Welcome to Rosalie Siegel International Literary Agent, Inc.
Prior to founding her independent literary agency in 1977, Rosalie Siegel began her career as an agent in the late sixties representing French authors on behalf of Editions Robert Laffont in Paris.
The agency also represents Ann Rinaldi, who is a major historical novelist of young adult fiction. Harcourt has sold over one million copies of her titles. In addition, she has been published by Scholastic, including their Dear America series, Hyperion's Jump at the Sun, Simon & Schuster and by HarperCollins.
Siegel serves as American and Canadian sub-agent for Mary Kling's La Nouvelle Agence in Paris, through whom she represents Nancy Huston, winner of the 2006 Prix Femina award for FAULT LINES (McArthur & Co, Toronto, October, 2007). Grove Atlantic published the novel in the U.S. in October 2008.
With representatives in all translation markets, Ms. Siegel has been responsible for selling translating rights in the U.S. during the entire course of her career. Until 1997 she served as a major scout vetting the American market on behalf of European houses. On behalf of La Nouvelle Agence she is currently representing Mathieu Belizi's major Fall 2008 novel about the Algerian struggle for independence published by Albin Michel in Paris.
Through her efforts, and those of Maria Strarz Kanska's Graal agency in Warsaw, William Wharton became the number one bestselling American author in Poland during the 1990's and beyond after communism fell. His earlier works were reissued while new works have been brought to market in Polish translation.
One of the agency's most noteworthy backlist titles is BANKER TO THE POOR, the autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, the economist who created the concept of micro-credit, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The Public Affairs trade paperback edition is selling steadily and has been widely taken for course adoption.
You will find more information about our authors in the Recent Titles and Backlist sections of our website.
NEW FOR 2010
Dana Johnson: ELSEWHERE, CALIFORNIA.
Flannery O'Connor Award winner for her collection, Break Any Woman Down, (Anchor) Dana Johnson's beautifully crafted first novel, Elsewhere, California, explores the various lives and languages of Avery Arlington, an African-American woman with a collage-like, shifting identity, creating a powerful American story in which her protagonist journeys from her girlhood home in urban South Los Angeles, out to the suburbs, down to the American South and ultimately up into the Hollywood Hills.
Sold to Jack Shoemaker at Counterpoint for world English language rights, with Dan Smetanka editing.
Rosalie Siegel for Translation and Film Rights.
Winter 2012 Publication.
Reverend Jen: ELF GIRL.
Former sex columnist, artist, and elf eared open mike host Rev Jen (Live Nude Elf/Soft Skull) shares her hilarious and bizarre story of life in Manhattan's Lower East Side arts scene in which there is never a dull or unoriginal episode.. A portrait of the down town artist at work in the new century.
Sold to Jeremie Ruby-Straus at the Gallery imprint of Simon & Schuster.
World English, Simon & Schuster. Rosalie Siegel. for Translation and Film.
Winter 2011
Starred PW Review for KAPITOIL by Teddy Wayne.
KAPITOIL Teddy Wayne. Harper Perennial, $13.99 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-187321-8
Magazine writer Wayne's strong and heartfelt debut novel, set in New York City in the months leading up to the millennium, follows Karim Issar as he leaves his home and family in Qatar for a programming job at a Wall Street firm preparing for the Y2K bug. On the side, the very socially maladapted programming genius creates Kapitoil, a morally troubling computer program that allows his company to make a killing by modeling oil futures based on political instability. Meanwhile, a romance simmers with Rebecca, Karim's colleague and his guide to American culture. Ultimately, Karim must make a choice about his and his family's financial security and Kapitoil's potential for (perhaps) doing good in the world. Wayne zips through a minefield of potential clichés and comes out unscathed, striking a balance of humor and keen insight that propels the story through Karim's education about the West's ethics and its capitalism, while in the background the World Trade Center looms. It's a slick first novel that beautifully captures a time that, in retrospect, seems tragically naïve. (Apr.)
www.TeddyWayne.com
We are adding reviews and more up to the minute information about 2010 titles below:
TEDDY WAYNE: KAPITOIL
Harper Perennial, April 2010. Harper has North American rights only. Louise Greenberg, London handles UK and Commonwealth. R.S. controls all other translation rights.
Lynn Pleshette Agency is co-agenting for film. KAPITOIL has been sold to Duckworth in the U.K. and to Editions Liana Levi in France.
Debut Novel
In December 2009, Teddy Wayne was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts and is at work on his second novel. Wayne has fashioned a page-turning first novel with an appealing protagonist, a 26 year old Muslim computer programmer and math whiz brought to NYC from Quatar in the fall of 1999 to work in the corporate headquarters of a hedge fund. He soon invents an ingenious quants program that can predict oil futures, which reaps record profits for the company. Homesick and unsophisticated, but with a strong moral core, he is taken under the wing of the charismatic CEO of his firm, and develops an increasingly tender friendship with Rebecca, a colleague who understands him better than he may understand himself. As Karim's values shift, he confronts a significant choice concering his program, Kapitoil, that will determine his and the company's future. Teddy Wayne is a 30 year old Harvard graduate who received an MFA from Washington University. He has developed a strong following for his many humor pieces to be found on McSweeney'sonline.and for Op-Ed essays published in the N Y Times. To learn more about Teddy Wayne's published pieces, visit his website at: TeddyWayne.com
Starred PW Review for KAPITOIL by Teddy Wayne.
KAPITOIL Teddy Wayne. Harper Perennial, $13.99 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-187321-8
Magazine writer Wayne's strong and heartfelt debut novel, set in New York City in the months leading up to the millennium, follows Karim Issar as he leaves his home and family in Qatar for a programming job at a Wall Street firm preparing for the Y2K bug. On the side, the very socially maladapted programming genius creates Kapitoil, a morally troubling computer program that allows his company to make a killing by modeling oil futures based on political instability. Meanwhile, a romance simmers with Rebecca, Karim's colleague and his guide to American culture. Ultimately, Karim must make a choice about his and his family's financial security and Kapitoil's potential for (perhaps) doing good in the world. Wayne zips through a minefield of potential clichés and comes out unscathed, striking a balance of humor and keen insight that propels the story through Karim's education about the West's ethics and its capitalism, while in the background the World Trade Center looms. It's a slick first novel that beautifully captures a time that, in retrospect, seems tragically naïve. (Apr.)
www.TeddyWayne.com
MARLENA DE BLASI: AMANDINE
Ballantine, May 2010.
First Novel/Historical fiction
This first novel is a departure for the author of four memoirs about life in her beloved Italy. DeBlasi relates the story of an orphaned girl named Amandine growing up in World War II era France. Her aristocratic Polish grandmother entrusts her in infancy to a convent on the outskirts of Montpellier, telling her daughter that her baby had died shortly after birth. The child will long to know and comfort her mother. Her mother will only learn her daughter is still alive at the outbreak of the war. Neither knows how to find each other as Europe heads into conflagration.
PW Lead Fiction Review for AMANDINE
AMANDINE Marlena de Blasi. Ballantine, $25 (368p) ISBN 978-0-345-50734-1
De Blasi, a bestselling memoirist (A Thousand Days in Venice) and food-writer, makes a solid fiction debut with this poignant tale of an orphan growing up in Europe as it descends into WWII. Amandine Gilberte Noiret de Crecy, an illegitimate child born into Polish royalty and ditched at five, months by her grandmother at a convent in Montpellier, grows up surrounded by a loving governess, Solange Jouffroi, and adoring nuns and priests. Yet the bitter abbess, Mother Paul, who runs the convent, inexplicably loathes her. Aware of this hatred and longing to find her birth mother, Amandine becomes a serious child who believes there is something wrong with her. After a rash of scarlet fever breaks out at the convent, Solange decides to take Amandine to live with her family, and not long after they leave the convent grounds, they are confronted with the horror the war has brought to France, which has especially dire consequences for Solange. In de Blasi's tale of unexpected turns taken during the search for understanding and identity, she balances heartbreak, loneliness, fear, and hope with aplomb. (May)
PANTHEA REID: TILLIE OLSEN; One Woman, Many Riddles
Rutgers University Press, January 2010.
Tillie Olsen died on January 1, 2007. While her literary output was small, all her major work remains in print. She is one of America's most revered women writers, especially for TELL ME A RIDDLE and her short story, I STAND HERE IRONING. Olsen was prominent as an activist in California and member of the Communist Party prior to WW II. Reid's biography will focus on both the author and her times, and will explode the many myths that Olsen created about her life, setting the record straight. Panthea Reid taught English literature at LSU and is the author of ART AND AFFECTION: A Live of Virginia Woolf. Oxford, 1996, among other publications.
Starred PW Review For Tillie Olsen, One Woman, Many Riddles
Attempting to solve "the riddle" of Tillie Lerner Olsen, literary scholar Reid paints a warts-and-all portrait of the woman who became an iconic feminist and admired writer. The author of the celebrated stories "I Stand Here Ironing" and "Tell Me a Riddle" was, according to Reid, an imperious narcissist who used her charisma to cover her inadequacies. But Reid also presents Olsen's life as a metaphor for the 20th century, encompassing Communist activism, WWII patriotism, early feminism, and civil rights activism. Olsen (1912-2007), born in Omaha, Neb., to poor Russian Jewish immigrants, displayed early on a magnetic personality, verbal prowess, and what would become a lifelong habit of lying. A Communist during the 1930s, Olsen was thrust into the limelight after being jailed during a San Francisco dockworkers' strike. Putting the Party before personal loyalties, she neglected her daughter, was unfaithful to her husband, and took an advance from Random House without delivering a novel. A second marriage to fellow Communist Jack Olsen was happier, but sputtered as she finally tried to publish a book in 1974. Reid, author of biographies of Faulkner and Woolf, paints a deftly engrossing, nuanced, and meticulously researched portrait of a perplexing, larger-than-life woman. Photos. (Jan.)
www.PantheaReid.com
ANN RINALDI: THE FAMILY GREENE
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2010
Young Adult Fiction
Cornelia Greene is fed up with gossip about her mother. Caty Littlefield Greene was once a beautiful young bride who lifted the troops’ spirits at Valley Forge, but Cornelia knows that rumors of Caty’s past indiscretions hurt Nathanael Greene, Cornelia’s adored father. Yet Caty claims that she’s just a flirt, and that flirting is a female necessity—a woman’s only means of power. But Cornelia’s concern with her mother’s reputation fades to the background when she learns that Nathanael Greene may not even be her father. As she searches for the truth, she makes unexpected discoveries that lead her to a new understanding of love and family.
ANN RINALDI: THE LAST FULL MEASURE
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, November 2010
Young Adult Fiction
As Confederate and Union soldiers take over their town, the local residents can do little more than hunker down in their homes while canon and gunfire explode around them. But the battles are not only fought between soldiers. At home, fourteen-year-old Tacy and her disabled brother lock horns as David struggles with his desire to go to war. He has strong principles, and it tortures him to allow others to fight while he does nothing. In the aftermath of this great and terrible battle, in which so many soldiers sacrifice their lives for their beliefs, David gives his last full measure…and leaves Tacy struggling to make sense out of it all.
CURRENT NEWS
JONATHAN AMES: THE DOUBLE LIFE IS TWICE AS GOOD
Scribner, July 2009.
Collection of both Non-fiction and Fiction
This collection of essays and fiction includes Jonathan's novella BORED TO DEATH, originally published in McSweeney's in the Fall of 2007, which serves as the basis for the HBO comedy series of the same name. The show features a young man who, on a whim, decides to become a detective one day when he is at loose ends, and becomes embroiled in a series of hilarious episodes around NYC as he searches for a NYU co-ed gone missing. In 2009 Jonathan Ames had two film projects in production in New York based on his fiction: the aforementioned series starring Jason Schwartzman as the detective for the HBO television series; and the second project is the long awaited film based on THE EXTRA MAN which features Kevin Kline, Katie Holmes, Paul Dano and John C. Reilly. Berman and Pulcini are directing, Anthony Bregman's Likely Story and Stephanie Davis' 3 Arts will produce. Visit the Daily Beast to read Jonathan's interview about having two films in production simultaneously in the Big Apple. The film aired at Sundance in January 2010 and received a top review in Variety on January 27, 2010.
www.JonathanAmes.com