Lauren Keller Galit

Agent: such a loaded job description. It’s the word you scream (AGENT!) into the phone when you get stuck in an airline or cable company’s automated loop. Or it might call to mind images of a classic real estate or Hollywood agent with slicked-back hair and too-sharp clothes. But that’s not who I am. My client, Clinton Kelly, once wrote in the acknowledgments of Freakin’ Fabulous: “Lauren Keller Galit, a totally chill agent who’s not even a jerk.”

Being a literary agent is my dream job (but then again, I was a literary geek at Harvard): I get to work with writers all day long, helping them craft their book ideas and manuscripts. And then, once the work is complete, I get to connect with editors to sell them on something I have passionately committed myself to for the past few months. And I get to chat — a lot (but hopefully not too much). With writers, with editors, with anyone who will listen. All good.

I also get to be a world-class dilettante. For each new project that comes along, I delve deep into that book’s world, asking questions with the authors. Who are these characters? How do they grow and change? How does the magic work? Would that plot point evolve organically out of the story?

I started my agenting career in 2002 at John Boswell Associates, a literary agency and book packager that’s most noted for creating 365 Ways To Cook Chicken, as well as countless other best sellers. Because Boswell was a packager as well as an agent, he taught me how to do more than just craft a proposal and sell it; he showed me how to create a book from scratch, working with designers and production people along the way. It is that attention to detail that I bring to all my current projects. I help my authors envision what their books could be.

Before becoming an agent, I was a magazine editor for 10 years, starting at GQ (Gentleman’s Quarterly) and ending at GH (Good Housekeeping). That’s where I learned to edit and copy edit, to read and reread until an article or caption or pull quote was just so. It is a skill I bring to every book I work on with a writer. It won’t go out until it is just so, because the manuscript should beautifully and accurately represent the ideas and characters an author is dying to bring to the world.