Conversations about diversity in the publishing industry are not new, they’re not easy, and they’re bigger than publishing. In late October, PW spoke with agents and editors about their impressions and experiences of the industry as publishing professionals of color, and how they advocate for their authors, themselves, and one another. A few common themes emerged, but as befits conversations about diversity, the responses were as individual as the people interviewed.
Tanya McKinnon, principal, McKinnon Literary
As the founder of a Black-owned boutique literary agency and, prior to becoming an agent, an editor for a politically progressive nonprofit publisher, Tanya McKinnon has keenly observed the cyclical nature of the industry. The recent exodus of Black editors doesn’t deter her, she says. “African Americans are not niche. We are it. We’re as American as apple pie. I don’t understand the idea that we go in and out of vogue.”
McKinnon, an advocate for Black narratives, also champions multicultural perspectives. “My hope is that we continue to have a greater understanding and appreciation for the centrality of the Black experience, and by extension, the centrality of the experience of so many different groups of people who make up what we constantly tout as the greatest melting pot in the world,” she says.
One work that exemplifies the kinds of projects McKinnon takes on is Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century (Harper, Jan. 2025) by activist and scholar Bianca Mabute-Louie. The book combines prose and what McKinnon describes as “irreverent cartoons” to depict “a kind of refutation of respectability politics.” Another is Tara Roberts’s forthcoming memoir Written in the Waters (National Geographic, Jan. 2025). “She was the first Black woman explorer to be on the cover of National Geographic; she started diving for slave ships with different Black scuba associations. This is the story of finding herself in the midst of diving, and also reclaiming our history.”
Despite the challenges that come with advocating for diverse narratives, McKinnon acknowledges the progress that’s been made. “In the last four or five years we’ve seen a real wonderful infusion of work by folks of color. That’s been really exciting to see and be a part of as an agent.”
Her varied interests—from economics to history to graphic novels—inform what she seeks in a manuscript. “I’m curious about how the world works in terms of power relations and human relations,” she says. Her main catalyst: “Am I learning something? Did this book teach me something? I trust my own instincts and my own interests. I don’t let myself get too overwhelmed by what the market is doing.” —DWM
Anjali Singh, founder, the Anjali Singh Agency
Prior to working as a literary agent, Anjali Singh was the young editor who brought Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis to the U.S. after stumbling across it on a visit to Paris. “I understood on a very visceral level that it was an important book,” Singh says, adding that her new boss at Vintage, Pantheon editor Dan Frank, “had my back.”
This was at the start of her editorial career; later, she worked at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, and Other Press, where she served as editorial director. Her years in the trenches of the Big Five forced a personal reckoning: “As an Indian American, it was a realization that you get racialized in particular ways in this industry because it’s so much about personal relationships,” she says. “It’s a real struggle when you’re not white.”
Later, in her nine years at Ayesha Pande Literary, Singh says, Pande modeled a way to “be an agent without being part of the ‘club’—to be an agent on my terms and within my own value system, to find that Venn diagram of something I want to see in the world and something I can sell.” Singh established her namesake agency in March and continues to advocate for narratives she believes in. For instance, she urged Bloomsbury to reissue Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa’s debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, which it will do in 2025.
“It’s a classic,” Singh says. “It’s sold over one million copies worldwide. I shouldn’t have to beg you to give it some love at this moment. It feels so shortsighted: If you gave it a little bit of love, it would sell even more copies.”
Now, as an industry veteran, she’s able to reflect on the experience of young professionals in the workforce today. “A lot of the diversity push is from the bottom up,” she says. “You put young people of color, many of whom don’t come from privileged backgrounds, in very subservient positions. When you come from a particular socioeconomic position, an apprenticeship doesn’t have the same cost, because you know you’re going to end up okay. But when you’re the child of first-generation immigrants, and you’re put in this position where there’s no clear path forward, no mentorship, and no true commitment from the top down to support you—why would you stay?” —PM
Quressa Robinson, agent, Folio Literary
Literary agent Quressa Robinson, who worked at Nelson Literary before joining Folio in 2022, says she chooses projects based on her personal interests rather than the whims of the market. “By the time you try to get a trend, it’s over. I never want to be a follower. I’d rather be a trendsetter,” she says. “If a story connects with me, or a writer or their writing style connects with me, that’s what I’m looking for.”
Her publishing experience spans more than a decade, including three years as an assistant editor at St. Martin’s Press. The difficulty of getting books by authors of color past acquisitions—books that went on to success at other houses—spurred her switch to agenting. “It wasn’t a matter of my taste being an issue,” she says. “I knew it was a matter of them not trusting my taste or even recognizing my experience because I’m someone of color.”
As an agent, she continues to face challenges. “I don’t think I get the advance levels that white agents would get for the same projects. It’s definitely harder to get my clients’ books sold,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I still feel kind of invisible—people don’t always know the successful titles I’ve represented,” such as Brittney Morris’s debut YA novel, Slay, which earned widespread critical acclaim. “I’ve cultivated relationships across imprints and with a variety of editors, but it does feel like the visibility of Black publishing professionals has been diminished.”
Robinson is doing her part to raise visibility. Forthcoming books from her clients include The AI Incident (Levine Querido, June 2025), a middle grade novel by J.E. Thomas. “It’s about a young Black boy who’s been in and out of foster care and is looking for a family,” she says. “He’s also super smart and can build a robot.” Ikwo Ntekim’s debut, Where We Go at Night, is slated for release from HarperTeen. The contemporary YA fantasy combines “issues of race, what it means to be other, and generational trauma through the lens of the fairy world. I’ve always wanted a Black story that talks about fairies.” —DWM
Regina Brooks, founder and CEO, Serendipity Literary Agency
Literary agent Regina Brooks believes that the media “misses the boat and rehashes what everyone already knows” in conversations about diversity in publishing. “Yes, there have been fluctuations in leadership roles in editorial,” she says. “But if I’m an editor of color and I’m bringing in authors of color, who are the marketing people? Who are the publicity people? You can’t do it on your own. Part of the reason why the editorial space has been so challenging and fraught is because the ecosystem is not there to support it.”
In her roles as president of the Association of American Literary Agents, cofounder of Literary Agents of Change, and a board member of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, Brooks is taking the lead in building out that ecosystem. She spearheaded, with AALA’s Lynn Johnson, the professional track at the U.S. Book Show, and in February helped establish the Equity Directory, a resource that connects authors and illustrators with BIPOC agents and fosters community between those agents and their publishing peers.
Last month, she delivered the keynote address at the DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) Publishing Summit, focused on allyship and coalition-building. Looking ahead, Brooks is organizing the first HBCU Think Tank at AWP 2025, bringing together creative writing educators with the goal of expanding MFA opportunities for writers of color.
And that’s just for starters. “There are great inclusive programs happening, lots of partnership happening, but people aren’t coming to us to ask us,” Brooks says. “It’s just all this negative news being reiterated over and over and over and over again.”
On a more micro level, Brooks is “intentional and focused” about finding and promoting new talent. Her Serendipity Literary Agency, which she established in 2000, is the largest African American–owned agency in the U.S. “One thing that’s crucial in advancing diversity and inclusion in the industry is advocating for the authors,” she says. “We’re the people who orient them to the system. They have 50 million questions. The key is being able to speak the language of the author so that they get a sense that they’re going to have the support they need. We’re the people who help guide them on what it’s going to take to be successful in the industry.” —PM
Deborah Ghim, senior editor, Ecco
“The material I’m attracted to is subversive and doesn’t go down easily,” says Deborah Ghim, who worked at FSG and Astra House before joining Ecco in May. “That could be about racial diversity, but that could also be about economic diversity or challenging our ways of socially arranging. The biggest impact I can make as an editor is to seek out such material, not only based on the identity of the author, but also on how that identity or way of life has impacted their perspective, and how their perspective can speak to the broader culture.”
While at Astra, Ghim published Happy by Celina Baljeet Basra, which follows a young man from rural Punjab to Italy. Even though none of the characters is American and none of it takes place in the U.S., Ghim says, “America’s influence on the economic, creative, and emotional livelihoods of people living far away is suffused throughout the book.”
Her first acquisition for Ecco, Nanny Nanny by K Chiucarello (2026), sits squarely within the tradition of autofiction about motherhood but queers the genre. “Part of her desire to have a baby is a way of reckoning with the violence that she experienced at the hands of her ex-girlfriend,” Ghim says. “It gets into how intimate violence becomes invisibilized by gender, the politics of care work, transactional intimacy.”
The idea of making space for different perspectives figures into Ghim’s thoughts about diversity initiatives in corporate publishing as well. “That’s a complex conversation that manifests in concrete ways—the well-worn topics of comp titles and sufficient pay thresholds—but a lot of that is also cultural and requires us collectively to unsettle notions that we take for granted about the status quo,” she says. “It requires more deep-rooted work than a simple hiring initiative.”
Ghim says she is constantly examining her expectations for what professionalism is, and how that might look different for others. “I’m trying to think more mindfully about how to make things more accessible for my authors and for my colleagues,” she says. “I grew up in a home where my parents did not really read, and my love of books came later. Race, class, experience of trauma—those things certainly affect our relationships with books.” —PM
Nicole Counts, executive editor, One World
“I really love marketing,” says Nicole Counts, who started her publishing career a dozen years ago in the marketing department at PublicAffairs and Bold Type Books. “It’s fun and interesting and one of the most important parts of this whole job. But I wanted more control over what was being published.” For Counts, that meant switching to the edit side: after working as an editorial assistant at Spiegel & Grau, she moved to One World ahead of its 2017 relaunch.
A fiction lover who enjoys books that “break the mold,” Counts is looking forward to Nicole Cuffy’s next novel, O Sinners! (One World, Mar. 2025). “It starts as a journalist, who has lost both of his parents, is investigating a cult. Then there’s this other thread where we have four Black soldiers in the Vietnam War; one becomes the cult leader.” The interconnected tale “is really about how we decide to deal with loneliness.” Another forthcoming title, Anelise Chen’s “really weird but very exciting” memoir Clam Down (One World, June 2025), was instigated by a texting error—when Chen’s marriage fell apart, her mother repeatedly typed “clam down” instead of “calm down.” The book is a “metaphorical journey,” Counts says, that finds Chen contemplating her own shellfishness.
Supporting writers like Cuffy and Chen is a priority for Counts. “I’m working with folks who have been told constantly that their experience, their voice, their process is neither up to par nor as important,” she says. “I’m giving them the space to feel however they feel, and also permission to write whatever they want.”
Counts says that, though publishing’s diversity problems persist, there isn’t enough discussion about what changes have been made. For one, the full breadth of experience and interest is being better represented, she notes. “It’s so rewarding to me to see folks of color in the sci-fi and fantasy realm, those who only want to work on celebrity memoir, the history nerds.” Communal efforts she’s seeing across publishing are a key element of what keeps her going. “That’s the part of the industry that I like. I don’t want to say that it’s all great, because it’s not, but it literally moves me to tears to see that there are so many of us now.” —DWM
Stacey Barney, associate publisher, Nancy Paulsen Books
“When I started in publishing, you could count the Black editors on one hand, and they all knew each other,” says Stacey Barney, who worked as an English teacher before getting her start in publishing with a marketing internship at Lee & Low more than 20 years ago. Today, she says, “there are certainly more faces at the table, but I don’t know that there are enough faces at the table in all departments. I’d love to see more people of color in other sectors of our industry that impact the success of a book.”
At the same time, as a Black editor, “you do have to convince agents that you are more than your race,” she says. “I’m capable of editing and appreciating and steering other kinds of books as well. I’ve tried hard to ensure that I have a versatile, varied list. I don’t just publish Black people. I love publishing Black people, but I also publish white authors. I publish Asian authors. I publish across my particular interests.”
For instance, the recent Nancy Paulsen release Solis, a YA novel by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher, takes place in “a near future where things in this country have gone sideways, migrants are hunted, and the country has been fractured and split.” The YA action-adventure story Heist Royale, Kayvion Lewis’s recently released sequel to Thieves’ Gambit, is the tale of a Black girl and master thief who’s “doing badass things in the world, having fun, and kissing the boy or not kissing the boy,” Barney says. “I don’t want literature that’s available for kids of color to always be about the pain and anguish of being whatever they are. What about the joy of what you are as well?”
Barney, an avid traveler, hopes her books will help young readers “see the world outside of their city block or their rural county or wherever they are, and that they can see themselves in that place and say, I’m reading this book about Black people in Paris—maybe I can be a Black person in Paris.” She also wants her authors to see themselves as furthering ongoing cultural discourse: “I don’t want the books that I’m publishing to feel like replicas of something that already exists. You want to be always extending the conversation, putting your stamp on it. I publish across genres and age ranges. What’s consistent, for me, is that there’s some meaning in it for a reader that will resonate in real life.” —DWM
Ibrahim Ahmad, executive editor, Viking
There’s been a “sea change,” Ibrahim Ahmad says, in how books by authors of color have been received in recent years. “The fact that a writer like Percival Everett, one of my heroes, can achieve the peaks of commercial and critical acclaim for writing very deeply subversive literature—it’s remarkable.”
Ahmad began his career at indie publisher Akashic Books, rising to editorial director. “I spent two decades publishing the types of authors and books that I felt wouldn’t find a home among the corporate publishers,” he says. His move to Viking in 2021 was no accident. “For the first time in my publishing career, I felt like I would be able to actually get serious institutional support for the types of books and authors that I’m championing.”
His forthcoming titles include In Open Contempt by Irvin Weathersby Jr., a January publication that “looks at how white supremacy has impacted the way that we think about art and public space.” Carson Faust, an enrolled member of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso tribe of South Carolina, has written what Ahmad describes as a “Native American southern gothic” titled If the Dead Belong Here. “It follows the disappearance of a young girl and traces the legacy of a family across five generations. It’s a book about what it means to be haunted, not just by the supernatural but by the lingering specter of colonization and cultural erasure.” It’s due out in fall 2025, as is National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela’s Middle Spoon, which “pushes the boundaries of how we think about intimacy and family and love through the prism of a queer polyamorous relationship.”
Ahmad feels a responsibility to demystify the business, especially for BIPOC writers. “Having someone with whom you can presume a level of shared understanding about the kind of structural dynamics that are at play—it makes an enormous difference,” he says. “There’s no reason why these books should not be the bestsellers that are shaping the cultural conversation. It’s about setting them up in the right way and having the language and the tools that we need to be able to achieve a successful, big, loud, noisy publication. These things are intrinsic to my experience as someone who has largely been an outsider in all the spaces that I’ve operated in the world.” —PM
Sally Kim, president and publisher, Little, Brown
One of the last books Sally Kim published at Putnam before she left for Little, Brown in March was The Fetishist by Katherine Min. It’s “a very edgy book,” Kim says, and an example of “a book that I wouldn’t want to tone down in any way. I thought, I can’t let anyone else publish this—I have to do it. That’s the privilege I have now, having suffered through publishing for 30 years: to be able to say that my body of work shows that certain books that may not necessarily be seen as commercially viable need special guidance to be published.”
In her role at Little, Brown, “I won’t be buying a lot of books myself,” Kim says, but one novel that caught her eye is Dutch writer Viola van de Sandt’s debut, The Dinner Party (Sept. 2025). She calls it a “twisted Mrs. Dalloway” that follows a woman preparing to host a gathering for her husband. “My first love is editing and working with authors. This book was cutting through the noise of everything.”
Kim remembers her early years in publishing as “very static. It was a humbling moment to realize I do have a seat at the table. Now, a lot of us do; there’s no time to waste.” She’s been eager to enact change in her new role as president and publisher. “That’s the whole point of me being here. Some of it’s going be a little uncomfortable. When I was the publisher at Putnam, it was a similar thing. It was taking an imprint that was really known for franchise fiction, and saying, Okay, this list has to change, because the market is changing. And by the end of it, I was publishing Robert Jones Jr. and Kiley Reid.”
It’s equally important, she says, for publishing staff to reflect their readers and the world at large. “It’s hard to go in and say, I’m going to change the culture. We’ve had some staff changes [at Little, Brown], but also new hires. I specifically courted people who were known for certain categories that we weren’t publishing into. Everything should lead back to serving the reader.” And when it doesn’t? “We have to redefine our goals.”
—DWM
DW McKinney is a writer and editor in Nevada. Pooja Makhijani is a writer and editor in New Jersey.
This article has been updated.
