Hannah Brattesani is a literary agent with The Friedrich Agency. She says: “Freshly graduated from the University of St Andrews, IÕm on the top floor of a RADA building in Bloomsbury, London being interviewed for an MFA in playwriting by a man who, for the sake of this story, looks like a young Tom Stoppard. IÕve just been told something that hurts more than it should, ÒYouÕre too green.Ó Tom ends our interview with an instruction as I exit the door: ÒGo live!Ó It takes five creaking flights to get out of the building and five creaking flights for hurt to rise to spite. I spend the afternoon searching for jobs in New York from the coffee shop next door. IÕll show you living!
I begin working for Emma Sweeney Agency, a boutique literary agency which was home to bestselling and beloved authors and helmed by the eponymous Emma Sweeney. From that Upper East Side office, I learn the ropes of the industry and I am first introduced to the international publishing network. While juggling myriad duties at ESA, I also handle contracts for Blue Flower Arts, a speakers bureau whose roster includes Claudia Rankine, Joy Harjo, George Saunders, Eileen Myles and many more critically acclaimed poets and authors. I learn a lot in that first year; crucially, that there are only 24 hours in a day.
Just six months after a promotion to ESAÕs Foreign Rights Director, I am given an opportunity to double up once again, and I step in as the interim Director of International Rights at Folio Literary Management. I go from handling a catalog of twenty titles to ten times that amount; the list encompasses everything from picture books to green juice cookbooks to sweeping historical novels. I add mastering a matinee commute through Times Square to my skillset: elbows out, avoid eye contact, pause for no one.
At the end of my time at Folio, Emma Sweeney retires, and the agency is acquired by Folio. That weekend, I stand in a Barnes & Noble parking lot when my phones rings with a number I donÕt recognize. I answer. ÒItÕs Molly Friedrich. I heard youÕre looking for a job.Ó The whole thing would feel like divine intervention if it werenÕt happening next to the New Jersey turnpike.
I join Friedrich as an agent and Director of International Rights at the end of 2019 and have been cultivating a list of literary and upmarket fiction and voice-driven non-fiction ever since. Tom Stoppard Ð real or otherwise Ð has yet to get in touch.
Five non-agency books that I loved: FEVER DREAM, CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN, HOW TO BE BOTH, anything by Rebecca Solnit, and THEY CANÕT KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US.”