The Transatlantic Agency thanks Chelene Knight for her great years as an Associate Agent and Literary Agent as she takes a step away from agenting to focus on her writing career and her literary coaching business as Principle at Breathing Space Creative. Going forward Chelene will be involved on a freelance basis at the Transatlantic Agency as the Internal Programs Designer. Chelene, assisted by literary agent Amanda Orozco, developed and launched the agency’s highly successful BIPOC Mentorship Program which had its inaugural run in 2021. Chelene will stay on as the Internal Programs Designer to help oversee it again in 2024, along with other related programs which help the agency fulfill its mission of inclusivity, integrity, and dynamic collaboration.
Says Samantha Haywood: “Chelene is an incredible professional overflowing with talent. We are thankful to have worked with her as a literary agent and look forward to continuing to work with her as Internal Programs Coordinator and a dynamo author client. We celebrate the success she is having with the Breathing Space Creative and wish her well on her literary coaching career journey.”
Says Chelene Knight: “I’m excited to continue working with Transatlantic as the Internal Programs Designer. Working as an agent for the last three years has helped me gain clarity around how to best show up for myself and the writers I work with! Stay tuned for some fabulous new additions to the BIPOC Mentorship Program, and more!”
Chelene Knight is the author of the Braided Skin (Mother Tongue 2015) the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, and her novel, Junie (Book*hug 2022) long-listed for the inaugural Carol Shields Fiction Prize and is in development as a tv series. Her next book, a work of narrative nonfiction, Let It Go is forthcoming with HarperCollins Canada in 2024.
Previously, Knight was the managing editor at Room magazine, and festival director for the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver. She has also worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. Chelene is now founder of her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative through which she’s launched The Forever Writers Club, a membership for writers focused on creative sustainability, and the Thrive Coaching Program.
Transatlantic Agency is a leading literary management company with a vibrant team of literary agents based in cities across North America, including New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Vancouver, and Toronto. Transatlantic Agency offers full-service international representation for storytellers in books, speaking, TV/film and select screenwriters. Notable clients include Khaled Hosseini, Iain Reid, Marissa Stapley, Katherena Vermette, MG Vassanji, Karma Brown, Jesse Thistle, Zoe Whittall, Samra Habib, and Catherine Hernandez. Transatlantic Agency is recognized in the industry for its sales success and its reputation for integrity, passion, and commitment. Transatlantic represents more than 700 clients for adult trade and children’s literature, ranging from commercial to literary across all genres for fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books, which regularly appear on prestigious bestseller and award lists, including the New York Times, the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.