Ashley Herring Blake

Ashley Herring Blake is an agent with Rees Literary Agency. For more information about her, you can visit her website, her Twitter, or her Rees Agency page.

Ashley is actively seeking character-driven upmarket and commercial fiction, particularly from queer, BIPOC, and QBIPOC creators featuring their stories.

In adult, she is most interested in contemporary romance, rom coms, upmarket adult fiction, accessible literary fiction, women’s/bookclub fiction, and commercial contemporary fiction. In these categories, she’s drawn to beautiful writing, voices that leap off the page, flawed characters, unique and charming settings whether in small towns or big cities, vibrant friendship and messy families, and fresh takes on familiar tropes. She enjoys both the slow burn and instant attraction. For romance, HEA or HFN are a must. While there are exceptions for undeniable hooks and breathtaking writing, she is almost exclusively looking for queer stories at this time.

In YA and MG, she is only looking for queer contemporary realism and/or stories from BIPOC creators at this time. In YA, she’d very much like non-school or non-traditional school setting stories, as well as stories set in early college.

What I’m Not a Great Fit For: To save everyone time, here are some things she wouldn’t be a great fit for. As of right now, she’s not looking for nonfiction (unless it’s a graphic memoir), spy novels, or sci-fi. She’s also not here for redemptive arcs for bigots or abusers, love affairs where the power dynamic is problematic, and rom coms where the love interest is kind of a jerk but the MC loves them anyway.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be emailed to http://QueryMe.Online/AshleyBlake

Please query Ashley through the Query Manager system and include your query as well as the first three chapters of your manuscript. For graphic novels, please include a link to your artwork or upload a sample. She responds to all general queries within 4-8 weeks. When you’re ready to submit, click here.

Ashley does NOT accept queries via email and all queries sent through email will be deleted.

Guidelines & Details