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LARISSA MELO PIENKOWSKI

LITERARY AGENT

Larissa Melo Pienkowski began her publishing career working for a handful of publishers before becoming a literary agent at Jill Grinberg Literary Management in 2020. She joined Azantian Literary Agency in 2025. As the queer, mixed-race daughter of Brazilian and Polish immigrants, she is passionate about championing BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, international, and other historically underrepresented authors across fiction and nonfiction in most age groups. Larissa is a New England transplant living in Philadelphia with her wife and Siberian husky, Olaf, and when she doesn't have her nose in a book, she can usually be found cooking, baking, playing volleyball, doing Pilates, or making pottery. 

Larissa grew up outside of Boston and attended Simmons College, where she earned her degree in Social Work and Sociology, performed poetry competitively and recreationally, and edited a number of literary magazines. Larissa later went on to receive her MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College, where she worked with Beacon Press and Barefoot Books before becoming the associate publisher of Dottir Press. She joined Jill Grinberg Literary Management as an agent in 2020 and later went on to join Azantian in 2025, where she now represents a wide range of adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction. She believes books are a critical tool in the ongoing fight for justice and liberation, and she's especially excited to bring books into the world that challenge the status quo and make people feel seen. Larissa speaks Portuguese and Spanish, and loves trying new hobbies almost as much as she loves books.


WISHLIST 

Across the board, Larissa gravitates to character-driven books, genre subversion, and what some editors have called “literary plus,” meaning fiction that pays particular attention to line-level craft but is driven by genre elements. She’s compelled by an original, well-developed voice and nuanced characters whose propulsive, clearly defined desires and motivations bring them to life. And while the list below is long, it's not exhaustive! She's always excited to fall in love with something new and unexpected. 


ADULT FICTION

In adult fiction, she’s especially looking for:

  • stories of chosen families that trace the evolution of relationship dynamics over the course of decades (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, The Ensemble by Aja Gabel)

  • fresh, compelling twists on heists, cons, and scams (Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li)

  • cozy murder mysteries, capers, and thrillers about spies, assassins, and other clandestine characters (Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto)

  • BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ protagonists reckoning with entry into primarily white, cis, heterosexual spaces, especially art spaces (Your Love Is Not Good by Johanna Hedva, Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou)

  • non-Western, anti-colonial, grounded fantasy (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang)

  • feminist pursuits of revenge and justice (You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrique)

  • high-heat contemporary and historical romance and rom-coms with underrepresented characters and premises (Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola).

ADULT NONFICTION

In adult nonfiction, she’s seeking: 

  • voicey, engaging narrative nonfiction that blends memoir with beautifully crafted investigative journalism (How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler, The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio); 

  • microhistories that can be described as “a love letter to __” or be comped to an Ologies podcast episode (Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui, Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson); and 

  • essay collections that chronicle contemporary life through the lens of pop culture, justice, decolonization, and liberation, in the vein of Hanif Abdurraqib and Rebecca Solnit.

MIDDLE GRADE

While she’s taking on middle-grade and YA very selectively at the moment, she loves middle-grade mystery adventures with a ragtag group of friends at its core (The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart) and stories that handle heavier topics in a moving way (The Line Tender by Kate Allen).


YOUNG ADULT

Her tastes in YA are similar to above but can also skew a little darker. She’s always on the lookout for queer, feminist, and anti-colonial revenge/coming of rage/”good for her/them” books; original twists on dark academia; “unlikeable” protagonists; high-stakes heists, cons, and scams; and LGBTQIA+ protagonists in historical YA.


ANTI-MSWL

Across the board, she’s not a good fit for: 

  • stories centered around identity written by authors who don’t share that identity 

  • apocalyptic, technological sci-fi, or dystopian novels 

  • short stories/novellas, chapter books, or novels-in-verse

  • Christian or “clean” romance 

  • Tolkien-esque high fantasy

  • books with a 110K+ word count

  • stories that include animal cruelty or gratuitous, visceral descriptions of hate crimes, sexual assault, or domestic violence

  • true crime books or books featuring military, police, or professional detectives (amateur sleuths and spies are great, though!)

  • anything having to do with Nazis or Zionists

  • WWII or Civil War historical fiction, unless written from a marginalized perspective we haven’t heard from before

  • fatphobia

  • nonfiction centered on business, economics, or capital-P politics

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