BPA's Blog
Author and literary agent Q&As, plus advice ranging from submissions to how to improve your craft.
Peggy Lee
Peggy manages Blue Pencil Agency’s editorial department, social media channels and blog. She completed a Master’s in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, where she found a love for editing and decided to pursue a career working with words. Peggy has had stories published by Liar’s League, Every Day Fiction and Coffin Bell. She is currently working on two contemporary novels.
21 Rather Relevant Book Quotes to Carry us Through Lockdown
While literary agents prepare for an onslaught of pandemic themed submissions, we're compiling quotes from bestselling novels that could have been written in direct response to 2020's lockdown... "And she learned that you couldn’t stockpile anything that...
Review: How It Ends by Saskia Sarginson
A quick google search describes Saskia’s latest book, How It Ends, as ‘a sweeping and turbulent drama about the anxieties of post-war Britain, where one strong and inspirational young woman looks to find her place, no matter the cost…’ I’ve never really been a fan of...
Ask a Literary Agent: Rebecca Ritchie from AM Heath
Rebecca Ritchie is an agent at AM Heath, looking for contemporary women’s fiction, reading group, historical fiction and saga, through to police procedural, crime, thriller and psychological suspense. She is also interested in non-fiction topics such as cookery,...
Ask a Literary Agent: Laetitia Rutherford
Before I became an agent, I started out in Fiction Marketing at HarperCollins – a fantastic starter job, gained from applying to an ad in the Guardian (neither interning, nor nepotism involved!) After three years, I wanted to get closer to books but wasn’t sure how....
Writing Advice with Mandy Robotham
Mandy Robotham is the author of "Breeder", the story that was awarded the runner-up prize in the BPA First Novel Award Competition 2018. After completing a masters in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University, Mandy has won several prizes for her short stories....
Writing Advice with Jules Lampshire
Jules Lampshire is the winner of the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2018 for her novel My Poor Deluded Girl which she wrote while attending the six month Faber Academy Writing a Novel programme in 2017. Our judges praised her work as being "one of those real...
What’s ‘Up Lit’?
What's ‘Up Lit’? It's the trend that everyone in the literary world has been talking about after it took 2018 by storm. There has been a surge in demand to read novels such as the award-winning ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ and other ‘up lit’ titles such as...
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