Madison Smartt Bell is a literary agent with Ayesha Pande Literary. He is the author of twelve novels, including The Washington Square Ensemble, Waiting for the End of the World, Straight Cut, The Year of Silence, Doctor Sleep, Save Me, Joe Louis, Ten Indians, SoldierÕs Joy, Anything Goes, All Souls Rising (National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner finalist), Master of the Crossroads, The Stone That The Builder Refused, DevilÕs Dream, and The Color of Night. Bell has also published three collections of short stories: Zero db, Barking Man, and Zig-Zag Wanderer; two biographies: Toussaint-Louverture and Lavoisier in the Year One; and a memoir of travel in Haiti, Soul in a Bottle. With Wyn Cooper, the other head of the two-headed singer songwriter Bell & Cooper, he has released two albums: Forty Words For Fear and Postcards out of the Blue.
Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York, Paris and London. A graduate of Princeton University and the Hollins College graduate creative writing program, he has taught in many other writing programs, including Goucher College, the Iowa WritersÕ Workshop, and the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. For thirty years he has helped writers place their manuscripts on a pro bono basis. He is interested in literary fiction, noir, criminal procedurals, work from the Caribbean basin and other diasporas, and anything genuinely original and fresh.