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Mary Cummings

About Mary

If you are reading this you are probably a "book person," with passion for writing (and, perhaps, illustrating), reading and sharing children's books. You may have experienced - or dream of experiencing - the incredible joy of seeing something you wrote become a book that gets out into the world and into the hands of kids and teens. That describes me, too. 

Although the agency is located in California, I work from my home in Minnesota. For fourteen years I was Education Director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. At the Loft I curated an annual Festival of Children's Literature, and hired judges for the McKnight Award in Children's Literature from among the nation's top editors of children's books. On many occasions, I hired Betsy Amster to teach workshops at the Loft and, in 2008, joined the agency to bring contacts and expertise in children's lit. Many star-reviewed, inspiring books later, and more in the pipeline - I'm still having lots of fun! 

Houses I've sold book projects to include, among others: 

Little, Brown; Abrams; Knopf; Henry Holt; Imprint; Holiday House; Farrar, Straus Children's; Running Press Kids; Peter Pauper Press; Random House Children's; Viking; David Godine; Walker; and Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster. 

Query Instructions

For picture books, please embed the entire text in the body of your e-mail. 

For longer works, please embed the first three pages. 

Include a bit about your project (pitch language), plus some bio information as well as related writing or other experience. 

** NO ATTACHMENTS! They will be deleted without being read ** 
No telephone or snail-mail queries accepted. 

Please understand that owing to the number of queries I receive, I am able to respond only to those that may be a potential fit.