Cole Hildebrand is a literary agent at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. He began his publishing career as an Assistant Editor at YesYes Books, going on to become Managing Editor for the press, whose list includes award-winning authors such as Ocean Vuong, Elizabeth Acevedo, Justin Phillip Reed, Danez Smith, Michael Wasson, Kayleb Rae Candrilli, and many others. He joined JVNLA in 2021, working alongside agency President Jennifer Weltz, and is now building his list, seeking adult literary fiction, narrative non-fiction, and select poetry, with a particular interest in queer voices.

SEEKING: In fiction, he is looking for contemporary literary and experimental work, and is open to novels that blur genre elements in surprising or unconventional ways, incorporating the surreal, lightly speculative, and horrific. Overall, he is drawn to character and voice driven stories that play with form and narrative structure, written with stylistically distinctive, immersive prose and evocative imagery. He loves books that explore subversive territories with an off-beat or absurd sense of humor, books with characters that behave badly, but in a way that is endearing, and books that deftly unearth the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. Additionally, he's always looking for books that grapple with the myriad devastating effects of global capitalism and its historical roots.

In non-fiction, he is seeking narrative and/or investigative work that blends personal, cultural, political, and historical threads--books that engage with radical thought, queer history, art, pop culture, environmental studies, and mental health. He is also interested in memoirs with unconventional narrative and formal structures, and well-researched accounts of understudied historical movements or figures.

For more information on Cole's interests, please visit his Manuscript Wish List page.