We have big news …
Amanda Luedeke is joining MacGregor Literary as an agent. This is a big step for us, and we're very excited.
Amanda is a 2006 graduate of Taylor University’s Professional Writing program, headed by Dennis E. Hensley. She's got a long background in books and words, and this is a step she's been moving toward for the past year.
Since her college graduation, Amanda has made her living as a full-time writer, freelancing for newspapers and marketing agencies as well as operating her own writing business. Her current full-time job is with a marketing group in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she writes and assists in the marketing strategy for clients such as Vera Bradley, Peg Perego and Baekgaard. Like both Chip and Sandra, Amanda understands what it takes to make a living as a writer.
Amanda came on board with us a year ago as Chip’s assistant, and she's been going through the slush pile, helping out with research, and taking care of other odds and ends. We’ve really enjoyed her help here, but now that she’s gotten the hang of things, we’re excited to move her on to the next step – so she's becoming a literary agent.
Amanda will be working with childrens, YA, speculative, and post-college-aged fiction and nonfiction. This is great for us, because we currently don’t have "specialists" in these areas. Bringing Amanda on will help expand our knowledge of the industry and allow us to take on more authors with differing interests. She's just getting started, and will focus her time on a handful of clients as she gets her feet wet. Amanda will also be helping us with our foreign deals — an area we've been wanting to expand in order to help authors maximize their income potential.
She's going to be attending the ACFW conference with us in Indianapolis this summer, so if you write children's books (for either CBA or the general market), YA books (ditto), speculative fiction, or books aimed specifically at the twenty-something market, we're going to be open to seeing proposals. Amanda may be contacted at amanda (at) MacGregor Literary (dot) com. Please join me in welcoming Amanda to our team!