Fiction: I need more books about people doing things instead of just thinking about doing/not doing things. I need more books that are adventurous and strange and that tug me along as a reader. I need more books where the overwhelming impression is that the author loves their characters rather than resenting them. I need more books that are funny without trying overly hard to be so, or relying on flash-in-the-pan memes.
Nonfiction: I need more books that look at the economics of unusual things (cars, motorcycles, vintage shopping, theater). I need more books that teach me something I didn't know I wanted to learn about. I need more books with explicitly leftist sensibilities, politics, and arguments for a better world.
I am sick of books where the central conflict could be resolved if everyone just took some Lexapro. I am sick of books where the plot is ‘a group of young people are bonded by an act of shocking violence that changes the trajectory of their lives forever’ (Donna Tartt did it best). I am sick of books that are myopic in nature and do not turn a small observation outwards, or zoom out enough to show me why it matters, or why I should be impressed that you noticed. I don't want books that could have been magazine articles. I am sick of heteropessimism or homoutopianism (none of us are exceptionally good or bad at our core, we could just treat one another better). No romantasy, nothing glib, no memoirs.
Ayla Zuraw-Friedland joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in 2022 after starting her agenting career at The David Black Agency in 2019. Previously, she worked as an editorial assistant and assistant editor at Beacon Press in Boston, and as a development editor for encyclopedias at Oxford University Press. She received her BA in English and Creative Writing from Connecticut College in 2015, and her writing can be found or is forthcoming in The Drift, Excerpts Magazine, GAY the Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and The Cape Cod Poetry Review. She is interested in literary fiction and nonfiction that inspect big questions about queer identity, class, community, and art & technology through a personal lens. Please note that she does not represent Young Adult, Middle Grade, or Picture Books.
Her current clients include J. Halberstam, Haley Jakobson (OLD ENOUGH, Dutton 2023), James Frankie Thomas (IDLEWILD, Abrams 2023), Jamie Hood (TRAUMA PLOT, Pantheon 2025; how to be a good girl, Grieveland 2020; 2nd edition, Pantheon 2025), Shelly Jay Shore (RULES FOR GHOSTING, Ballantine 2024; LOVE ME LIKE A ROCK SONG, Ballantine 2026), Ann Larson (CLEAN UP ON AISLE FIVE, One Signal 2026), and Sarah Hartshorne (YOU WANNA BE ON TOP?, Crown 2025).
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