Brought to you by

Kim Carson Bodie

Susan Schulman Literary Agency

My Manuscript Wish List®

Kim joined Susan Schulman in 2025 after years of working thematically and geographically scattered jobs that mostly involved taking words out of the air and putting them on paper. She is a former journalist, university creative writing instructor, CutBank Fiction Editor, and Coffee House Press Editorial Intern.

Kim is interested in reading adult commercial, upmarket, and literary fiction, horror, slipstream, bookclub-with-an-edge, creative nonfiction, pop culture, essay, and select memoir—particularly projects that feature strong voice, experimental structure, bold risks, and big swings. Kim gravitates toward themes of adolescence, monstrosity, class, innocence, memory, healing, freakishness, community, otherness, identity, the body, the natural world, and the concept of home.

Kim received her MFA from the University of Montana, where you can still find her gathering dirt under her fingernails, between the pages of her books, and in the cracks of her computer keyboard. She can usually be spotted alongside her dog, Townes Van Dog.

Please keep in mind:

  • I do not represent YA, MG, or children’s books. I’m open to NA.
  • I welcome #OwnVoices projects and am particularly interested in representing authors from diverse backgrounds.

  • I will read anything that takes place at a carnival.

  • Please send me weird westerns.

  • I’m probably not the best fit for high fantasy or other speculative projects without grounded elements, in addition to pure romance or thrillers, with the exception of projects that use suspense or genre as a tool to examine surprising social, scientific, cultural, or political elements of the world at large.

Please read the following before submitting your work.

  • For fiction submissions, please send a description that will help us understand your project. Include a brief synopsis and the first ten pages, which should be pasted into the body of the email below your query.

  • For non-fiction submissions, please send an informative description, a full outline of your project, and the first ten pages of the manuscript, which should be pasted into the body of the email below your query.

  • For graphic novel submissions, send 10 illustrated pages with text (attached as a PDF) and a synopsis in the body of the email below your query.

I endeavor to respond to each submission. Thank you for having patience with me, as I receive a high volume of queries. I will contact you if I wish to pursue your submission.

 

Here are some recent and not-so-recent books I would have loved to represent:

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

Jawbone by Monica Ojeda

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Bunny by Mona Awad

Writers and Lovers by Lily King

Butter by Asako Yuzuki

Dogs by C. Mallon

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

The Wilds by Julia Elliot

Autobiography of Red by Ann Carson

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee

How to Set a Fire and Why by Jesse Ball

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi

True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey

Bear Down, Bear North by Melinda Moustakis

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Us Fools by Nora Lange

Submissions should be emailed to kim@schulmanagency.com

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