Mary Krienke

About the Agent

Mary Krienke represents literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, and select prescriptive and illustrated projects. She gravitates toward work that is fierce, sharp, nuanced, and uncompromising. In fiction, Mary is looking for inventive and strange, brave and honest stories with humor and heart. She especially loves fiction that employs genre elements—whether evocatively surreal, slightly askew, or supernatural—to speak about a world that is always in flux and difficult to perceive and render. In nonfiction, Mary responds to work that explores our experience of being in relation: to ourselves, to one another, to the material world, and to all we cannot see but strive to comprehend. In both fiction and nonfiction, work that investigates culture, identity, sexuality, disability, and mental health is especially welcome. Some of Mary’s clients include Kavita Bedford, Betsy Bonner, Emily Boring, Katherine Brabon, Stacy Austin Egan, Kristine S. Ervin, Kimberly Olson Fakih, Gina Fiore, Jon Lackman, Shelby Lorman, Vyshali Manivannan, Zack Pinson, Ashlee Piper, Rachel Pollak (estate), Betty Shamieh, Yana Tallon-Hicks, Sharon Sochil Washington, and Ellen O’Connell Whittet. She co-represents the Berenstain Bears franchise with Flip Brophy. Mary received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her other interests include film, television, art, and design, and she has a deep appreciation for dark chocolate.