Kathleen Foxx

About Me

*** I’m temporarily closed to queries (updated April 2025). ***

In early 2023, I joined The Rights Factory in Toronto in an editorial assistant role on my path to becoming a literary agent. I bring writing, editing, executive management, and administrative experience to my role, in addition to having a fabulous team of experienced agents behind me, furthering my ability to combine two of my biggest passions: storytelling and helping others succeed. When I get enthusiastic about a potential client’s story, it shows! Aside from a literary agent, I’m also a freelance fiction editor (Foxx Editorial), so my literary clients can be sure they’re getting editorial support as well.

Other than the above-mentioned things (and obviously reading!), I enjoy travelling, photography, creative cooking, hiking, and camping/kayaking in Ontario’s beautiful cottage country. I was born and raised in a lovely area of Southern Ontario, spent 6 months in Brazil and 15 years living in BC, AB, and NWT, and returned home to where my heart is in 2019. A romantic to my core, I consider myself mostly country with a bit of big city splash, and I’m convinced my soul resides somewhere in old world Europe. I love coffee, chocolate, cheese, and a good glass of red (not necessarily in that order!).

PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL ME YOUR SUBMISSION! Emailed queries will be deleted and unread. The same goes for DM and website contact form submissions. If you have been referred to me by someone who’s given you my email address, please say so in the subject line.

What I’m Seeking in Adult Fiction:

• Thriller/Suspense/Mystery and related sub-genres
• Horror (ghosts, haunted houses, etc.)
• Historical Fiction/Historical Fantasy (pre-WWI is preferred)
• Light Speculative Fiction (our world with one or two differences)
• Fairytale Retellings with a unique twist

Memoirs

When querying me with your memoir, it should read like fiction. Everything must be true, since it’s technically nonfiction, but it should contain all the propulsive elements that we see in a novel. We need to meet you (the protagonist!) and see your norm, see the inciting incident, meet the antagonist or antagonistic force, we need to know what your goals are, how external circumstances are constantly affecting your internal struggles and ability to meet your goals, who or what stands in your way, and what’s at stake. This all must be woven together with tension, emotion, and voice, with a clear story and character arc–and backstory/flashbacks should be kept to a minimum. If you haven’t taken agent Cece Lyra’s course on memoirs, I highly recommend it! What a memoir is not: your life story; this would be an autobiography (which I am not seeking). A memoir should be about a specific event in your life that drastically changed your trajectory, often impacted by a universally relatable, outside event.

Favourite Elements and Tropes

High-tension, locked-room mysteries, thrillers in isolated and exotic locations à la The Hunted (Roz Nay), thrillers and suspense with a bit of sarcasm mixed in, past covered-up crimes in the family, twins, adoptions, the manipulation and jaw-dropping twists as seen in Behind Her Eyes, based-on-true-crime stories, ancestry, soulmates, second-chance romance with a high school crush, international locations (let me live vicariously through your characters!), small town romance, unequal social status relationships (bonus if one of them lives in a castle!). If your story has midwives and related topics/themes, that’s a huge hook for me! If you can easily comp to Every Summer After, This Is Us, Behind Her Eyes, The Time Traveler’s Wife, or Outlander, these are also huge hooks for me!

I am NOT Looking For:

Picture books, political thrillers, space operas, graphic novels, poetry, epic fantasies, hardcore sci-fi, werewolves, vampires (unless like ADOW or human-friendly), or high-tech stories.

HARD PASSES

Please do not send me, under any circumstances: erotica, extreme gore horror, extreme violence or torture, explicit/repeated on-page physical abuse of any kind, intentional and on-page harm to children or animals, vaccination debates, or heavy politics (i.e. anything in support of Trump/his followers.) I am not (ever) interested in seeing AI-generated stories.

Nonfiction

I’m quite specific about what I’m seeking in nonfiction, and I have a pretty specific list on my website (kathleenfoxxagent.com/mswl), which I won’t get into here because it’s rather long! I’m mostly looking for narrative nonfiction that wows me; surprising family histories, the strength of motherhood, the wonder that is childbirth, the fascination of past lives/reincarnation, true crime, cookbooks woven into life experiences, witches/witchcraft, puzzling ancient locations, and so much more.

Nonfiction I’m Currently NOT Seeking:

In addition to the hard no’s above: biographies/autobiographies, academic works, self-help, health and fitness, sports, science or high-tech, DIY, or religious-centered works.

I’m always seeking works from BIPOC or historically underrepresented writers and would love to see more LGBTQIA+ stories.

Above all else, I’m looking for stories that elicit emotion. I love a good laugh, I love to be surprised, and I love when a book/show/movie makes me cry. I want to feel emotionally connected to and invested in the characters from the very beginning. Tension, emotion, voice, and curiosity—these are, in my opinion, the top four most important elements to have in the opening pages. This is why those first few pages are crucial when submitting query material to agents! (But make sure the rest of your manuscript is just as good/gets even better from there!) 😉

Submission Guidelines

AGAIN, PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL OR DM YOUR QUERY. My submission guidelines are on Query Manager, but please have your query, synopsis, and first chapter ready. Please only query me (and any agent) if your manuscript is complete and polished (i.e., several rounds of beta readers/critique partners/revisions, etc.) or, if nonfiction, you have a completed book proposal.

Responses: Please note I will do everything in my power to read your query submission as soon as possible. If I request a full manuscript, it may take quite a bit of time to respond. Don’t be afraid to nudge me, but know that as much as I’d like to respond to each and every query, this is not always possible.

Guidelines & Details