Demystifying the Memoir Query: A Brief Interview with My Literary Agent

By Paul Rousseau

Paul Rousseau

The query for my first book, Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir—about the time my best friend unintentionally shot me in the head through two walls in our on-campus apartment, one month before college graduation—was picked out of the “slush pile” by my agent Michele Mortimer of Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents. Knowing of the misconceptions and anxieties that often surround the querying and “finding an agent” step in memoir publication, I thought it would b...