Mary Krienke is a literary agent with Sterling Lord Literistic. Mary represents literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, and select memoir, prescriptive, and illustrated projects. Whether in fiction or nonfiction, Mary gravitates toward work that is fierce, sharp, nuanced, and uncompromising. In fiction, she is looking for work that is inventive and strange, brave and honest, with humor and heart. She especially loves fiction that employs genre elementsÑwhether evocatively surreal or supernaturalÑto speak about a world that is always in flux and difficult to perceive and render. In nonfiction, Mary responds to work that explores our experience of being in relation: to ourselves, to one another, to the material world, and to all we cannot see but strive to comprehend. In both fiction and nonfiction, work that investigates culture, identity, sexuality, disability, and mental health is especially welcome. Some of MaryÕs clients include Kavita Bedford, Betsy Bonner, Nandita Dinesh, Stacy Austin Egan, Kristine S. Ervin, Kimberly Olson Fakih, Shelby Lorman, Vyshali Manivannan, Ashlee Piper, Betty Shamieh, Yana Tallon-Hicks, Sharon Sochil Washington, and Ellen OÕConnell Whittet, and she co-represents the Berenstain Bears franchise with Flip Brophy. Mary received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and has a deep appreciation for dark chocolate; her other interests include film, television, art, and design.