Erika Stevens is a literary agent with Salky Literary Management. Erika (she/hers) has acquired, edited, and developed the work of a wide range of authors over the course of two decades in publishing. She recently wrapped up twelve years with indie Coffee House Press, finishing her time there as editorial director. She began her career at academic presses, including Duke, UNC, and UGA Presses. Authors whose work she has shepherded include Eloisa Amezcua, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Kyle Dargan, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Saeed Jones, Eugene Lim, Dawn Lundy Martin, Bao Phi, Justin Phillip Reed, Natasha Trethewey, Anne Waldman, Karen Tei Yamashita, and many others. Her authors have been awarded or named finalists for the National Book Award, the Hurston Wright Award, the Kingsley and Kate Tufts Award, the PEN/Osterweil Award, the Whiting Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kate Tufts Award, the NBCC Award, the Lambda Awards, and others.

As an agent and editor she specializes in helping authors develop their work, whether in their home genres or stretching into others. She has an affinity for work that argues, experiments with language, and/or pushes genre boundaries, and she is looking for projects that excite, invigorate, and surprise in the genres of poetry, literary nonfiction/essay, literary and experimental fiction, hybrid work, translation, criticism, music writing (ˆ la Ellen Willis), and food writing/cookbooks (ˆ la Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and MFK Fisher). In the realm of childrenÕs literature, sheÕs looking for picture books and books for early readers that speak to children with gender-expansive identities and families.