London Writers' Salon

CAA literary agent Rachel Mann on what makes her say yes to a manuscript, how to navigate the submissions process without losing control of your career, and why cutting is the work that makes prose land.

You'll learn

Why the recognition an agent needs is physical rather than analytical.

What to do when you're not sure your manuscript is ready to send out.

How to buy more time after a full manuscript request without killing the momentum.

Why telling other agents about your requests works in your favour, even if it feels grubby.

The realistic rhythm for chasing an agent who has gone quiet.

Whether refusing to use social media can cost a writer representation.

A question worth answering before you sign with anyone, and why the answer shapes the edit.

The edit most manuscripts need before submission, and why it rarely means adding.

How poetry's distillation applies to prose, whatever you write.

What still gives an agent hope in a market where people are reading less.

Resources & Links

Rachel's Website

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr

Waterstones

Puffin

Jo Unwin Literary Agency

Karolina Sutton agent

Harriet Poland agent

Sarah Harvey agent

John Ash agent

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

Ottessa Moshfegh author

Society of Authors

The Arvon Foundation

To Query Rachel: Email her at rachel.mann@caa.com. To submit, please send a cover email, one-page synopsis and the first three chapters of your work, or the rough equivalent.

About Rachel Mann

Rachel Mann is a Literary Agent at CAA and represents a broad range of work – largely fiction, with some non-fiction — from commercial to literary, in adult, young adult, and middle-grade markets.

Her clients include Eliza Clark, Caleb Femi, Jade LB and Aisling Rawle, and have won and been listed for major prizes, including the Granta Best Young British Novelist, the Forward Prize for Poetry, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize, the YA Book Prize, The Bookseller Discover Prize, and the Carnegie Medal.

She spent ten years editing and commissioning fiction for young people at houses including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and was global publishing director at the Roald Dahl Story Company. She became an agent in 2018 and joined CAA in 2023.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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In this special episode we go behind the scenes with memoirist Deepa Paul, essayist, cookbook author Gina Beach, and novelist Daisy Buchanan and talk about the two things that keep them going: the passion behind the work, and the practice that makes the work possible.

From an essay that no editor wanted to a Women's Prize-longlisted memoir, a personal research rabbit hole that became a four-year book project, and the journey from idea to novel, this is a personal conversation with three writers about about why they write the things they write — and what kept them going.

You'll learn

Why an essay no editor wanted a decade ago turned out not to be an essay at all.

How to break a book into tasks small enough to finish inside a single hour.

The case for treating your own interior life as seriously as any grand subject.

How a rabbit hole of personal research turned into a four-year book project.

Why the hardest part of self-publishing has nothing to do with production.

When procrastination is doing useful work, and when it's just filling the gaps.

What changes in your writing once you stop trying to get it right.

A reason to stop measuring a writing session by its word count.

How sitting alongside other writers quietly rearranges your sense of your own work.

The tidal metaphor that makes a bad writing day easier to let go of.

Resources & Links

Writers' Hour

Ask Me: A Memoir of Daring to Love Differently by Deepa Paul

Deepa Paul

'The power of an hour' — Deepa Paul interviewed by the Women's Prize

Nurture: Oil-Free, Plant-Based Cooking for Health by Regina Beach

Regina Beach

All Grown Up: A hilarious and heartwarming new novel inspired by Little Women by Daisy Buchanan

Daisy Buchanan — Creative Confidence Clinic

About the Guests

Deepa Paul is a Filipina-Indian author living in Amsterdam. Her writing explores the balance between being a mother, wife, girlfriend, daughter, adventurer, and herself – all at the same time. Her debut, Ask Me: A Memoir of Daring to Love Differently, was longlisted for the Women's Prize.

Regina Beach is a disabled poet and essayist. Originally from the American midwest, she now calls the Welsh Valleys home. Her writing has appeared in Global Poemic, Boldly Mental, The Rail, Haiku by You, Five Minutes, Visual Verse, The Horror Tree, and Disoriented among others. She is the founder of the literary magazine Lesions | Art + Words, which features the work of people living with chronic health conditions. Her book is Nurture: Oil-Free, Plant-Based Cooking for Health.

Daisy Buchanan is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author of Insatiable (longlisted for the CWIP prize), Careering (as heard on BBC Sounds), Limelight and Pity Party, and the non-fiction titles How to Be A Grown Up, The Sisterhood and Read Yourself Happy. She writes for major newspapers and magazines from the Guardian to Grazia, and is host of the chart-topping podcast You're Booked. Her latest book is All Grown Up: A hilarious and heartwarming new novel inspired by Little Women.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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Children’s fiction studio founder Jasmine Richards (Storymix), publisher Natalie Doherty (Puffin and HarperCollins Children’s Books), and bestselling author Soman Chainani (The School for Good and Evil) on shaping an idea commercial enough to sell, what makes a children’s book impossible to put down, and trusting the unconscious to write it.

 

You’ll learn

Why the most commercial idea is the one that centres its reader from the very first thought.

How a single pithy log line can carry a book all the way from the slush pile to the playground.

The counterintuitive trick of starting your story at chapter three.

How to read what children are reading now so your pacing keeps up with theirs.

What a publisher is really looking for when a manuscript lands on the desk — and why voice comes before plot.

How the categories from early readers to YA actually break down on the bookshop shelf.

The difference between weaving in a message and writing a book that feels worthy.

The case for never self-censoring in a first draft, and saving the negotiation for later.

How tiring out your conscious mind can unlock a freer, more instinctive way to draft.

Why the goal of writing should be the writing itself, not the bestseller list.

 

Episode Links

#050: Jasmine Richards — How to Pitch Commercial Children’s Fiction & The Business of Children’s Publishing

#081: Natalie Doherty — The Magic of Writing for Children, Market Trends & Behind the Scenes of Publishing Children’s Books

#035: Soman Chainani — Writing Dark Tales for Children & Balancing Creative Work with Discipline

 

About the Guests

Jasmine Richards is the author of over a dozen children’s books, ranging from picture books to teen fiction. Her most recent novel, Keeper of Myths, was published by HarperCollins. She has over 15 years of experience as an editor, including roles at Hamish Hamilton, Puffin, and Dutton Books in New York. Jasmine is the founder of Storymix, a children’s fiction studio, where she uses her unique experiences to develop new voices and inclusive stories.

Natalie Doherty is a Publisher at Puffin, although during this interview she was at HarperCollins Children’s Books. She’s worked with award-winning and bestselling authors, including Tom Fletcher, Robin Stevens, R. J. Palacio, Tamzin Merchant, and Nazneen Ahmed Pathak. Before moving into editorial in 2010, she worked in Contracts and Rights at Hachette and holds a BA in Modern European Languages and an MA in Translation. Her recent middle-grade acquisitions include Simon Stephenson’s The Snowman Code and Philippa Leathley’s Inkbound.

Soman Chainani’s debut series, The School for Good and Evil, has sold more than 3 million copies, been translated into 30 languages across 6 continents, and became a major motion picture from Netflix starring Charlize Theron, Laurence Fishburne, Kerry Washington, and Michelle Yeoh, with Chainani as an executive producer. Each of the six books in the series — The School for Good and Evil, A World Without Princes, The Last Ever After, Quests for Glory, A Crystal of Time, and One True King — debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list. A graduate of Harvard University, Soman created his own fairy-tale major before going on to an MFA in film at Columbia University. He has made films that have played all over the world, and his writing awards include honors from Big Bear Lake, the CAPE Foundation, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Fellowship. In Beasts & Beauty: Dangerous Tales, Soman reimagines old stories into fresh fairy tales for a new era.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Poet Maya C. Popa on writing with wonder, the ruthless craft of revision, and building a sustainable life in poetry.

You’ll learn

Why wonder has more in common with the sublime — the beautiful and the terrible — than with simple delight.

How a poem loses its charge the moment its ending is visible from the opening line.

What “negative capability” asks of a writer stuck in the dark middle of a draft.

The question worth asking when the work feels uncomfortable and you’re certain something has gone wrong.

A ruthless method for finding a poem’s true entry point — often buried three-quarters of the way down.

When to cut the images you love most, even the ones that took hours to invent.

How to write about longing and love without collapsing into confession.

Why asking your writing to carry your finances can quietly poison your relationship with it.

What to guard at all costs while holding space for other writers.

The freedom that arrives once rejection stops meaning anything at all.

Resources & Links

📄 Interview Transcript

If You Love That Lady by Maya C. Popa

Gerard Manley Hopkins - Poetry Foundation

Wound is the Origin of Wonder by Maya C. Popa

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Maya’s Substack

Conscious Writers Collective

Poetry Society of America Awards

Maya’s ‘Five Things I Have Learned’ class

About Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa is a Romanian American poet. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was a recipient of a department bursary for exceptional merit, and previous degrees from Oxford University, New York University, and Barnard College.

Popa is the author of If You Love That Lady (W. W. Norton, 2026); Wound Is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022), named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry; and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), a runner-up for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, judged by Ocean Vuong, and winner of the North American Book Prize in 2020. She has also received awards from the Poetry Foundation and the Oxford Poetry Society.

Popa is the poetry reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and is the founder of Conscious Writers Collective, where she teaches and oversees all literary programming for poets and prose writers. She lives in New York City.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Author Casper ter Kuile on transforming everyday writing into a sacred ritual, drawing on rest and reflection to fuel creativity, and moving past self-doubt to write as a gift for others.

You'll learn

Why the point of the work week might be the rest, not the other way around.

How to turn an ordinary daily habit into a ritual using three simple ingredients.

What a weekly tech sabbath can unlock in your most creative thinking.

The reframe that turns a dreadful first draft into something you can build on.

A piece of advice from a mentor that dissolves the pressure to say something new.

How reading writers you love can quietly refill the tank when you're stuck.

Why treating your writing as a gift changes the way you handle criticism.

The practice for staying humble and kind toward yourself in equal measure.

What sacred reading traditions can teach you about going deeper into any text.

Why the smallest groups, not the biggest audiences, are where meaning actually forms.

Resources & Links

Casper ter Kuile's website

The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile

The Nearness

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text (podcast)

Sacred Design Lab

"How We Gather" report

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Seth Godin

About Casper ter Kuile

Casper ter Kuile is the author of The Power of Ritual and the co-founder of The Nearness: a space to explore life's big questions with like-hearted others. Casper holds Masters in Public Policy and Divinity from Harvard University, is the former cohost of popular podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and loves harmony singing, the London Review of Books, and arriving at the pub after a long country walk. He lives with his husband in Brooklyn, NY.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
Twitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalon
Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!