Meet Our Agents

It's here! Our week long of interviews from our agents! As you can guess, we at the MiGs are huge fans of these four brilliant agents. And we figured you would love to hear what they have to say about books, publishing and agenting.

Please welcome our agents: Andrea Cascardi of the Transatlantic Literary Agency, Ginger Knowlton of the Curtis Brown Agency, Marie Lamba of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency, and Jeff Ourvan of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency, LLC.

Here's the line-up:

Tuesday- Susan Laidlaw's agent: Andrea Cascardi of the Transatlantic Literary Agency

Andrea Cascardi has more than twenty years experience in book publishing. Beginning as an editorial assistant at Houghton Mifflin, she moved up the ranks at several major New York Publishing houses (including Scholastic, Crown/Random House and Hyperion) to become Assistant Publishing Director for Knopf and Crown Books for Young Readers before joining TLA. Among the award-winning authors and celebrities whose children’s books she edited are Faith Ringgold, Karen Hesse, Julia Alvarez, Raffi, Tim Burton, and Wendy Wasserstein. She also wrote two books for parents about choosing the best books, audio, and video for children, and reviewed children’s book for the Boston Parents’ Paper. Andrea has also taught children’s books publishing for master’s degree-level students at Pace University.


Wednesday- Debbie's agent: Ginger Knowlton of the Curtis Brown Agency

Ginger Knowlton represents authors and illustrators of children's books in all genres, as well as a few adult book authors. Her list includes Newbery Medalists, Newbery Honor and Printz Honor winners, Edgar and Lambda winners, a Sibert and Orbis Pictus winner, New York Times bestsellers, and a host of other delightful and talented clients. Ginger started working at Curtis Brown as an assistant to Marilyn Marlow, one of the first literary agents to specialize in children's books in the 1960s. Working for Marilyn was a rite of passage, affectionately referred to as Curtis Brown’s "Boot Camp." Before joining the company, Ginger worked in the field of early childhood education in Sacramento and Mendocino, California. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Authors' Representatives and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Library in her hometown in Westchester County.

Thursday- Carmella's agent: Marie Lamba of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency

Marie Lamba joined JDLA as an Associate Agent in 2011. She is the author of the young adult novel WHAT I MEANT . . . (Random House), and her work appears in the short story anthology LIAR LIAR (Mendacity Press) and the anthology CALL ME OKAASAN: ADVENTURES IN MULTICULTURAL MOTHERING (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing). Marie's articles appear in more than 100 publications, including national magazines such as Writer's Digest, Garden Design, and RWR. She has worked as an editor, an award-winning public relations writer, and a book publicist, has taught classes on novel writing and author promotion, and is a member of Romance Writers of America and The Liars Club.

Friday- Christina's agent: Jeff Ourvan of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency, LLC.

Jeff Ourvan, an attorney, published author and former editor, is a literary agent with the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. His interests are varied: he represents non-fiction works, especially memoirs, histories, biographies, international current events and sports. He also represents fiction works, particularly in the young adult, thriller and international fiction categories. Prior to his career as a literary agent, Jeff was a litigator for many years at two large New York-based corporate law firms; a communications consultant working in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo; and an editor of Living Buddhism magazine. One of Jeff’s upcoming works, How To Coach Youth Baseball So Every Kid Wins, will be distributed by Norton in Spring 2012. Jeff is married to the novelist Jessica Jiji.