Time for a new story.
^This is Neon’s agency motto; it also encapsulates the mission we’re on with our clients.
The authors we represent are all changing the story of the world in some way.
Some dive backward into history, reclaiming misunderstood, forgotten, or suppressed figures to honor their contributions and document their legacies.
Some venture outward, mapping the terrain of the present with cultural criticism or journalism.
Others use fiction to imagine new possibilities in time and space.
Whatever they’re writing, our authors take their work seriously.
They understand that even the silliest stories can be a powerful tool for social change. The privilege of telling stories to big national audiences is therefore a profound honor and responsibility, and it’s not one any of us take lightly.
Here at Neon, we’re done with the Big Ideas Industry and its assumptions and entitlements. (Think the sort of book our author Mike Hobbes would destroy on his podcast “If Books Could Kill.”)
All of us, agents and authors alike, understand that the real world is not a Big Idea; it’s vast, nuanced, and complex.
We therefore embrace writing that is difficult, dark, brave, strange, subversive, loving, and funny. We speak truth to power. And we’re not afraid to acknowledge life’s uncertainty, cognitive dissonance, or mess.
Hope. In a word, our mission is hope.
Our authors illuminate open doorways for people who’ve spent whole lifetimes wandering a world that feels closed to them. Our books welcome people home to themselves.
Hence the real reason our company is named Neon: in the middle of the night, neon signs are a lighthouse for the lonely. They say: We’re open. It’s warm in here. Welcome.
To assist our clients as they welcome readers home, we offer sharp and comprehensive editorial development; vigorous representation; and industry-leading, transparent expertise.
Read more about us in the New York Times, Deadline, Poets & Writers, PublishersMarketplace, and Publishers’ Weekly.
Here are some of the nice things our clients have said about us in their books’ acknowledgements sections:
“My phenomenal agent, Anna Sproul-Latimer…came all the way to Philadelphia, bought me a Reuben sandwich, and asked me if I had a book in me and I said yes, which felt like 60 percent of a lie but I really wanted to finish the Reuben sandwich and also I thought perhaps I could find a book. Instead, Anna found the book, with brilliant editorial notes and great questions and many drafts. Thanks for changing my life.”
— R. Eric Thomas, author of Here For It and Kings of B’More
“[Kent] is the exact same amount of horrible I am, thus making this the greatest working partnership of all time.”
— Samantha Irby, author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life and Meaty
“This project fought me every step of the way, but Anna Sproul-Latimer, the best literary agent a writer could have, never stopped believing in it (and me). Thanks, Anna, for pep talks, stiff drinks, inappropriate text messages, and for never ever going easy on me when you know I could do better, no matter how much I cried.”
— Jaclyn Friedman, author of Unscrewed and What You Really Really Want; editor of Believe Me and Yes Means Yes
“[Kent is] brilliant and scarily capable.”
— Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House
“[Kent] will always have the best hair along with the eternal gratitude of all his writers.”
— Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World
“Anna Sproul-Latimer is the best, bluntest, smartest agent in the world.”
— Rachel Friedman, author of And Then We Grew Up and The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost
“Anna Sproul-Latimer, you are a rock star who single-handedly restored my faith in agents. ….Having you in my corner has been the best thing to ever happen to my career. Even more than that, I’m so happy to call you a friend.”
— Zach Anner, comedian, actor, and author of If at Birth You Don’t Succeed
“[Kent is] incredible.”
— Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters
“Anna Sproul-Latimer, I dip my feathered hat to you….If you had wings you would be an angel, albeit a rather dark one!”
— Christopher Skaife, Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London and author of The Ravenmaster