About the Agency

MASSIE & McQUILKIN is a full-service literary agency that focuses on bringing fiction and non-fiction of quality to the largest possible audience. We work closely with our clients at every stage of a project’s development, submission, and placement—staying involved in all issues of design, publicity and sales, long after the ink has dried on a contract, to ensure that the author’s needs are being met by their publisher.

In 2012, MMQ acquired the venerable literary agency Russell & Volkening, Inc. Founded in 1940 by publishing legends Diarmuid Russell and Henry Volkening, and later acquired by Timothy Seldes before its acquisition by MMQ, Russell & Volkening joined MMQ intact as a corporate entity. With its list have come the works of some of the most noted writers in the history of American publishing, including Eudora Welty, Bernard Malamud, George Plimpton, Barbara Tuchman, and South African Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. These writers and others joined MMQ’s own growing list of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction writers.

After attending Duke University, MARIA MASSIE (agent) joined Kim Witherspoon in creating Witherspoon Associates, which grew rapidly during the 1990’s, representing many prize-winning and bestselling writers. Overseeing all foreign rights for the agency and managing its business affairs, Maria soon began to build her own client list as well. She now brings to MMQ over two decades’ worth of experience in representing authors and helping to make sure that they can be read around the world. She specializes in literary fiction, memoir, and cultural history.

A graduate of Phillips Academy and Columbia University, ROB McQUILKIN (agent) started out in publishing at Warner Books (now known as Grand Central Publishing), where he acquired the paperback rights to books including Primary Colors, by Anonymous (Joe Klein). He left Warner Books for Anchor Books/Doubleday, where, as Editor, he acquired books by and/or worked closely with writers including Anita Hill (Speaking Truth to Power), Phillip Lopate (Totally, Tenderly, Tragically), and Lois Gould (Mommy Dressing), also acquiring the paperback rights to bestsellers such as Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. Rob cut his teeth as an agent while working with Ike Williams and Jill Kneerim at The Palmer & Dodge Agency (now known as Kneerim & Williams), before leaving to start his own agency. Representing clients who have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and le Prix Medicis, among other major awards and prizes, Rob specializes in fiction, memoir, history, cultural criticism, and poetry.

RAYHANÉ SANDERS — agent (joined 2014) — was raised in Los Angeles and New York City by Iranian and Greek-Cypriot parents. She began her career at Newsweek Magazine before moving to book publishing. She worked for Dutton, Gotham Books, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt before moving to the agency side, working for WME (William Morris Endeavor) and Wayne Kabak’s WSK Management. She is a member of the Association of American Literary Agents. Her clients have been finalists and winners of numerous grants and prizes, including the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Story Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, and the New American Voices Award. Works by several of her clients have graced the cover of The New York Times Book Review, and have appeared on national and international bestseller lists. She is particularly interested in representing a diversity of voices from around the world, and in fresh voices telling stories we haven’t heard before. She is fond of immigrant tales and stories concerned with race, sexuality, cross-cultural themes, and notions of identity. You can find her Writer’s Digest profile here.

STÉPHANIE ABOU — agent (joined 2015) — hails from France, where she worked for fashion magazines while finishing her degree in comparative literature from the Sorbonne, thinking she would pursue a career in journalism. Upon arriving in NYC in the late 1990’s she landed an internship at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which convinced her to make a career out of her passion for literature. Starting at The Joy Harris Literary Agency, and most recently at Foundry Literary + Media, she has developed a dual career as a foreign rights director and a domestic agent. Multi-lingual and multi-cultured, she particularly enjoys works that celebrate the resilience of the human spirit while also depicting the experience of “the other.” She specializes in character-driven fiction, memoirs, crime fiction, and narrative nonfiction. She enjoys a close editorial rapport with her authors, and believes that strong writing must be put in the service of great storytelling to birth a successful book.

RENÉE ZUCKERBROT — agent (joined 2016) — became an agent after working as an editor at Doubleday. Authors represented by Renée have won or been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize, The National Book Award, the Dublin Literary Award, The Caine Prize for African Writing, the PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Prize for Biography, the PEN E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, the National Magazine Award, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, B&N’s Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Story Prize, the PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus, the Hugo, the Nebula, the Pushcart, and others. She is a member of the AALA and Authors Guild. She represents commercial and literary fiction––she has a soft spot for short story collections––and science, popular culture, and history in the nonfiction space. You can read an interview with Renée and her colleagues at Poets & Writers.

JULIE STEVENSON — agent (joined 2016) — was an agent at Sobel Weber Associates and Waxman Leavell Literary before joining Massie & McQuilkin. She received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She also worked in the editorial departments of Tin House and Publishers Weekly. She is drawn to fiction with unforgettable characters, an authorial command of voice, and a strong sense of narrative tension. She loves outsiders, weirdos, and innovators. She looks for work that explores the depths of human experience and the many facets of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and regional backgrounds. Julie loves editing and contemplating craft and storytelling with clients. She takes pride in connecting writers with editors and ultimately with readers. She’s agented books that have won the Pulitzer Prize, the MWA Edgar Award, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor. She represents literary and upmarket fiction, suspense and thrillers, memoir, narrative nonfiction, and YA.

ARAM FOX – agent (joined 2023) – represents a mix of fiction and nonfiction. His favorite novelists, commercial as well as literary, put immersive storytelling front and center. In nonfiction, he’s looking for powerful memoir, natural history, deeply reported narrative nonfiction, and world-class explainers and advice-givers. At age 26, Aram founded a book scouting agency where for 23 years he represented international publishers and American film/TV companies, guiding his publisher and film/TV clients to acquire a Who’s Who of bestsellers and prize-winners, including: Brit Bennett, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Lauren Oyler, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Bill Gates, George Saunders, Angela Duckworth, Patrick Radden Keefe, Dave Grohl, Lena Dunham, Emma Cline, Harlan Coben, Jeff VanderMeer, Alex Honnold and Andy Weir among many others. Please see our agency’s Contact page for Aram’s query and submission guidelines.

MAX MOORHEAD – agent (joined 2024) – began his publishing career at The New Republic as an editorial fellow before joining Massie & McQuilkin in 2019 in a junior role. Over the years he has cultivated a client list while also managing backlist titles by Russell & Volkening clients including Annie Dillard, Eudora Welty, Bernard Malamud, Barbara Tuchman, and Marian Engel. Raised in New Hampshire, he graduated with honors from The New School earning a B.A. in Creative Writing. As an agent he specializes in literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, biography, cultural history, and memoir.