Jill Marr

Jill is an agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

She graduated from SDSU with a BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing and a minor in history. She has over 20 years of publishing experience, and wrote features and ads for Pages, the literary magazine for people who love books, as well as book ads for publishing houses, magazine pieces, and promotional features for television.

Jill is looking for fiction and non-fiction by unrepresented voices, BIPOC and Latinx writers, disabled persons, and people identifying as LGBTQ+, among others. She  is interested in commercial and upmarket fiction, with an emphasis on Gothic, horror, romantasy, romance, fantasy, speculative fiction, mysteries and thrillers, and historical fiction. She loves food-centric novels, no matter what the genre. She is looking to find more rom coms with a fresh voice, perspective and a strong hook. When it comes to suspense she likes it dark and psychological in the vein of Freida McFadden. Her tastes lean more in the vein of The Silent Patient,  The Lost Apothecary, Mexican Gothic and the works of S.A. Cosby than Private Investigator and CIA stories. Her tastes in horror run closer to Riley Sager, Shirley Jackson, and Paul Tremblay rather than slasher horror. And she almost never takes on military or Western projects. However she is a sucker for novels with grounded magical realism, and is always looking for a new take on mythology or folklore.

She is also looking for non-fiction by authors with a big, timely, smart message. She'd like to see work that does a deep dive into subcultures and social commentary as well as historical projects that look at big picture issues. Jill is looking for non-fiction projects in the areas of current events, true crime, science, history, narrative non-fiction, sports, politics, health & nutrition, pop culture, humor, music, and very select memoir.

Some of Jill's recent and soon-to-be-published non-fiction includes the New York Times best-selling The Menopause Manifesto (Citadel Press) and Blood by Dr. Jennifer Gunter; The Stadium (Basic Books) by Frank Andre Guridy; Becoming Baba (Doubleday) by Aymann Ismail; Big Dirty Money (Viking) by Jennifer Taub; Dateable (Hachette Go) by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp; Use the Power You Have (The New Press) by Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal; Freedom to Win (Pegasus) by Ethan Scheiner;The Great Black Hope (Public Affairs) by Louis Moore; Goddess Energy (Tarcher) by Gabriela Herstik, Manifesting Justice by Valena Beety, the Founding Director of the West Virginia Innocence Project; Keep Marching (Hachette) by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the co-founder of MomsRising; Ali on Ali (Workman) by the daughter of Muhammad Ali, Hana Ali; Being Heumann (Beacon Press) by late American disability activist Judith Heumann.

Some of Jill's new and upcoming fiction includes The Curse of Penryth Hall (Minotaur) the USA Today bestseller by the winner of the 2022 MWA/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel Competition Jess Armstrong; Come with Me (Thomas & Mercer) by Edgar Award-winning author Erin Flanagan;  Lighs Out (Zando) by Navessa Allen; Heavenly Bodies (PRH) by Imani ErriuEdgar Award-winning A Dreadful Splendor (William Morrow) by B.R. Myers, A Sweet Sting of Salt (Random House) by Rose Sutherland; Hot Summer (Putnam) by Elle Everhart; Love and Other Conspiracies (Berkley) by Mallory Marlowe; The Last Witch in Edinburgh (Kensington) by Marielle Thompson; Kilt Trip (Canary Street Press) by Alex Kiley; The Mystery Writer (Sourcebooks) by Sulari Gentill; Juror #3 (Little, Brown) a thriller written with James Patterson, by Nancy Allen; In the Hour of Crows (Mira) by Dana Elmendorf; The Devil and Mrs. Davenport (Lake Union) by Paulette Kennedy.

Please note that Jill is specifically not interested in: screenplays, poetry, and novellas