Fiona Kenshole

Wishlist dos: I am hungry for middle grade, especially any kind of animal story. I’m passionate about the natural world and saving the planet and look for stories that chime with those beliefs. Yes please to a 21st century 101 Dalmatians or Charlotte’s Web. I also laugh easily – send me your funnies!!

I am being selective about taking on YA. I love a well-written commercial page-turner where the protagonist has to defeat increasingly difficult odds. I don’t love sad endings or too much moody introspection.  

 I like quirky contemporary, humor; unreliable narrators; wilderness adventures; immigrant stories; sister stories, practical feminism, and ghost stories.  I’d love a story about the sheer joy of escaping on your bike or on skis.

For picture books, send me your funny books. I’m especially a sucker for clever British-style humor. Author-illustrators especially welcome.

I have special passion for mid-career writers looking for a change, or to elevate out of the midlist.

I love stories that surprise me: If I can predict the ending in the opening pages, it’s probably not for me. Most of all I love compelling writing that makes me laugh out loud, or makes me love the characters so much that I like them more than the real people around me! 

Wishlist don’ts: I’m not taking on rhyming picture books,  poetry, screenplays or faith-based stories, and I don’t usually like sad endings.

“I love the midwifery of being an agent, from getting your debut published to doing the movie deal. I specialize in children’s and YA from picture books to older teenage.”

Fiona came to agenting after nearly a decade as VP at Laika Studios, creating a development slate of new projects for the Academy Award winning animation studio including the Oscar-nominated THE BOXTROLLS and CORALINE.

Previously she was a senior publisher in the UK where she published authors including Michael Bond (Paddington Bear), P.L Travers (Mary Poppins) and the Laureate Michael Morpurgo (War Horse) and was UK editor for Beverley Cleary, Lois Lowry, Bruce Coville, Gary Paulsen and Cynthia Voigt. She was nominated for “Editor of the Year” at the British Book Awards.

Fiona enjoys being on faculty as a conference guest speaker throughout the US and in Europe. She is an adjunct Professor on the Publishing faculty at Portland State University. Previously she organized events for the Oxford Literary Festival and is herself a published author. A British citizen, Fiona now lives in Portland, Oregon.

She joined Transatlantic in 2013. Her clients’ recent successes include Rosanne Parry’s MG A WOLF CALLED WANDER (Andersen Press/Greenwillow) which spent 6 years in the NYT bestseller list and sold in 15 languages: and Vicki Grant’s YA romcom, 36 QUESTIONS THAT CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT YOU (Running Press), which sold in 22 languages and is optioned for TV.