HG Literary

Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts brings a decade’s worth of knowledge of different aspects of the publishing industry to her role as an agent at HG Literary. She began her career in the editorial department at MacAdam/Cage, an independent publisher based in San Francisco, where she worked on shepherding a diverse list of titles to publication, including literary debuts, important non-fiction, and translations. She subsequently worked for the Manhattan book scouting agency Sanford Greenburger Associates. As a literary scout, she reported on the American literary marketplace and evaluated manuscripts for foreign publishing houses.

She then moved to the Susan Golomb Literary Agency, where as Rights Director she handled translation and subsidiary rights for best-selling and award-winning authors such as Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Kushner, William T. Vollmann, as well as representing her own list of clients. She was then hired as an agent by Writers House, adding new clients to her list of fresh, vital, diverse fiction, non-fiction, and young adult authors. In 2017, Soumeya joined HG, where she is Rights Director and agent. Drawing on her experiences with agenting, editorial work, and foreign rights, she seeks to be a subsidiary rights advocate for the agency and to nurture long-lasting, collaborative relationships with her authors. She is a full member of the AAR, and serves on their Foreign Rights Committee. She also serves on the Center for Fiction’s First Fiction Fete and Opening Party committees. She is originally from the California Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and their cat.

In fiction, Soumeya is seeking literary and upmarket novels and collections, and also represents realistic young-adult and middle-grade. She likes books with vivid voices and compelling, well-developed story-telling, and is particularly interested in fiction that reflects on the post-colonial world and narratives by people of color. A lover of craft, she is drawn to observant writing that illuminates dynamic relationships between complex but sympathetic characters, intelligent experiments with form, and stories that enchant and transport the reader in inventive ways.

In non-fiction, she is primarily looking for idea-driven or voice-forward memoirs, personal essay collections, and approachable narrative non-fiction of all stripes: politics, current events; popular culture, especially anything that deals with subcultures (the more minute the better); unconventional business; popular science; adventure; psychology; and more. She also represents a select list of practical nonfiction in cooking, design, craft, gardening, travel and the outdoors, humor, health, and parenting.

Submission Guidelines:

Soumeya now exclusively accepts queries via Query Manager. Please send a query letter, synopsis, and the first fifty pages of the manuscript directly through the personal link https://QueryManager.com/SBR. If you had previously sent her a query by email within the last 6–8 weeks, please feel free to resubmit via the QueryManager link.