KE

Kelsey Evans

Rosecliff Literary
Open to queries · confirmed 1mo ago

What they’re looking for

From their profile

Kelsey is a publishing professional with a background in communications, marketing, and editing. After a decade helming marketing strategy and content development for agencies with major clients like AAA, Dannon, and Target, she transitioned into publishing. She began as an editor, helping writers shape their work through developmental feedback, query critiques, and revision guidance. Later, she moved into agenting, interning with Triada US and Creative Media Agency (CMA), where she gained hands-on experience in manuscript evaluation, submissions, and client development. Passionate about championing authors, Kelsey now combines editorial insight with marketing expertise to help writers navigate both craft and career. She is especially excited to seek out independent voices by tracking breakout self-published successes, surfacing under-the-radar talent, and scouting the indie authors whose sales, platforms, and craft signal they’re ready to leap into traditional publishing.

General likes

Immersive settings (fantasy or otherwise), jaw-dropping plot twists, distinctive voice, tight plotting, high concept hooks, emotional character journeys, slow burn romances, top-tier banter. For Adult

Nonfiction

Anything science-related, specifically physics, is a yes for me! Think Brian Greene and Carlo Rovelli, making complex topics accessible to a wide audience. Personal women’s rowing or basketball stories like The Red Rose Crew or In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle. I’d also love a larger look at the WNBA and growth of women’s basketball as a whole. Nature-based nonfiction like The Hidden Life of Trees or quiet, uplifting stories like Raising Hare. Heartfelt, funny, compelling cooking stories. Everything from Calvin Trillin’s The Tummy Trilogies to Marissa Ross’s Wine, All the Time. Coming from a food background, I’d love personal insights into the world beyond The Bear. Think: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry ; The Making of a Chef; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; The Omnivore’s Dilemma; A Homemade Life; Tender at the Bone; On Food and Cooking. A deep dive into the recent “tradwife” phenomenon, specifically as it intersects with social media, capitalism, economic precarity, and right-wing ideology.

Romance

Sports (anything but hockey or football). Send me lacrosse stories, basketball rivals, rowing books — especially if they’re queer. They can be witty, snarky, and fun ( Cleat Cute ) or deeply moving and compelling ( A Sharp Endless Need). Formula 1 or English Premier League stories! Grounded, laugh out loud grumpy x sunshine stories like Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks. If you’re a fanfic writer and have banter chops like DMATMOOBIL or Lionheart please (please please) send stories my way! Action/adventure romps like Pirates Of the Caribbean or National Treasure with a romance through-line. YES to dark academia and gothic aesthetics. I’d love to see these trends explored more deeply in the Romance space, especially with emotional complexity and immersive (but accessible) atmospheres ( Spells for Forgetting, for example). Speculative Romance (think The Dead Romantics from Ashley Poston).

Horror

CULTS CULTS CULTS

Mike Flanagan-esque stories or anything that mixes religion or spirituality with horror, like Hell Followed With Us or Black Sheep or Archive 81. Slow unfolding horror with an unreliable narrator like Meg Smitherman’s Thrum. BIPOC-centered stories like The Only Good Indians or Kindred. X-Files. Twin Peaks. Give me weird and creepy and a slow-burning fire.

SFF

Supernatural investigators like Dresden Files or Constantine, or an aged-up heist story like Six of Crows. I like a good Romantasy but very selectively. It has to be a fresh take on the genre and not a rewrite of SJM or RY. Cozy fantasy is a yes, especially if it has some romance and a bit of mystery. Think The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst or The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields. If I could live inside Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle I would be the happiest camper.

S