Agent Acquiring New Clients

Jennifer Chen Tran is an Associate Agent at Fuse Literary acquiring both fiction and non-fiction. She is a lifelong reader, New York native, and experienced member of the publishing industry. Prior to joining Fuse Literary, Jennifer was principal and owner of Penumbra Literary LLC, and served as Of Counsel at The New Press. She has also interned at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth literary agency, was an editorial and publicity intern at Hunger House Publishers (since acquired by Turner Publishing), and editorial intern at Terrain Magazine.

Jennifer obtained her Juris Doctor from Northeastern School of Law in Boston, MA, and a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis, with a minor in Legal Studies. Originally a visual arts major turned English major, Jennifer appreciates creativity in all its incarnations. She was also Managing Editor of Student Life, Washington University’s Independent Student Paper and studied comparative literature with Emma Kafalenos while she was an undergraduate.

With a legal background, Jennifer understands the importance of negotiation when securing and retaining author rights. She counsels each client on building or expanding her platform, improving on craft, and works collaboratively with her clients to obtain the best deal for each writer’s creative investment. She believes in building fulfilling and life-long writing careers and is honored to work with her client-writers.

Submission Guidelines:

Jennifer acquires both fiction and non-fiction.

For fiction: Jennifer is seeking literary fiction, commercial fiction, women’s fiction, upmarket fiction, contemporary romance, mature Young Adult, New Adult, suspense/ thriller and select graphic novels (both adult, YA or MG). She is particularly interested in voices from underrepresented and marginalized communities, strong and conflicted female characters, war and post-war fiction, and writers who are adept at creating a developed sense of place. She admires writers who have an ear for dialogue and who are not afraid to take emotional risks.

For non-fiction: Jennifer acquires memoir, narrative non-fiction in the areas of adventure, biography, business, current affairs, medical, history, how-to, pop-culture, psychology, social entrepreneurism, social justice, travel, and lifestyle books (home, design, fashion, food). She believes in creating books that will have a positive impact on the world, and that inform and entertain.

Some of Jennifer’s favorite reads include: The Unwanted by Kien Nguyen, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and Word Freak by Stefan Fastis.

Currently Jennifer does not acquire science fiction or fantasy.

For fiction, send the first twenty pages (copy and pasted into e-mail, no attachments) and a query letter. For non-fiction, submit your non-fiction proposal and query letter. Electronic submissions only to queryjennifer@fuseliterary.com

Jennifer aims to respond to queries within a 6-8 week timeframe but due to the volume of queries she receives, regrets that she cannot reply individually to each query.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy