James Gill

I have worked in publishing and literary representation since 1995, and act for a broad range of both fiction and non-fiction authors writing for the general-trade market.

I’ve represented Sunday Times #1 and top-ten bestsellers in fiction and non-fiction, acting for clients who have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Nibbie Novel of the Year Award, and the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, as well as past winners of the Wolfson History Prize, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, the Whitbread Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Wainwright Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize.

I am always on the look-out for the original and the excellent – whether in fiction or non-fiction.

I’m drawn to real-life stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and particularly to first-person books that shows us a life, or an occupation or situation that we don’t know about – a voice we haven’t heard before.  In general, in a proposal or outline I am hoping to find originality and clarity of intent.  I’m not normally excited by novels that are formally adventurous and daring, or self-consciously “literary fiction”, but I love a driving plot, a promising set-up and believable characters (those real-life stories again…).