Publishers Weekly is reporting that Michael Stearns, Chris Richman, and Danielle Chiotti have set up a new agency, to be called Upstart Crow Literary (the web site isn’t yet available). The three agents are bringing along all of their clients.
Stearns and Richman will focus on children’s book authors; Chiotti will handle a range of fiction and nonfiction authors (focusing on women’s fiction, women’s interest nonfiction, and YA).
Stearns was an editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books before moving over to the agent side. He was most recently with Firebrand Literary, but decided to form his own agency because he and Firebrand founder Nadia Cornier “”had different ideas about how the ideal literary agency should be run.” Stearns, he said, wanted to create “a more author-focused, editorially minded, artisanal sort of agency, and so I set up my own shop.”