Meet the Agents
Sandra Dijkstra | Elise Capron |
Jill Marr |
Natalie M. Fischer | Taylor Martindale
SANDRA DIJKSTRA is the founder, owner, and President of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She is agent to authors in the arenas of fiction and non-fiction, including literary and commercial fiction, and on the non-fiction side: history, politics, current affairs, business, science, and religion. Truly bicoastal, Sandra was born in the Bronx, schooled in the East, then went west to grad school at UC Berkeley. Some twenty-five years ago, she brought to agenting literary taste honed by a Ph.D. in French Literature, a keen editorial eye trained during a decade of university teaching, and on the business front, her homegrown New Yorker selling smarts. Over these years, Newsweek dubbed her "the best agent in the West," Esquire chose her as one of the nation's "top five literary agents," and the Los Angeles Times proclaimed her an "über-agent" and "the most powerful literary agent on the West Coast."
Sandra looks for writers with something significant to say and who know how to say it in a unique way. Her hallmark is an eye for quality fiction that sells well, and on the literary fiction side, her roster of authors includes Chitra Divakaruni (One Amazing Thing, Spring 2010), Maxine Hong Kingston (Woman Warrior, and next year, A Broader Margin to My Life), Anchee Min (Pearl of China, Spring 2010), Lisa See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and more recently, Shanghai Girls), Adrienne Sharp (The True Memoirs of Little K, to pub Fall 2010), and Amy Tan (Joy Luck Club, and more recently, Saving Fish From Drowning), among others. On the mystery/thriller side, she champions bestselling Diane Mott Davidson, the Queen of the Culinary Mystery, Cosmopolitan's Kate White whose new thriller (Hush) will pub Spring 2010, and Susan Kandel, whose brilliant Cece Caruso series has been acclaimed by the NYT's Marilyn Stasio and others, with her Dial H for Hitchcock, which has been nominated for an Edgar. And, on the children's front, she is Stellaluna author/illustrator Janell Cannon's proud agent.
Sandra's roots in academe, as well as her passionate concern that our books contribute to making this world a better place, have led her to become the advocate for a leading group of investigative journalists, including the Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin, the Los Angeles Times's Michael Hiltzik, and ProPublica's T. Christian Miller, amongst others. She is proud to champion the work of two important critics of our times, Mike Davis (Ecology of Fear) and Chalmers Johnson (Blowback, and soon-to-be pubbed Dismantling the American Empire), and Sandra is agent to major American historians, many of them award-winning, including Pulitzers Stephen Hahn, and Leon Litwack, as well as prize-winning Civil War historian Eric Foner (The Story of American Freedom), and historians of the slave trade, Ira Berlin (The Making of African America), and Marcus Rediker (Slave Ship), Her history list proudly features Steve Fraser (Wall Street, America's Dream Palace), civil libertarian Peter Irons (People's History of the Supreme Court), economic historian David Landes (The Wealth and Poverty of Nations), Gary Nash (The Unknown American Revolution), Marilyn Yalom (The History of the Breast, and more recently, American Resting Place), and Elaine May (America and the Pill) and many more. This past fall, Adrienne Mayor pubbed The Poison King, The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy to great praise and a National Book Award Nomination, and Carol Sklenicka's Ray Carver was selected as a "Best Book of 2009" by the New York Times.
In addition, Sandra has developed a strong list on the science front, featuring such gurus as Don Norman (Emotional Design, Design of Everyday Things), Irv Yalom (The Gift of Therapy), Dr. Gary Small (iBrain, Memory Bible, and The Naked Woman Who Stood on Her Head, due Fall 2010), Jordan Fisher Smith (Nature Noir), and Bernd Heinrich (Summer World, The Mind of the Raven), as well as on the business side, starring bestseller Joel Greenblatt (The Little Book that Beats the Market), David Einhorn's Fooling Some of the People All of the Time and Herman Miller's Max dePree (Leadership Is an Art). Reaching for the sky, on the realm of religious studies, Sandra champions award-winning scholar Paula Fredriksen (Augustine and the Jews) and bestseller Stephen Prothero (Religious Literacy and the forthcoming God Is Not One).
Her goal is to help authors realize their dreams, supporting their work through each phase of the publishing process, so that their books reach the widest readership, here and abroad, and in as many formats as possible! To that end, she has assembled a team of powerful staffers, each of whom is a great reader and supporter of the Dijkstra List, and a few of whom are agenting their own lists, as well!
ELISE CAPRON is Sandy's Executive Assistant and a Literary Agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She specializes in debut fiction, character-driven literary and offbeat fiction, and short story collections. She is also interested in selected nonfiction if it has a literary edge.
A graduate of Emerson College, Elise holds a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing. She also served on the editorial staff of the Emerson Review. She interned at Harcourt and the Dijkstra Agency before joining the agency full-time in late 2003.
Elise is interested in fiction that has unforgettable writing, a terrific narrative voice/tone, and memorable characters. She loves novels with an unusual or eccentric edge, and is drawn to stories she has never heard before. She aims to work with writers who are getting their work published regularly in literary magazines and who have a realistic sense of the market and their audience. Some of Elise's recent and soon-to-be-published books include Tiphanie Yanique's How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf), Rikki Ducornet's Netsuke (Coffee House Press), Jonathon Keats' The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six (Random House) and upcoming Virtual Words (Oxford University Press), Ali Liebegott's The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf), Peter Plate's Soon the Rest Will Fall (Seven Stories Press), and Whitney Lyles' Party Games (Simon Pulse) and First Comes Love (Berkley).
JILL MARR is an acquiring associate agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Jill worked at SDLA as Sandy's Executive Assistant from 2001 to 2004, learning the ins and outs of publishing by working side-by-side with her. She's returned to the agency, now as an acquiring associate agent. She graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and a minor in History. She has a strong Internet and media background as well as over 10 years of publishing experience. She wrote features and ads for Pages, the literary magazine for people who love books, and continues to write book ads for publishing houses and promotional features for television.
After writing ad copy and features for published books for years, she knows how to find the "hook" and sell it.
Jill enjoys taking the time to meet budding writers at conferences around the country, including The Surry Writers Conference, Pike's Peak Writers Conference, (JAWS) Journalism and Women Symposium, The La Jolla Writers Conference, SDSU Writers Conference, Murder in the Magic City, Killer Nashville, Writers Boot Camp and more.
Jill is interested in commercial fiction, especially women’s fiction, multi-cultural fiction, historic fiction, mysteries and thrillers. She is also looking for non-fiction in the areas of self-help, inspirational, cookbooks, memoir (she especially loves travel and foodie memoirs), parenting, history, health & nutrition, pop culture, humor and music.
While she prefers you send manuscripts and proposals by mail, Jill is happy to look at queries by email at jill@dijkstraagency.com. However, keep in mind that she can only respond to the queries that she’s interested in seeing. (Please see our How to Submit page for submission requirements for other agents.)
NATALIE M. FISCHER is a Literary Agent and Assistant at the Dijkstra Agency. She is in charge of managing permission requests and foreign tax, among other things. An honors graduate of the University of San Diego, California, Natalie holds a BA in Literature/Writing. She started as an intern at the Agency in 2007, after which time she left to write author profiles and book reviews for the San Diego Union Tribune. Finding that journalism was not for her, she returned to work full-time at the Dijkstra Agency in April 2009.
Natalie is actively seeking new clients, and is especially interested in talented, hard-working new authors with a fresh, unique voice and hook. Her specialty is commercial fiction, with an emphasis in children’s literature (from picture book-YA/Teen), romance (contemporary and historical), historical fiction, multi-cultural fiction, paranormal, sci-fi/fantasy in YA or romance only, fairy-tale/legend spin-offs, and “beautiful dark” novels. She will also consider select memoir (has to be really unique) and that amazing project she never even knew she was looking for! She is always drawn to an open and positive attitude in an author, good grammar, and fantastical, engaging and sexy plots.
Natalie is not interested in thrillers, "boy" books, ABC books, bug books, spiritual guides/novels, and books geared toward the Christian market.
TAYLOR MARTINDALE is a Literary Agent and Office Assistant at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Taylor is a proud graduate of The College of William and Mary and holds a BA in English, with a minor in Hispanic Studies. She was the Copy Chief of her college newspaper for three years and does freelance writing for a local paper. Before joining SDLA in Summer 2009, Taylor was the Submissions Coordinator at Bliss Literary Agency, Intl.
As an acquiring agent, Taylor is interested in Young Adult fiction -- specifically contemporary, paranormal, urban fantasy, and any story with a captivating voice. She loves the way YA authors manage to bring today’s teenage culture to vivid life, set fire to imagination, and make their audience put aside cell phones for the crisp (or wrinkled) pages of a book.
Taylor is also interested in commercial fiction, women’s fiction, and multi-cultural fiction. She is looking for engaging and unforgettable characters and stories that stay with you long after you turn the final page.
