Tasneem Motala

Tasneem Motala is currently working as an Assistant Agent under The Rights Factory. She is looking to work with BIPOC authors writing character-driven YA, Graphic Novel, and Adult fiction, with or without a touch of magic.

As much as she’d love to represent the things that molded her into the adult she is today, like Beyblade and Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tasneem will happily settle for stories that give her that same sense of joy but for older audiences. Contemporary adult-aimed books on the power of friendship, nostalgia, bittersweet endings, second chances, and regrets like those told in anime like Flavors of Youth and Barakamon are on her radar, along with sci-fi stories that break into the many facets and ideas of futurism, cyberpunk, and what it means to be human from a marginalized perspective.

A short list of books she’s devoured within hours include the Perfect Dark books by Greg Rucka, the Six of Crows duology from Leigh Bardugo, and the Shadow Game trilogy by Amanda Foody, which all find themselves taking place in the underbelly of their respective worlds elite, with high stakes and characters who are too good at their jobs, yet are still human and make mistakes whether they can afford to or not. If anything, Tasneem is still craving the same excitement of reading Perfect Dark: Second Front for the very first time.

Lately she’s been very drawn to the ideas and themes explored in certain literary fiction and sci-fi books including two on her 2023 TBR: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo and The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta.

Overall, some of Tasneem’s favourite tropes include enemies to lovers, unreliable narrators, retellings of myths and legends from the world over (but don’t send her any more retellings of the Greek Gods, she’s over it), and ragtag or reluctant team-ups (which pair perfectly with enemies to lovers!).

Some things that don’t spark joy include Dystopian YA, anything with a super heavy focus on real world events, politics, or social issues, and stories that glamourize triggering subjects. She’s also not a fan of stories with animal protagonists (as much as she wants to be a cat mom, she never got into the Warrior Cats series, but she does love Sonic the Hedgehog).

As an agent, Tasneem is passionate about representing the underrepresented, hence why she’s only accepting BIPOC queries.

Submission Guidelines

NO dystopian YA fiction.
NO memoirs or self-help books.
NO LONGER accepting picture books.
NO novellas, screenplays, or poetry collections.
NO contemporary books with a heavy focus on real world current events, politics, and social issues.
BIPOC queries ONLY.

Guidelines & Details