Jared Johnson

I’m someone with a wide variety of reading loves and interests, and this tends to be reflected in the types of stories I represent. Most of all, I love stories that feel like they speak to the time and place that we currently find ourselves in, whether that be nonfiction or fiction, large or small scale.

Platformed Nonfiction

• Works that examine society from a unique angle (think The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr or Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar) and that explore a cultural concept from an underexamined perspective (such as Imani Perry’s South to America)

• Narratives with hope and connection at their core and which seek to find ways to build bridges (a few favorites are We Should Not Be Friends by Will Schwalbe, I Never Thought of It That Way by Mónica Guzmán and Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki)

• Well-researched explorations of microhistories like The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World by Tom Roston that shed new light on a forgotten or overlooked place or time (another evergreen favorite is Second Suns by David Oliver Relin)

• I also personally love anything related to language, from the science of how it works to how it sculpts our identities (a few favorites are The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa and Wordslut by Amanda Montell)

  • I would especially love to see a book exploring the social impact of bilingualism!

     

Fiction

• I am easily drawn in by complex family relationships, especially with adult children and parents, and I would love to see more stories with senior protagonists

• I want to see any and all stories built around complex expressions of hope, joy, connection, and other forms of positive emotion (think Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt, just to name a few)

• Stories that incorporate speculative elements into the narrative (a few examples are The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal, The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo and The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton)

• I love smart humor and books with a unique hook (I would absolutely love to receive the next Starter Villain!)

• Fantasy of all types except romantasy (it’s a great subgenre; I’m just not as familiar with the professional landscape)

  • I love worlds that feel like they live off the page and with unique, well-integrated systems of magic

  • I’m a sucker for a well-executed Chosen One narrative, but I especially love protagonists that just happen to find themselves in the right (or wrong!) place at the right time (think The Will of the Many by James Islington)

• Near-future sci-fi that examines how technology affects us in the here-and-now

• Especially with fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, I’m drawn to stories that use their respective genre as a vehicle to explore relevant cultural narratives or that aren’t afraid to play with structure (think This Is How You Lose the Time War, Mechanize My Hands to War, How High We Go in the Dark)

Submission Guidelines

For submissions, please submit your manuscript through QueryManager (http://QueryManager.com/jaredjohnson). For fiction manuscripts, please include a brief query letter, the first 20 pages of your manuscript, and a synopsis. For nonfiction, please include a complete sample chapter as well as the full proposal.

Guidelines & Details