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Beth Phelan
Gallt & Zacker
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About
Beth Phelan is a literary agent at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency who focuses on children's and young adult literature. She is also the founder of the #DVpit Twitter pitch event, which was created to help marginalized writers connect with agents and editors. She is a prominent advocate for diversity and inclusion in publishing.
Currently Looking For
OPEN TO QUERIES DURING THE FIRST WEEK OF EVERY MONTH. Beth Phelan has been working in publishing since 2010. A lifelong reader, she’s been caught reading by flashlight in hotel closets while on vacation and finishing stories in lieu of returning friends’ calls. She is a winner of the inaugural CBC Diversity Outstanding Achievement Award, a Publisher’s Weekly Notable Person of the Year Reader’s Pick, twice-nominated for The Ignyte Community Award for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre, and a Publisher’s Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She’s a senior literary agent at Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency since 2017 and is a member of the AALA. Beth is also the Founder and was President and Executive Director of DiverseVoices, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization that operated from 2019 to 2023. She created #DVpit, a pitch event for marginalized creators, in April 2016, and DVcon, a free virtual conference for marginalized book creators (2021 & 2022). Most of her time is spent reading, editing, and playing with her ugly dog Beefy.
Submission Guidelines
Please note that I am only actively seeking to consider projects of MG and YA fiction (and/or just the right nonfiction project for those age categories) at this time. Altho I sometimes sell picture books, graphic novels, novels-in-verse, and adult projects, I am not accepting those from new clients and reserve those sales for my current client list. I’m interested in contemporary, fantasy, magical realism, speculative, romance, light horror, and thriller/mystery. I am particularly looking to work with authors from marginalized communities (BIPOC, queer/trans/enby, religious minorities, disabled folks including neurodivergent, etc); please refer to the WNDB definition of “diversity” for more info here. I am not a good fit for books about school shootings, self harm, disordered eating, animal cruelty, or anything promoting copaganda. Please include content warnings if any of the above are even incidentally mentioned and definitely content warnings for anything about suicide. I am not interested in any material generated by AI, nor do I care to work with any authors who still support/enjoy JK Rowling or don’t see the issue with book bans or the genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli state. I’m looking to be swept away by new worlds, dynamic characters, compelling relationships, and absorbing settings. I feel deeply, and I want books that meet me there. I’m in particular interested in championing intersectional, marginalized voices, pushing boundaries, and seeing if we can shak
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