On behalf of all of us here at KT Literary, I’m so thrilled to welcome three new members to our team!
Kelly Van Sant joins us as Contracts Manager, with a list of existing clients and a strong interest in adding more. With over a decade of experience in the publishing industry, Kelly cut her teeth in New York working at esteemed literary agencies before relocating to Minnesota, where she spent years as a contracts manager for various publishers. She uses her platform as a teaching artist at the Loft Literary Center and as the co-host of the Pub Crawl podcast to empower writers to become informed and take creative control over their work and the trajectory of their careers. Kelly’s own career came full circle when she realized that her true passion was advocating on behalf of authors.
Jas Perry and Chelsea Hensley both join us as Associate Agents, bringing their wide expertise garnered in multiple publishing internships and related experience to our new mentorship program.
Jas Perry is a Manhattan-based freelance editor who attended New York University in Florence and London before graduating with a degree in English from CUNY Hunter College. She was awarded the We Need Diverse Books Internship Grant and held several editorial intern positions with Levine Querido and Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books, where she assisted on titles by Kelly Yang, Varian Johnson, Daniel José Older, Eric Gansworth, A.S. King, Francisco X Stork, and Cherie Priest, among others. Jas is Black American/Japanese and interested in representing a diverse range of strong voices — especially by disabled and/or QTPOC creators. She particularly enjoys dark contemporary fiction, offbeat humor, (Alondra Nelson-defined) Afrofuturism, and bold SFF that makes her think.
Before joining kt literary, Chelsea Hensley was a freelance editor and perpetual publishing intern. In 2018 she mentored in Pitch Wars and most recently was an editorial intern at Page Street Publishing where she assisted on titles from Addie Thorley and Breanna Shields. She has a BA in English from the University of Missouri and lives and works as a bookseller in St. Louis, MO. She likes fresh and imaginative SFF, dark and twisty mysteries/thrillers, and whipsmart protagonists. She is interested in working with authors belonging to groups traditionally underrepresented in publishing, especially Black authors. When she isn’t working, she can be found playing Dungeons & Dragons, watching The Golden Girls, or playing with her dog.
We’re updating our Submissions guidelines shortly for how you can best submit to Kelly, Jas, and Chelsea. Stay tuned!
