All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell

Born to Lebanese immigrants in the Midwest, she grew up straddling cultures and languages and still feels like a third culture kid. Prior to joining Ayesha Pande Literary in 2015, Serene worked at Laura Gross Literary Agency in Boston. She is a devoted New Yorker but still manages to spend a great deal of time in Rhode Island.

She grew up between New Delhi and Alexandria, VA, graduated from Brown University and holds a diploma in French language and literature from the Sorbonne. She is on the lookout for character-driven fiction or non-fiction works that reflect an engagement with the world around us and graphic novels for all ages. Her graphic novel list includes Rebecca Hall and Hugo Martinez’ Wake: The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts, Rhea Ewing’s Fine: A Comic About Gender, Gillian Goerz’s two Shirley and Jamila books and Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeik as well as new and forthcoming works by Gillian Goerz, Steenz, Salman Toor, Fouad Mezher and Tessa Hulls. As an agent she represents Bridgett Davis, author of the acclaimed memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers Susan Abulhawa, bestselling author of Mornings in Jenin and Against the Loveless World Nawaaz Ahmed, author of the PEN-Faulkner finalist Radiant Fugitives Mai Al-Nakib, author of An Unlasting Home and Rachel Harper, author of The Other Mother. She has always been drawn to the thrill of discovering new writers and among the literary novelists whose careers she helped launch are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Samantha Hunt, Preeta Samarasan and Saleem Haddad. She is best known for having championed Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis after stumbling across it on a visit to Paris.

Formerly Editorial Director at Other Press, she has also worked as an editor at Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Vintage Books. Anjali Singh started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout.

All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell