Marrissa Childs

An Arkansas Native, Marrissa has come a long way in her journey into publishing. She doubled majored in professional writing and creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas. Since she has obtained her MFA  in Creative writing at Chapman University in California, she has dedicated herself, wholeheartedly, to publishing through leading her literary innovation team, JourneyWriter,  in their path to healing the literacy crisis.  She is also a member of the New York non-profit, Inkluded Inc.- assisting them with introducing young BiPOCs publishing professionals to the industry. She has also had the opportunity to work with Publisher’s Weekly as a writer and Booklife extern.  She is now entering her path to agenting with Ladderbird with a clean slate, but experienced mind. 

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Marrissa is a reader that values detailed narratives, intelligent and cool characters, lessons learned, and family gained in unlikely places. When Marrissa is not reading you can find her drinking sweet iced tea, eating pasta, and watching the latest foreign drama. 

Submission Guidelines

I only accept submissions through QueryManager.

I grew up in a literary world that valued-highly-BIPOC pain and poverty. So much so, that those narratives became commonplace and make up a small portion of the literary canon. With every direction I took with my career, my goal has been simple: to obtain books that can hold perennial and redefine BIPOCs places in the literary canon. Saying that,  I am looking for works that depict BIPOC voices in our full spectrum- from the most mundane to the most spectacular lifestyles, from the bittersweet to the joyous. ​

I deeply value detail, and lean more towards a show me, rather than tell me sort of narration. I love when writers give me a chance to critically think about the messages that they want to send. I do not enjoy direct or surface writing. I love when a writer digs into the complications and puts you into the room where everything happens. I also enjoy stories that have a great balance of plot with multiple subplots and practically have an ensemble of characters.  I adore high intellect, morally clear, soft-hearted characters. I also like cold and decisive characters. ​

I am currently interested in accepting Adult, New Adult fiction, and Craft/Homemaking. I do not accept Picture Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult, legal, mystery/spy thrillers, paranormal, religious, hyper-sexual, or dark romance.

New Adult/ Adult Romance: 

Something to know about me: I am absolutely a romantic girl! The very epicenter of any of my favorite stories is love in all of its types (passionate, family, self-love, friendship, etc.). I am a romantic by defintion: I love stories that provoke layered and intertwined emotions.

I am looking for stories that focus on mundane daily living, persons that work uncommonly discussed jobs (corporate & niche jobs), slice-of-life, persons diagnosed with physical disabilities, medical, historical, and light academia. I am a foreign story fanatic (I.e. Chinese historical, Turkish modern, and Korean modern stories.) I love dream/career-driven characters, female centric narratives, appropriate age gaps, and mischievous male leads. I would love for an author to come to me with a narrative balanced with love, family, heartache, and daily life. Even if the story has a sci-fi twist, those other things need to be there for me. I would love versatile characters that are three-dimensional. I want female leads that are ambitious, building businesses, running households, and building communities. I would love male leads that are respectable, honorable, tough (almost ruthless) leaders, yet soft hearted, loyal, emotionally intelligent, and attentive.   I would love romances that allow characters to be complete individuals, as they fall in love. I believe in those stories that do beautifully at creating human beings that are 3-dimensional ,in that, while they have central drives (career, revenge, or family, etc.), they also have interests, family, and loved ones outside of that that make them real people coming off of the page.  I love to read works that simply allow characters to practice their culture and language as if they are telling the story to someone from their community. I also love characterization that allows room for each character to be their own person- having their own identity, ambitions, and connections- while still falling in love.

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I am not a big fan of second chance romance, erotica, romantasy, and some enemies to lovers. I do not accept dark romance, smut, religious, or “cozy” romance. I am looking for rather emotionally and situationally layered romantic stories. While tropes and cliches aren’t attractive to me, I love when a writer does crazy or funny twists with them- making them their own.

SFF/ Fantasy

I have a pretty short fuse with speculative works. I am not accepting any religious, mythology, hyper sexual, magical, or horror works. I do have a love for dystopian and science fiction. I am often intrigued with aliens, parallel universes, and time travel. Alongside these genres, I love discussions about humanity, family love, romantic passion, friendship, agape, self-love, and complicated decisions.