undeniable chemistry, where the plot is as important as the romantic arc and you could cut the tension with a knife (kink welcome!)
• Historical fiction with genre elements—speculative, romance, mystery, etc.— or straight-up historical fiction that features unexpected settings, events, and protagonists

Adult Nonfiction

In nonfiction, I’m looking for authors with an established platform in their field who are writing voicey, on-the-pulse cultural commentary and reflections on capitalism and colonization, power and privilege, race and identity, gender and sexuality, art and culture, beauty and the body politic, and academia and intellectualism. I’m a sucker for narrative nonfiction that draws insightful connections between investigative journalism to the author’s personal experiences to humanity at large, and I have a deep and abiding love for well-researched microhistories—the more niche the better.

Some specific wants:

• Microhistories that can be described as “a love letter to X” or be comped to an Ologies podcast episode
  • I’m especially on the lookout for microhistories having to do with beauty, fragrance, poison, psychedelics/plant medicine, sex and the erotic, heists/cons/scams/thefts, and topics that might be seen as taboo but have broader connections to humanity at large.
• Essay collections that chronicle contemporary life through the lens of cultural critique, pop culture, justice, decolonization, and liberation
• Multicultural cookbooks that center authentic recipes from underrepresented cuisines and/or fusions between cultures, as long as the author can speak intimately to the ways these cultures meld together
  • A comprehensive Brazilian cookbook that explores recipes by region is high on my list.

Middle-Grade and YA Fiction

While I’m taking on middle-grade and YA fiction extra selectively at the moment, I will absolutely keep reading if the characters’ voices jump off the page so vividly that I forget an adult wrote the book. Picture books are almost always a hard sell for me, but I’m open to being surprised.

I love middle-grade fiction across genre, especially if there’s a ragtag group of friends at its core, or if it handles heavier topics in a moving way with a beautiful literary quality to it. I want to see more marginalized kids experiencing joy, though I won’t shy away from storylines centered around identity as long as they feel unique and specific to the character. I laugh and cry very easily, and my favorite middle-grade books make me do both.

In YA, my tastes can skew a little darker. I’m always on the lookout for queer, feminist, and decolonial revenge/coming of rage books; original twists on dark academia (I’d love to see dark academia in a non-Eurocentric setting); “unlikable” protagonists; queer protagonists in historical YA; and standout coming-of-age stories that grapple with emotionally weightier circumstances.

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I am NOT a good fit for:

• stories about a specific marginalized identity or experience written by authors who don’t share that identity
• books with a 110K+ word count
• dystopias or postapocalyptic novels (unless it embraces hope in the vein of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers)
• Tolkien-esque epic fantasy or books that feature elves, fae, dragons, werewolves, zombies, or unicorns (though I do love ghosts, mermaids, bruxas, non-Western mythological creatures, and feminist interpretations of monsters)
• books glorifying the military, police, or the FBI/CIA (amateur sleuths and spies are great, though)
• Christian or “clean” romance
• novellas, short story collections, chapter books, or novels-in-verse
• stories that portray hate crimes, sexual violence, or domestic violence on the page
• anything having to do with Nazis, Zionists, or terrorists
• WWII or Civil War historical fiction
• diet and wellness nonfiction unless written from a fat liberationist framework
• memoir, true crime, or nonfiction centered on business, economics, or capital-P politics

Submission Guidelines

Please query me via my Query Manager link: https://QueryTracker.net/query/lmpnk

Consultations