November/December Agent of the Month Jane Chun

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER AGENT OF THE MONTH – JANE CHUN

TRANSATLANTIC AGENCY

Jane Chun joined Transatlantic in 2023 after four years at Janklow & Nesbit Associates. Prior to her time at J&N, she worked on a freelance project for HG Literary and interned at Writers House and Maximum Films & Management.

Before entering the publishing world, Jane attended NYU where she majored in History and minored in Business of Entertainment, Media, and Technology; Creative Writing; and Spanish. She returned to NYU shortly after graduation and a brief stint at Asian CineVision and the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) to receive her M.S. in Publishing with distinction. She is a native New Yorker.

What Jane Wants:

Jane is particularly interested in stories that center on marginalized communities and prose that is cinematic and atmospheric with good rhythm. In both fiction and nonfiction, she is drawn towards compelling, fresh voices that make her feel as though the writer is in the room with her, telling her their story with intimacy as if they were already acquainted. Regardless of how plot-driven a story is, characters with rich inner worlds and emotional depth are a must for her.

1. For fiction, she is seeking commercial, upmarket, and literary works in both adult and MG/YA about the search for and rebuilding of identity, diaspora, family and community, and examinations of power in relationships.

2. She is also looking for fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative fiction that delve into sharp social commentary and have meticulous world-building and settings that don’t feel like Western Europe.

3. For historical fiction, she likes hidden histories and anything that is set in a time or place she’s not familiar with or focuses on a community that has been often overlooked if it’s a time/place she knows.

4. In terms of nonfiction, she is looking for memoirs and narrative nonfiction with a nuanced, intersectional approach and similar themes to her interests in fiction. She also is interested in books about food, travel, pop culture, and cultural criticism that dive deeply and thoughtfully into culture and traditions, particularly those written by authors of color.

5. In addition to traditional prose, she is very interested in graphic novels and nonfiction. She is looking for stylistically engaging, unique art that feels either nostalgic without being derivative or fresh and boundary-pushing. At the moment, she is only open to picture books by referral.

She is not the right person for prescriptive nonfiction, self-help, religion/spirituality books, romance, commercial thrillers, hard sci-fi, poetry, or short story collections.

For more details on what she’s looking for, please refer to her MSWL: https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/jane-chun

Jane’s Submission Guidelines:

Please send the following through Query Manager.

If you are having difficulty using Query Manager, you can query Jane by email [queryjane@transatlanticagency.com]

Please do NOT submit your query through both methods; the duplicate query will not be answered.

Fiction: a brief introduction, a synopsis, and the first ten pages. For email queries, please include all text in the body of the email

Nonfiction: a brief introduction, a full outline, and the first ten pages of the proposal. For email queries, please include all text in the body of the email

Graphic novels/nonfiction: a brief introduction, a synopsis/outline, and at least five illustrated pages with text. If you do not have five pages, you can send ten script pages and some sample art instead. For email queries, please attach the sample pages/art as a PDF

For email queries, include the book title, category/genre, word count (or estimated page count for graphic novels/nonfiction), and your author bio.

FIRST PAGE CRITIQUE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

PLEASE name the Word document file using 2023 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER FIRST PAGE  – Your Name – Title of first page. 

IMPORTANT FIRST PAGE NOTE: Almost everyone who submitted a first page last month, did not submit it correctly.

1. You must include at the top of the page your name, the title, and the genre. Do not use a header for this. It stops me from being able to copy and paste it into the blog post.
2. Make sure you include the genre. This will help the agent give you a better critique.
3. This is not an anonymous submission. So please include your name at the top of the page.
4. I still need everyone to use their name, title, and genre in the file name of the attachment.

REMEMBER: I DO NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS WITHOUT HAVING THE FIRST PAGE PASTED DIRECTLY INTO THE EMAIL THEN THE WORD DOCUMENT ATTACHED. PLEASE PUT 2023 SEPTEMBER FIRST PAGE IN THE SUBJECT BOX AND SEND IT TO: kathy(dot)temean(at)gmail(dot)com.

Your First Page Word document should be formatted using one-inch margins and 12-point New Times Roman font – double space – no more than 23 lines – only one page. Remember to indent your paragraphs. When Dialog is used “parenthesis” should be used. When a new person speaks a new line should be used.

PLEASE DO NOT USE A HEADER. Place everything directly on the page. Remember a first Page should have a title, your name, and the genre on the first line. Thanks!

MUST USE WORD OR A PDF – I CAN’T OPEN PAGES

Send to: kathy(dot)temean(at)gmail(dot)com.

PLEASE FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES.

DEADLINE December 1st – noon EST

RESULTS: December 8th

CHECK BACK NEXT FRIDAY FOR PART ONE OF JANE’S INTERVIEW.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy