What I Mean by a #MSWL

Hi friends!

I hope it is springlike where you are. I just got back from a morning walk in Prospect Park (and saw this sprightly little birb) and it was incredibly restorative. Outside! Who knew?

Anyway, yesterday I tweeted:

I am listening to THE BARBIZON: The Hotel that Set Women Free by Pauline Bren on audiobook and it is AMAZING. It is the perfect audiobook for me—non-fiction, about mid-century America, about women in the workplace. I also like fiction like this, like THE DOLLHOUSE by Fiona Davis and THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe and THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy (shout out to my amazing group chat, which we named Mary McCarthy’s THE GROUP). I’ve also recently enjoyed THE EQUIVALENTS: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty and, it might go without saying if you know these books, Silvia Plath’s THE BELL JAR, partially set in the Barbizon Hotel. You could say I have a type.

These books, however, are all about white, mostly upper middle class women, and I would love to know of any books about working women of color, those trying to break into the professional world, from the 1930s-1970s, if you know of any. Please share in the comments.

And so, yesterday on Twitter I used the #mswl hashtag, which if you don’t know, stands for Manuscript Wish List, and is associated with https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/ and brought to you by this really great group of publishing people. Agents (and sometimes editors) use it to signal that they want something specific, usually on Twitter, and you can search that hashtag here.

If you see something like this, how should you interpret it? Does it really only mean that I want a novel set in the bookstore on the ground floor of the Barbizon Hotel in the 1930s-50s? (Yes please god if you have this book sent it to me right now.) What if you have an historical romance about a bookstore set in Toronto in 1971? What if you have an historical romance set in New York City in a library in 1929? What if you have a contemporary romance set in a bookstore set in Miami in 2021? Do those count?

Well, yes and no. And I’m writing this here and now so you can understand what I mean, and what other agents may mean as well. I really do want an historical romance set in the Doubleday bookstore in the Barbizon Hotel in mid-century New York City. I REALLY DO! But that’s a tall order, something so specific that it is pretty unlikely that the person writing that A: follows me, B: saw it, and C: is done writing and ready to send. But one can dream. I want to read that book so bad. I don’t want to have to write it myself. (I’m crap at historical research.)

I’m also closed to queries right now (I know, I know. I hope to open soon.) and would GLADLY open the gates for someone writing this specific thing because I want it so bad. I think book people will like it. People love books set in bookstores. And Doubleday already said they want it. :) There’s evidence, too, that the Barbizon Hotel captures people’s imaginations. I can’t, of course, take on more than one book on this exact topic (which there is unlikely to be anyway) so if you’re not writing exactly this, what do you make of this information?

What you can learn from #mswl posts like this is that I like historical romances, things about women in the workplace, and things set in mid-century America, and if that’s you, add my name to your big list of agents, and circle back to me when you’re ready to query and if I’m open to queries.

What isn’t here is that I don’t really want historical romances about WWI or WWII. There are just SO MANY about the Wars and I don’t feel the need to contribute more to that. You wouldn’t know just from this post, but it’s true, and without knowing that you’d still be right to send me your WWII-adjacent historical romance. I probably wouldn’t pick it up, but you wouldn’t be wrong to send it. You aren’t going to know everything little thing I want or don’t want, and sometimes I am surprised by a query regardless of what I say I want or don’t want. (Which is not an invitation to send agents books in genres they say they don’t represent. I’ve said a million times here that you should not send me your straight up mysteries. I would be a bad agent for a mystery writer.)

The bottom line here is that there is no definitive SEND THIS AND YOU ARE GUARANTEED REPRESENTATION information, even if you send me an historical romance set in the Doubleday bookstore in the Barbizon Hotel. It still has to be good. But what you can do with information like this is add it to the broad information you get from other resources and make the best decisions you can. I’m sorry there is not a an easier, more centralized, more widely accessible way to find the right agent for you, but hopefully things like #mswl help.

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Now, for some Client Good News Links!

OPRAH DAILY picked THE MAGICAL LANGUAGE OF OTHERS by EJ Koh as one of the 12 Best Books by Writers of the Asian Diaspora

Parents.com picked THE MAGIC FISH by Trung Le Nguyen as one of the 15 Asian American Children's Books to Read As a Family Right Now

Listen to Nicole Kornher-Stace’s short story “GETAWAY” on the Levar Burton Reads podcast (read by Mr. Burton himself!!) (Spotify link here, or find it wherever you get your podcasts.)

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I hope your state or country is opening up vaccines to all very soon. Get your shots if you can!

OXOXOXO,

Kate