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Anna Olswanger

Olswanger Literary LLC

Anna Olswanger has been a literary agent since 2005. She started her career at Liza Dawson Associates in Manhattan, and in 2014 launched her own literary agency, Olswanger Literary LLC, where she represents a wide variety of genres, but is currently focused on illustrated books (picture books and graphic novels). She is a member of the AALA, Association of American Literary Agents.

Anna has sold to major publishers, including Bloomsbury, Chronicle, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster.

Her clients' books have won the Newbery Honor, Asian Pacific American Award for Literature Honor, Flora Stieglitz Strauss Award for Nonfiction, Orbis Pictus Honor, PEN/Steven Kroll Award for Picture Book Writing, Parents Choice Gold Award, Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Books, Sibert Award Honor, Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Honor, Sydney Taylor Silver Medal, Boston Globe Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, International Bologna/Ragazzi Nonfiction Honor, CCBC Choices, and been Junior Library Guild Selections and on The New York Times Bestseller list. You can view many of her clients' books on Instagram.

Anna has several colleagues at Olswanger Literary who focus on adult fiction and nonfiction. Their interests range from science fiction to memoir to romance. Click on each agent's name for more information:
Clara Chuiton
Kimberly Fernando
Jared Johnson
Yael Levy
Annie Romano
Madison Scalera

Like her colleagues, Anna works hard with authors to get their manuscripts into shape for submission. She finds that most manuscripts need work on plot, so if you're a potential author-illustrator client, be ready to go through many revisions before Anna agrees to send out your manuscript. Her job is to get the story to the point where an editor will make an offer. (And then be prepared to make more revisions for the editor.)

Through her work as an agent of children's books, Anna has developed a special interest in animal advocacy. She is the agent for Jill Robinson and Marc Bekoff's Jasper's Story: Saving Moonbears, the story of a moon bear held captive in a cage by bear farmers in rural China until rescued by Animals Asia, the organization that Jill founded, and Alan Rabinowitz's A Boy and a Jaguar, the story of a boy who fulfills his promise to speak for animals who cannot speak for themselves.

Anna is also interested in finding unusual books with a Judaic or Israel theme. She is the agent for Ruchama Feuerman’s novel In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist, about the friendship between a rabbi’s assistant and a devout Muslim janitor, and Santiago Cohen’s picture book The Yiddish Fish, about a fish who speaks Yiddish.

Anna would like to represent more author-illustrators of color.

If you think she would be the right agent for you, start by sending her an email with a few details about your book and the opening pages in a Word or PDF attachment. If Anna likes what she sees, she'll ask to see the full manuscript.

No phone calls please.