Mariah Stovall is a lterary agent with Trellis Literary.
Mariah joined Trellis Literary Management after agenting at Howland Literary and Writers House. Prior to that, she worked on the other side of things, at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and at Gallery Books.
She is actively seeking writers with strong voices and intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives. She works on adult literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, essay collections and memoir. She’s most passionate about music, mental health/illness, Black America, linguistics, histories of objects and ideas, pop science, and deep dives into subcultures and social movements, but great writing can get her interested in any topic.
Mariah hopes to learn something from everything she reads, whether that’s a new possibility for how to structure a novel or a piece of history she wasn’t taught in school. She gravitates toward outsider characters and weird, dark, challenging stories that are obsessive in content and craft. She has a hands-on, collaborative approach to editing, and loves helping writers shape their projects for publication. She is especially passionate about advocating for authors from underrepresented and marginalized and minoritized groups (including writers without MFAs).
Mariah is a graduate of Pitzer College, of the Claremont Colleges, where she studied English and World Literature with a minor in Linguistics. She has written fiction and nonfiction for Ninth Letter, Hobart, Joyland, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Catapult, The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub and more, and volunteered with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Mariah’s favorite non-client authors: Hanif Abdurraqib, Percival Everett, Leslie Jamison, Han Kang, Angie Kim, Raven Leilani, Valeria Luiselli, Ottessa Moshfegh, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Helen Oyeyemi, Mary Roach and Sanjena Sathian.