Bridgette Kam

Westwood Creative Artists

My Manuscript Wish List®

I’m a literary agent at the Toronto-based agency Westwood Creative Artists. As a wide reader, I represent a curated list of authors across the three main areas of book club and upmarket fiction, middle grade and YA fiction, and picture books.

In fiction, I’m looking for book club and upmarket novels that explore timely and urgent themes like Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers and Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s A Great Country; are propulsive and well-paced like Celeste Ng’s body of work; feature irresistibly lovable characters like those in Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry; powerfully bring history to life like Jabari Asim’s Yonder; and are brilliantly multi-layered like R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface.

Some of my favourite YA writers are June Hur (The Forest of Stolen Girls) and Stacey Lee (The Downstairs Girl), and in middle grade, Susin Nielsen, Kelly Yang, and Daniel Nayeri, among many others. I want to see a protagonist with an unforgettable voice who I can root for with one or more of the ingredients of: mystery, history, a little suspense, lightly speculative, and family. I prefer that romance not be the central focus; give me a protagonist who is completely surrendered to a cause!

In picture books, I’m seeking kids-centric, age-appropriate picture books by writers and illustrators alike that have a clear story, guaranteed reread quality, and an inviting and engaging approach rather than a didactic one.

Submissions that keep me reading have: a strong hook, skillful balance of good pacing and character immersion, emotional resonance, and very polished writing on the line-level. I’m not the right agent for suspense (thriller and horror), crime, sci-fi, high fantasy, erotica, chapbooks, poetry, scholarly/academic works, and politics.

While fiction is my focus, I’m keeping the door open for narrative non-fiction proposals from journalists, emerging writers, and deep thinkers alike on the topics of culture, sociology, psychology, faith, and history. Some books in the last few years that have stood out to me are Jessica J. Lee’s Two Trees Make a Forest, Cheuk Kwan’s Have You Eaten Yet?, Tara Isabella Burton’s Self-Made, Hua Hsu’s Stay True, Tamara Cherry’s The Trauma Beat, and Luke Burgis’ Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.