 ABOUT THE AGENT: Valentina Sainato (she/they) is an associate agent at JABberwocky assisting Eddie Schneider. She also handles all merchandise and third-party licensing proposals. They graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a B.A. in English and have lived in New York City ever since. Outside of her literary interests, Valentina is a dancer of many different styles, a video game lover, and a ~very~ amateur digital artist. Before joining JABberwocky, Valentina worked as an Events Manager with Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side, where they hosted a huge variety of author events, book clubs, children’s activities, and more. She has also interned at Foundry Literary + Media, Folio Literary Management, and the Feminist Press at CUNY. VALENTINA IS SEEKING: “Horror: Horror is my favorite genre to read, and I’m looking for lots of different flavors here. If it’s spooky, eerie, disorienting, thrilling, existential, or horror-lite, I want to read it. Blends with sci-fi/fantasy are also welcome, but it should still feel at home on the horror shelf! I love stories featuring monsters, witches, and demons, but I really want to see fresh takes on them with unexpected twists. A good ghost story or haunted house will always catch my attention; Carmen Maria Machado’s work is among my all-time favorites. Other elements I enjoy: body horror, cults or secret societies, natural phenomena like fungi and flora, and settings that make me feel claustrophobic.
While I tend to gravitate more to supernatural or suspenseful horror over serial killers, I do like self-aware homages to slasher and cult films like Stephen Graham Jones’ brilliant My Heart is a Chainsaw. Survival horror or horror with thriller elements are also categories that I like but don’t read as often. Horror media I love:
AND “Science fiction / speculative fiction: I’m more selective about science fiction and speculative fiction; I’m a big character reader and want stories with an emotional core that drives them. I was absolutely blown by Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark as well as Simon Jimenez’s The Vanished Birds; projects in those vein are what I’d love to work on. I also love narratives that play with time and/or space as part of the plot. Sci-fi books that deep-dive into spaceship mechanics or battle sequences generally are not for me. I also like reading more grounded contemporary books that have a speculative or off-beat twist such as Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks. Absurdity is also welcome but it has to mesh well with the voice, like in Hilary Mantel’s Temporary. Sci-fi / speculative media I love:
You can also find Valentina’s Manuscript Wishlist here. HOW TO SUBMIT: “Please visit my submissions page http://QueryManager.com/ValentinaSainato. I do not take queries over email or on the phone, so this is the best (and only) way to submit to me.” Attend a writers conference in 2025:
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