Hi! I’m Hillary, and I rep fiction and nonfiction from picture books to adult novels, plus the occasional book for the academic market.

If you'd like more info about what I'm looking for, please visit my Manuscript Wishlist profile: https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/hillary-fazzari. To see all of my #MSWL tweets in one place, go here: https://mswishlist.com/agent/HillaryFazzari

Right now, what I’m looking for most is:

▶ Adult Narrative Nonfiction, particularly in areas of history and lifestyle.

▶ Adult Literary and Upmarket fiction, particularly in genre areas (e.g.: hauntingly dark literary thrillers; character-driven upmarket mystery; literary horror; upmarket historical works with strong hooks; speculative upmarket and literary projects – and I am especially interested in stories that genre-mix, feature feminism, or complicated female or queer protagonists).

▶ High-concept, Commercial Fiction with strong “strange attractor” elements for all ages. Here, I’m loosely following Terry Rossio’s definition with “strange attractor” being a combination of “strange” (or “unique”) and “attractor” (from “attractive”, though in publishing this can also mean “familiar” because familiar can be attractive and can therefore attract the reader/editor). So an example of a storyline with a strong “strange attractor” element would be Rossio’s own Disney cartoon Aladdin, which is a combination of the familiar, original story of Aladdin (often associated with One Thousand and One Nights) with the character of Aladdin as My Fair Lady in a way that rewrites the old into something unique, strangely attractive, and compelling though the added My Fair Lady, will-his-real-identity-be-found-out lens. Or the How To Train Your Dragon books, which are different than the movies, and approach the concept of the “strange attractor” by asking combining questions: "Could the Vikings in this world actually just be weirdos?" -- aka a combination of "cool Viking lore" with "weird behavior"; "Could, in this world, the protagonist have a tiny dragon that is 100% just a really obnoxious cat?" -- aka a combination of familiar dragon tropes with familiar cat tropes in a way that makes a hybrid concept that's strangely unique and compelling.

▶ Genre mixing stories of all kinds, for all ages, again with a high concept and a strong “strange attractor” element. Which means I’m specifically looking for stories that combine elements that might not otherwise go together into new, compelling ideas: e.g., My Fair Lady in space formatted as a murder mystery; a dark academia with a thriller plotline; a cozy fantasy set on a space ship; Doctor Who but make it a time-travel rom-com instead.

▶ Fanfiction writers interested in transitioning high-concept, novel-length, strange-attractor-based fanfiction out of the fanfiction sphere and into the traditional market via reworking their writing into projects unconnected to their original fandom(s).

These days I am rarely looking for:

• Commercial work that rigorously follows the patterns of a singular genre: e.g., rom-com, domestic thriller, high fantasy, romantasy, etc. Instead, I'm looking for stories that use domestic thriller or rom-com elements but combine in with them strong speculative angles and/or the weird, or that follow an adventure story structure but have rom-com or romantasy elements baked in. So single genre books are often harder for me to acquire (largely for market reasons) than stories that use multiple or mixed types of story archetypes.
• Low-concept material (though I am very happy to look at high-concept, strange attractor-based character-driven work).

The types of work I acquire include:

• Picture books, fiction & nonfiction though at this point only from author-illustrators who write and illustrate their own work.
• Graphic novels for kids, again at this point only from author-illustrators who write and illustrate their own work.
• Chapter books (for young readers, with or without illustrations)
• Middle-grade fiction (with or without illustrations, including upper middle-grade and unique format books)
• YA fiction (including lower YA and upper YA crossover)
• New Adult/crossover fiction
• Adult fiction (literary, upmarket, and commercial)
• Adult nonfiction (history and lifestyle)