Nicole Aragi’s list of clients reads like a who’s who of contemporary literature: Anne Carson, Edwidge Danticat, Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer, Denis Johnson, Min Jin Lee, Rebecca Makkai, Tommy Orange, Tracy K. Smith, Chris Ware, Colson Whitehead, and on and on. No doubt Aragi has had an enviable career of publishing boundary-pushing literary stars, but before all the success, it took her some time to break into the publishing world.

Born in Tripoli in 1962 and raised in Lebanon, Aragi later moved to England to study history at the University of London. With a degree in hand, she attempted to find a job in the world of books, but after countless applications for editorial jobs went unanswered, a friend pointed out a bookstore for sale in Wimbledon, just outside of London, and Aragi jumped on it. Owning and operating an independent bookstore for six years, she learned the ins and outs of selling books while finding her place in the London literary scene. Through this community she met Abner Stein, a subagent based in the U.K., who introduced Aragi to U.S. agents, including Gloria Loomis, who Aragi ended up working under at the Watkins/Loomis Agency after she moved to New York in the nineties. While Aragi was there, Loomis encouraged her to develop her own list of authors, and she eventually started her own agency, Aragi, Inc., in 2002. 

Aragi built her small but mighty agency—it has only two other full-time agents, Frances Coady and Kelsey Day—by “following her nose,” as Loomis had suggested years earlier. Whereas Aragi had to cultivate a breadth of knowledge as a bookseller, as an agent she doesn’t find the idea of chasing trends appealing and prefers instead to be guided by her passions. This strategy has worked out well for her. “I just say, ‘I love it; let’s hope we can find a gap in the market,’ which seems like a better way,” she says. “It’s a happier way to work, that’s for sure.”

Over Zoom, Aragi and I chatted about finding community, what she responds to in a query, and the art of following one’s nose—whether that is in one’s own writing practice or as an agent.

Do you think that working at—and owning—a bookstore helped you become an agent?
It did, in a way. An agent is a bookseller for your books. I think it gave me a very practical understanding of publishing. I learned instantly that it was a business and that the people who made the books were expected to make money. I also instantly learned that I couldn’t just stock it with my taste and say, “Go read the books I like,” which was my thought when I first got the bookstore. I had to have books about all these different categories that didn’t interest me, and I had to know enough about them to be able to talk to customers. I just had to become a generalist in a way I hadn’t been up until that point. It was very useful, practical information. 

How so?
I mean, for one, it taught me how important cover design is. The number of books that sold on that basis was incredible. The number of great books where you’d go, Oh, this didn’t sell, why is that? Well, nobody saw it in the bookstore. It just sort of disappeared into the background in some way.

When you started in books, you said you were more of a generalist. Has your taste changed or been honed in some way, or do you think it’s about the marketplace?
I’ve gone back to selling my taste. Those years as a bookseller I was a generalist and I had gardening books and cookbooks and sports books and all of that, but now I’ve gone back to just selling what I used to read, still read, and probably will always read. It enabled me to take more control of what I was working with. You’re right at the beginning of the chain as an agent. But as a bookseller, you are not, and it’s a different pleasure. I love bookselling; I think it’s incredible, and I’ve got a lot of bookseller friends in the U.S. because I just sort of naturally like them—they’re good people. But it wasn’t right for me.

Did you feel like it removed you from the actual joys of reading and talking about books?
Some people can do it. There’s a bookseller, Paul Yamazaki [of San Francisco’s City Lights], who seems to take equal pleasure in the business side and the reading side, and he’s a deep, serious reader. He said to me once that he loves a spreadsheet. My eyes glaze when I see a spreadsheet. I just wasn’t right for that world in the long run, but I’m glad I did it.

What are you looking for now? What are you excited to see published?
God, that’s a hard question because I always think I have an idea of what I’m looking for, and then something surprises me. I took on a thriller for the first time last summer, a book called Ruth Run [by Elizabeth Kaufman], which came out in April. It was the first time I’ve ever represented a thriller. It really comes down to what grabs me.

I have a book out that is nonfiction, and it’s close to my heart for maybe obvious reasons, called One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This [by Omar El Akkad], about Gaza. Very important to me, and I’m really, really excited about that. I don’t do a lot of nonfiction. He’s a novelist; this is his first book of nonfiction. As a subject, I think it’s important to get it out into the book world in America.

Especially in nonfiction, are you looking for subject matter first or is it author first? 
It has to be both. I mean, the nonfiction I read is very sort of writerly. I don’t read academic nonfiction, and I don’t read policy writing. I stick to my area of knowledge when it comes to something like that. For me obviously the Middle East is an area of knowledge. I also represent graphic novels, which is something I grew up with and have always loved. I have a Lebanese Syrian cookbook writer. I have these little sorts of outposts, but they all reflect me as a reader or as a cook—my personal interests.

You’ve always had your eyes and heart on writers and stories out of the Middle East. Have you seen publishing being more open—specifically about Gaza and Palestine—over the past few years or even decades?
More and more people have become informed on the subject. I think it was just something that they either hadn’t thought about or were oblivious to and then [needed] to learn about. I think publishing is generally an industry that leans against injustice and against unfairness, and so when it sort of recognizes something it acknowledges and changes. I mean, that’s a slow process, but it is how publishing generally works.

For example, I found the response to One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This from booksellers and from writers mind-blowingly wonderful. I’ve had blurbs and comments and notes that brought me to tears. I mean, it’s just been fantastic. That’s special [to me] because when [Omar] wrote it, I had no idea what the reception was going to be like. Emotions were running so high. I knew how I felt about it, and I knew how he felt about it, and we had a very shared perspective, but whether the outside world was going to feel that way was sort of a wild guess. The publisher at the time was Reagan Arthur, and she completely saw it, and we’ve just gone ahead, and it turns out people care and people are profoundly affected by it. It’s really moving having people come up and say, “Please tell him thank you for writing it.” It’s been a very lovely experience in a strange way, amidst the horror.

I think that’s also a testament to your talking about leading with your taste, leading with your interests.
I remember when I was doing sub rights at the very beginning, selling audio rights and serial rights on other agents’ books. A magazine editor said to me, “The more polished your e-mail pitch is, the more I know it’s not yours.” He said, “I’m much more aware if you call me and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to read this, you’ve got to read this—I mean, it’s just so great.’” I’m sort of inarticulately enthusiastic. 

How did that enthusiasm help back then?
I went to [Gloria Loomis] and I said, “Apparently I’m transparent and people can tell, and I’m not doing a service to people if I’m obviously just doing the job, in a way.” She said, “Well, go build your own list, see what happens.” She just gave me the freedom to try that. She said it is sink-or-swim time, and if it doesn’t work, then you’re the one who’s going to drown. She was very amusing about it, but she did something that I don’t think many bosses would do, which is just let me follow my nose. I’m eternally grateful to her for that.

Tell me more about the idea of “following your nose.”
I’m transparent, so I have to sell what I love because otherwise people would know that I was just going: “I see an opportunity here. Here’s a gap in the market [so] I must fill it.” I just say, I love it; let’s hope we can find a gap in the market, which seems like a better way. It’s a happier way to work, that’s for sure. I have a small agency, so I’m not accountable to anybody, and if it fails, that’s my problem, not anyone else’s. That changes the responsibility, and I think that gives me the freedom to do my thing.

You mentioned Aragi, Inc., is small. How has that been beneficial?
I mean, it’s tiny; it’s three of us. It is very obviously teamwork-y. We know each other’s books and we love each other’s books. I make an effort [to get] my authors to meet one another and know one another and try to create a sense of us as a group. It’s nice for the writers because if they go on tour to a town where they don’t have any friends, I’ve got a writer who lives there, so they can have someone to go to the reading with or have a drink with after the reading. It’s quite familial. We’ve done a lot of things as a group. One of my authors calls it Team A. He designed my letterhead. Another one put together a cookbook; everyone had to contribute a recipe. They all drew something for me and put it in a book. It’s a pretty close little world. They’re my family.

When writers query agents, they are asked to think about comps. Do you look at them? 
I don’t look at them at all. I find them sort of irritating because really everyone is trying to find a comp where it’s like “Let’s take two successful books in vaguely the same area.” And if it’s just like X, well, then, I don’t want to read it! I want to read X.

It seems a silly thing, but they are important to publishing. I don’t like them in submissions to me, but I put them in submissions to editors. I grit my teeth as I do it because I just think it’s silly. I recognize that when an editor reads a manuscript that’s come to them from an agent, they have to share that manuscript with colleagues, and their colleagues are going to read part of it, so the letter the agent sends is a piece of what all the people around the editor are going to see. You’re giving them stuff they can share within the company. Mostly the editor reads it and knows whether they like it or they don’t, and that’s that. But other people don’t have the time to dive as deeply in as an editor can, so a few guideposts are helpful. But I hate comps.

What stands out to you in a query from a writer who is looking for representation? Does a prestigious bio matter, or is it more about the pitch?
It’s the pitch letter and the first few pages. As for a bio, I mean, you can be a good or bad writer with a good or bad bio. You can’t gauge much from that. It tends to be just the opening pages: A lot rides on that because we don’t have time to read full manuscripts from everybody who comes to us.

I learned that as a bookseller. Customers stand in a store, and they read the first three paragraphs; it’s ride-or-die in that situation. One of the things I’ve always said to people is, “Don’t tell me that it starts to get good on page 50, because nobody is going to get through pages 1 to 49. It’s just not realistic. Most of the things I’ve taken on, I’ve started to read them, and something happens in the first few pages where you think, “Wow, this person can really write.” 

I’ve read a lot of things where I think, “This is really good,” but I wouldn’t know what editor to send it to or I wouldn’t know how to write a pitch letter that represented it well. I wouldn’t know how to talk about it to anybody in the outside world. Other times I read something, and I think, “Oh my God, I’ve got to send this to so-and-so, they’ll love it.” That’s the first step. It’s both liking it and knowing what you’ll do with it; otherwise you’re not providing the author with anything. They need you to know the right people to hand it to. They need you to be able to describe it in a way that people will be intrigued. That combination is what I’m looking for.

A lot of times, editors are not rejecting a manuscript because it’s “bad” per se. It’s more about asking, Am I the right person for this manuscript? Do I see that bigger picture and how I can pitch it and how I can edit this? 
One of my closest friends is someone whose manuscript I turned down, and she once said, “Thank God you turned me down! I love my agent. They really understand what I’m doing; they really get it; this was the right thing.” She said it was a little hurtful at the time, because it can’t not be. I think your agent [needs to have] the right instincts, to understand when to say yes and no, and to be able to guide it perfectly, whereas I would’ve been, “Oh, I don’t know, what does everyone else think?” Nobody wants that in their agent; they want someone who is clear and decisive. 

Sometimes a rejection is not a no, right? Sometimes it’s kind of “I’d be open to something else.”
It is. I mean, we all have different periods when we are too busy to do anything more. I’ve turned a lot of people down because I just haven’t got the time. I have an author who wrote a wonderful novel, and I read her stories at a time when I was completely overwhelmed with work, and I thought, “I can’t represent this; I just don’t have the hours in the day.” I wrote her a note saying, “I’m turning it down, but I think they’re wonderful stories, and if you don’t find an agent, come back to me with what you do next.” She did. It was the right time for me to read something and say yes. I [now] had the hours that I could allot to it all along the way, and I took it on, and it was fantastic. She was a finalist for the Booker Prize. It was a happy ending. She published the stories with an indie press and the novel with Grove. It was as it was meant to be.

Speaking of time management, do you believe agents should edit?
I edit the submission draft, the first draft that I ever go out with. I edit that quite a lot, and then it depends on the individual situation. If they have a good working relationship with their editor, I disappear. I do all the other stuff, but I don’t involve myself because otherwise you’ve got all these different people talking in your head as a writer and it doesn’t help. If things fall apart somewhere along the way and the editorial relationship falls apart, or we are moving houses and they need to strike a whole new relationship, then I go back in. 

It varies based on circumstances, and I have writers who I gave a lot of notes to for their very first manuscript and never really said anything more than how much I love it. Occasionally I’ve said, “I really love this, but I have an issue here.” I don’t do a deep edit with someone who’s got a good working relationship with their editor because that’s what the editor is good for. I never send something out rough because people don’t have the tolerance for it. That first submission of a new writer, you want to get it as shiny as you can.

What are you excited about for the future, both for your list and for the agency?
Oh, boy, those are big questions. I mean, I just took on a writer and I’m going to be submitting her manuscript in the next week or so, and that’s a really exciting debut, and it’s always fun to submit a debut. We’re just working on the final polish of the manuscript I’m going to send out. I think you always get, as an agent, a sort of real buzz from seeing someone with their first book and it’s all new and fresh. 

I’m not really taking much on as I’ve got a very full list. One of my authors said, “When will you have free time when you’re not reading?” I said I’ve never had a time when my desk didn’t have ten manuscripts on it. That’s just not how it works. I remember I used to take a day a week just to look for new things. I haven’t been able to do that in a long time, which is really depressing. [But] I’ve been building my list for myself for a long, long time, and the idea of it being a little bit bigger and incorporating other people’s interests and tastes is quite exciting. For the agency I hope to have lots and lots of occasions where I can watch someone in my tiny team seeing something through step by step and kind of enjoy things more in a wider way. [My assistant] Kelsey has very clear interests and tastes, and I just think she’s going to be a super agent. I’m going to sit there proudly while it happens.

I love the idea of fostering community, of paying it forward in some way.
Yeah. I mean, it never occurred to me that that would be exciting, but it really has been. I’m sure the time will come when Kelsey will do that for someone else, and maybe that’s how publishing will always work, because you do need to have room to develop first your taste and then all the relationships. For an author, they need someone who understands contracts, who has all the right contacts, and who has a clear vision of a book. That takes a while to develop, and if you don’t give someone that time, then there’s no future agent. Someone gave me that time, and I would like to do the same. I look back, and Gloria was lovely to me. Gloria represents Ta-Nehisi Coates. I mean, she has her finger on the pulse, having done it for forty, fifty years. You just think, “Wow, that’s really impressive.” I hope when I’m eighty I can still go [gestures moving quickly with her hands]. Gloria had a very clear sense of her taste. I think that is one of the things about editors and agents. They all know what they like.

As an agent, what is the one piece of guiding-light advice that you like to give to writers?
Listen to feedback and be very aware it’s a community. I’m a little thrown when I see people behaving poorly. I just think, (1) why do you want to do that in life? and (2) why is that sensible? These are all people you depend on, who rely on the goodwill that you would like to have. If you’re going to be nasty, why should they help? Every now and then you see a sort of weird arrogance out there, and I just don’t get that. Other than that, every author has their own instincts, and they do things a partiCular way, and you just sort of give advice that fits them rather than a one-size-fits-all piece of guidance. I think I’m quite flexible, and I’m happy to work out what someone needs and then try to provide it.

I really like what you said about treating each other well. You’ve built a community with your list, with your authors, but it is also important for writers to have their community because writing can be a solitary endeavor, but publishing is a people business, and you do have to be nice. We have long memories!
Yes, everyone has a long memory. I know I do. I still remember one editor who was really nasty to me when I was Gloria’s assistant. They’re very charming to me now, but I’ve never forgotten and never will. We’re all human beings and we all want to get along. There are times in an agent’s job to be the combative one or to argue something, but it doesn’t have to be done in an unpleasant way. I’m advocating for the author, so obviously I’m not always going to be sweetness, but it does pay to remember that we are all part of an ecosystem, as they say, and also, it’s a nicer way to live.

I think that’s a beautiful place to end.
It’s a very optimistic, sunny way to end—in a year that hasn’t been optimistic or sunny.  

Vivian Lee is a writer and a senior editor at Little, Brown.