Angelique Tran Van Sang

I joined Felicity Bryan Associates as an agent after seven years as an editor at Bloomsbury, where I worked with authors such as Reni Eddo-Lodge and Kamila Shamsie, and published Jenny Zhang, Olivia Sudjic and Saba Sams, amongst others.

At FBA I am building a list of writers of fiction, non-fiction and select poetry, with a particular openness to authors who can work across these forms.

In fiction I am looking for works (novels, short story collections, novellas) that strike the heart and intellect in equal measure, that feature protagonists on the margins, and the full and complex lives of those not often represented in literature. I’m drawn to fresh and unexpected subversions of known narratives, the subtleties of class conflict, and writing that challenges, whether in form or content. Examples of novels I’ve admired are Severance by Ling Ma, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasm, Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley and When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut. In short fiction, I admire the work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Colin Barrett, Mary Gaitskill and Julie Orringer.

In non-fiction, I’m interested in oral and narrative histories, explorations of contemporary political and philosophical issues, gripping investigative journalism, as well as literary and cultural criticism and biography. Works I’ve admired range from The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan, Free by Lea Ypi and The Years by Annie Ernaux, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, and At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell.