Nicola Barr is a literary agent with Rye Literary. She says: ÒI have such admiration and respect for anyone who is driven to write and publish books. ItÕs takes incredible focus, dedication and determination. It has never stopped feeling like a privilege to champion writers and help them get their work out into the world. I spent my formative publishing years as an editorial assistant then editor at Flamingo, the much-missed literary imprint of HarperCollins where, to my ill-concealed disbelief, I worked on books by Naomi Klein, Anna Burns, Fay Weldon, Doris Lessing. IÕve also spent years working as a book reviewer for the Guardian and the Observer. I have over the years represented many bestselling commercial fiction authors, award-winning crime fiction, womenÕs fiction and literary fiction and am still very much on the lookout for well-written fiction in these genres. But, whether you are writing commercial or literary fiction, I am endlessly fascinated by dysfunctional families, oddballs, women struggling and women achieving, outsiders, messiness. Books that have a go at making sense of how difficult relationships, friendships, working life, getting by is. IÕm a committed Londoner, but was born and raised in Northern Ireland, then studied at the University of Glasgow, so please do send me your Irish and Scottish novels, your regional voices, working-class narratives. Publishing is known as an elite industry, but there is a huge appetite for working-class and diverse voices and stories and I want to champion them. I represent some of the UKÕs finest non-fiction writers – Joe Moran, Owen Hatherley, Lynsey Hanley, John Grindrod, Anna Minton, among others, writing on housing, class, feminism, social change, globalisation, sexuality and am always looking for more in these areas. IÕm good at spotting brilliance in a submission and helping a debut author shape what they have to fit the market in a way that stays true to their original vision. ThereÕs this sense in publishing that commercial and familiar is easy and that upmarket, literary, innovative, different, is difficult. I find that dull. I like books that challenge and surprise and am convinced readers do too.”