Larissa Melo Pienkowski
What she represents: Middlegrade fiction (all genres); contemporary YA; light fantasy; magical realism; literary fiction; LGBTQ+ fiction and nonfiction; queer/feminist/non-Western horror; retellings of non-Western folklore and mythology; rom-coms; narrative nonfiction; memoir; essay collections; cultural history and criticism; and across all genres, #OwnVoices stories that center authors of marginalized identities.
Who she represents: Remica BinghamRisher, Erica Buddington, J K Chukwu, Aline Mello, Angela Montoya, Princess Moon, Amy Quichiz, Johanna Toruño
AWEEK of reading, in mostly chronological, only a little haphazard order: At least eight or nine essays in Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights (Algonquin Books, 2019)—one is never enough. The back of my curl-cream bottle. E-mails. Queries, though of course I get through no more than five before another seven arrive in my inbox—a good problem to have.
Fiction excerpts and poems in the Offing, in the hopes of finding an unagented writer whose work I feel passionate about. Today’s deals on Publishers Marketplace. By way of procrastination, all of the recommended reading lists on Bookshop.org’s homepage. Half the recipe for overnight French toast, as I now know the other half by heart. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s Instagram review of Quiara Alegría Hudes’s My Broken Language: A Memoir (One World, 2021). Erica Buddington’s Twitter thread on the drowned Black towns of Alabama and beyond, which prompts me to reach out to her to see if she’s looking for representation.
The first few chapters of an adult romance I’m freelance editing. The “Thirty-Four Revision Exercises” chapter of Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World (Catapult, 2021). More e-mails (sigh), more queries (yay!). Yelp reviews of the best take-out pancakes in Philly.
A couple of beautiful Twitter tributes to DMX, including Hanif Abdurraqib’s short but powerful sentiments, which prompts me to start rereading his essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017)—one of my very favorite books. Billboards on the drive to my ceramics studio. Bumper stickers on the drive back from my ceramics studio.
Two fifteen-page samples in preparation for my Manuscript Academy appointments. Literary critic Molly Young’s latest Read Like the Wind newsletter, which for some reason reminds me of Chelsea G. Summers’s A Certain Hunger (Unnamed Press, 2020), which I’ve been delaying finishing because it’s so sumptuous.
A text from one of my best friends about Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (HarperTrophy, 1997), which prompts me to read the Wikipedia article on Just Ella (Simon & Schuster, 1999) by Margaret Peterson Haddix and leads me down a rabbit hole of looking up literary devices and subsequently reminds me of Carmen Maria Machado’s work of absolute brilliance In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019).
My author’s revisions to her YA romance. The grocery list for an upcoming weekend away in the Catskills. The latest tweets by a BIPOC travel blogger with whom I’ve been discussing the possibility of representation. The description for Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton Books for
Young Readers, 2021), which I add to my to-read list. Three different editors’ responses to an adult literary novel I have on submission. Texts from my family in Brazil and Poland, who are wondering how I’m feeling after the second dose of the vaccine.
A HipLatina feature on my author Amy Quichiz and her work with decolonizing veganism, which leads to the HipLatina listicle “10 Poetry Books Out This Year by WOC.” The first few pages of Red Island House (Scribner, 2021) by Andrea Lee while pretending to decide whether or not to buy it (is that ever really a question, though?). The menu at an outdoor tapas restaurant. A missing-cat poster while out on a walk with my dog. And, you guessed it, more e-mails.