Charlotte Seymour studied modern languages and began her career as a literary scout at Eccles Fisher Associates, before becoming an agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates in 2015. In 2022 she joined Johnson & Alcock, where she continues to build a list across fiction and non fiction. She loves working editorially and also champions a select number of titles in translation every year.  

Charlotte represents authors based across the UK and internationally, from New Zealand to Nigeria, whose works have been Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers, and won or been nominated for prizes including the Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Prize, Dublin Literary Award, White Review Short Story Prize, CWA daggers, National Book Awards (US) and PEN America Literary Awards, and international prizes including the Prix Goncourt and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

In fiction, Charlotte looks for book club and literary fiction as well as outstanding character- and voice-driven crime, thriller and suspense. The dark, Gothic and uncanny will always have a strong place on her list; meanwhile, she’d especially love to see:

  • a big will-they-won’t-they love story (One Day; Talking At Night; The Paper Palace), and love stories of all kinds, not just romantic love (Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow)

  • sweeping family stories, and other multigenerational/international/polyphonic novels (Pachinko; The Dutch House; Hello, Beautiful; Homegoing; Mongrel; Girl, Woman, Other)

  • sharply observed contemporary stories that will make her both laugh and cry (Dandelion Is Dead; As Young As This); stories of identity, written with intimacy and tenderness (Open Water; Milk Teeth)

  • historical fiction from a slant (The Safekeep; Briefly, A Delicious Life; How Much Of These Hills Is Gold; The Western Wind)

  • a Highsmithian thriller (think imposters, intruders, cat-and-mouse games…)

  • a beautifully written crime novel or thriller that transcends and subverts our expectations of the genre (Notes On An Execution)

In non-fiction, she is interested in accessible, engaging writing on a range of subjects including social and cultural history, biography and memoir (especially group biographies and literary memoir where the personal is interwoven with a bigger story or subject), reportage, popular science, nature, the arts, food and cookery. She welcomes submissions from experts, academics, and journalists as well as those with lived experience and extraordinary stories. Writers whose work she’s enjoyed recently include Patrick Radden Keefe, Suzanne O’Sullivan, Anna Funder, Lucy Jones, Caroline Eden and Alexa Hagerty.     

Charlotte was Secretary of the Association of Authors’ Agents 2019-2021 and a Bookseller Rising Star 2021. She has been a judge for the Caledonia Novel Award and the London Short Story Prize, and supports the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize.

 

She can be contacted at charlotte@johnsonandalcock.co.uk

Find her on Instagram and Pinterest for more about what she is working on and reading.