Jessica Woollard has been a literary agent for over thirty years, working at Toby Eady Associates and The Marsh Agency before moving to David Higham Associates in 2016. She was the agent for Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk, and her clients include Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris, and Merlin Sheldrake.
How has the role of literary agent changed during your career?
Things used to be slower. We’d submit printed manuscripts by post. My mentor, Toby Eady, famously used to deliver his submissions by hand, walking the manuscripts round New York. Editors had offices, and they were filled with piles of paper. We send a lot of material around the world quickly now and readers have a lot of reading matter pushed at them in many different ways—but it still takes the same amount of time for us all to read a book.
What do you enjoy most about being a literary agent?
I love working with my clients, discussing, honing and editing their ideas with them until they fizz and sing and are ready to take on the world. I like working with a clever team that has been protecting and promoting the work of writers since 1935, and I like holding a new book in my hands, knowing the huge amount of work that has gone into making it beautiful, making sure each word sits in the right place, is spelt right, in a great font, with endpapers that work with the cover. . . I could go on!
What is it about narrative non-fiction, in particular nature and landscape writing, that appeals to you?
The only thing that matches being out in the landscape myself is reading someone good describe it to me. People who are awake and alive to what is going on around them in the world, whether it be through the prism of nature or science or literature or their own life, tend to write really good books. Exciting writers bring lots of layers into their work, even if their focus is ostensibly the landscape around them or the fungi beneath our feet. Benjamin Myers is a brilliant nature writer who writes novels. Rob Cowen’s Common Ground was nature writing like fiction.
How would you define nature/landscape narrative non-fiction?
Narrative non-fiction is good writing about things that aren’t made up. Robert Macfarlane and then Helen Macdonald ignited a genre because they are both brilliant and chose to write initially about what they love. Landscape, nature and how we relate—or don’t relate—to it are central questions to our existence. Land and how we value it, who owns it, and who gets to go on it are concepts that couldn’t be more important right now. Nick Hayes is writing a lyrical, passionate book that brings fresh energy to the emerging conversation about colonialism in England. Macfarlane’s Is A River Alive?, his most personal and political to date, and probably the biggest publishing event of 2025, holds at its heart a transformative idea that asks you to not only reimagine rivers but also life itself.
Is this a genre publishers are currently excited about?
Yes, books classed as nature writing are selling well. I think the genre will become more overtly political, as we grapple with how to respond to the grim changes going on around us. We need more diverse voices. Jade Cuttle is someone to watch out for. Her Silthood is forthcoming.
How important are prizes, like the Wainwright Prize, to nature/landscape narrative non-fiction?
Prizes always help in a crowded market. They are particularly useful for foreign editors working out what to buy.
What common mistakes do authors make in the nature/landscape narrative non-fiction submissions you receive?
There is a lot of derivative work and the memoir/nature writing cross over is a crowded space. Hone that distinctive voice and believe that you have an important story to share.
Which areas of nature/landscape writing that haven’t yet been explored would you like to see?
The diversity of peoples that make up this country is still not represented in its writing about place and nature. I’m also interested in what might happen creatively if we untether ourselves from the belief that we, as humans, sit at the top of a great pyramid of being and are separate from the environment we live in.
What other genres interest you?
I have long worked with international literary fiction, Tan Twan Eng, Hitomi Kanehara, and Taichi Yamada whose novel Strangerswas adapted for film last year as All of Us Strangers, Santanu Bhattacharya whose much awaited second, Deviants, is forthcoming from Fig Tree. I love working with authors whose specialisms help us see the world in different and important ways, Lucy Jones’s Matrescence, historians like Jon Kennedy, scientists like Merlin Sheldrake, activists like Jay Griffiths.
Jessica Woollard’s Top Tip
Voice is really important. Think about the way you express yourself on the page. That is what is key for the reader. Write about the places that sing for you but think big, crow bar that idea open and see where you get to.
Further Information
https://davidhigham.co.uk/submissions/