esmond harmsworth
Esmond Harmsworth is a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Born in London, he was educated in England before graduating magna cum laude from Brown University and cum laude from Harvard Law School.
As a literary agent, Harmsworth represents fiction and nonfiction. He is one of the leading U.S. agents for business books, and regularly places major titles on management, leadership, finance, innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship with the leading publishers. His bestselling titles include the #1 Wall Street Journal business bestseller and New York Times bestseller Breakthrough: Secrets of America's Fastest Growing Companies by Keith McFarland, the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System To Drive Breakthrough Creativity by Josh Linkner, and the New York Times and national bestseller Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired —and Secretive — Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky. Other business titles include Erin Arvedlund's Too Good To Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff, Dave Balter and John Butman's Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, and Tuck professor Ron Adner's The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation.
Harmsworth's nonfiction list includes serious nonfiction books on topics such as politics, psychology, culture and society. His science and psychology list includes authors such as Robert Emmons, author of Thanks! How The New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, R. Keith Sawyer, author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration, and Dario Maestripieri, author of Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships. He also represents Amanda Ripley, author of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — And Why, David Rothkopf, author of Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead, and Sara Roahen, author of Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table.
Harmsworth also represents many leading authors and experts in education, including Dan Willingham, Tony Wagner and Douglas Reeves, as well as books on popular culture, health, food, religion, spirituality, parenting, fitness and media.
For fiction, Harmsworth represents literary fiction, mystery and crime, popular (mainstream) fiction and young adult and middle grade fiction. Many of his clients write historical novels, such as Michelle Hoover, author of The Quickening, and Laura Dietz, author of In The Tenth House. He also represents (and likes) "crossover" literary suspense and novels that inform genre with a serious, literary sensibility: examples include the work of the PEN/Faulkner award-winner Sabina Murray, most recently author of Tales of the New World, the work of George Harrar, author of The Spinning Man, the work of Dan S. Pope, author of In The Cherry Tree, and Jedediah Berry, winner of the Crawford Award for The Manual of Detection. Children's authors he represents include Alisa Libby and S. S. Taylor (who writes excellent mysteries as well for adults).
A frequent speaker, Harmsworth has been a featured panelist or speaker at, among others, the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, the national conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Breadloaf Writer's Conference, the Wesleyan Writer's Conference, Bouchercon, the Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is an advisor to organizations including Grub Street, the Boston Book Festival, and the Southern New Hampshire MFA Program, a former lecturer at the Boston University Publishing Program (now closed), and the former Treasurer of PEN/New England.
Harmsworth is always interested in nonfiction books filled with rich ideas or based on strong narrative stories. He is looking hard for literary food writing, for interesting science writing, for serious new writing on religion and spirituality, and for quirky narrative stories and biographies. As far as fiction goes, he is first and foremost searching for beautifully written prose, rich, descriptive writing and good characters. He does not represent any poetry.
