“Time is our most precious commodity. You are at an advantage if you leave less room for second guessing.” -Melissa Flashman (Janklow & Nesbit & Associates)
The 2025 Agents Symposium is a year-long program of monthly events with literary agents – taking writers step by step along the journey to publication. We’re happy to share Q&As with some of our featured agents here. To register for Melissa Flashman’s presentation on June 28 on “Between Signing & Submission: The Agent-Author Relationship” click here.
An Interview with Melissa Flashman
Melissa Flashman represents award-winning and best-selling fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, she is particularly interested in conversation-changing books including journalism, science, technology, business/finance/economics, memoir/narrative, essays and cultural criticism. She is drawn to a range of literary and commercial fiction and is particularly excited about stories that touch on the deeper meaning of life, family, identity and love. A good page-turner is always welcome. Melissa’s authors have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Windham Campbell Prize, Whiting Award, National Book Critic Circle Award, the Rona Jaffe Award, the Hugo Award, n + 1 writer’s fellowship, and The Nation’s Ridenhour Prize among others. A former first serial and magazine agent, she enjoys helping her writers place journalism, essays and fiction in a range of publications including The New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, Vogue, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, the Paris Review, n + 1, Tin House, the Baffler and Jacobin. Recent titles include The Dawn of Everything (FSG) by David Graeber & David Wengrow; Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (FSG), Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna (Ecco), Sociopath, a Memoir by Patric Gagne (Simon & Schuster), Out of Office (Knopf) by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen, Stray (Knopf) by Stephanie Danler, The Undying (FSG) by Anne Boyer, From the Hood to the Holler (Crown) by Charles Booker, Unwinding Anxiety (Avery) by Judson Brewer and Private Equity by Carrie Sun.
Scribe: How would you describe your personal approach to working with an author?
Melissa Flashman: It is definitely a partnership. Our shared goal in the initial stages of working together is to build the best package for potential publishers. Once we have a deal in place, the goal shifts to working with the publisher to strategically introduce the book into the world of readers.
Scribe: What do you look for in a debut author?
MF: For fiction it is a writer with a compelling, urgent story expertly told. We are in world of distractions, our iPhones always at the ready. Imagine you are out at lunch with a friend and you were pressing the last great book you read into that friend’s hands. Why must they read it? I am looking for writers whose novels can answer that “why.”
For nonfiction: it is authors with the expertise and/or platform to deliver a conversation changing message whether anchored in current events, history, the sciences or any other field of inquiry.
Scribe: What’s one piece of advice you find yourself giving to others time and time again?
MF: Unless you have a book that is time sensitive and pegged to the news cycle, there is no downside to taking the time to work with your agent to get your submission to publishers right. This generally is good advice for preparing material to submit to agents as well. Time is our most precious commodity. You are at an advantage if you leave less room for second guessing.
Scribe: What excites you the most about the publishing industry today?
MF: The ability of writers to develop their ideas and ecosystem directly via podcasts, newsletters and social media.
Scribe: Tell us about a recent book/project that you worked on that excited you and you want everyone to know about?
MF: Kathryn Paige Harden who is a ground breaking behavioral geneticist and psychology professor at UT Austin. Random House is very excited to publish Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame and the Future of Forgiveness. It’s provocative, beautifully written and full of grace.
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Thanks, Mel!
Click here for more information on the 2025 Agents Symposium, an event that focuses on the craft of writing, the business of publishing, and building a literary community.
