I joined DHA in 2020 and I represent writers of literary and general fiction, non-fiction and poets. My authors include Sara Ahmed, Raymond Antrobus, Jacqueline Crooks, Emma Glass, Leone Ross, Saba Sams and Kae Tempest. I am a recipient of London Book Fair’s Trailblazer Award, the Zev Birger Jerusalem Fellowship and a Bookseller Rising Star.

My authors have won or been nominated for the BBC National Short Story Award, Booker Prize, Costa Book Awards (now Nero), Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, Edge Hill Prize, Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, Forward Prize, Goldsmiths Prize, Granta Best of Young British Novelists, Jhalak Prize, Orwell Prize, Sunday Times Short Story Award, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Ted Hughes Award, T. S. Eliot Prize, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, White Review Poet’s Prize, White Review Short Story Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction, Writers’ Prize (formerly Rathbones Folio) and many more besides.

I am actively building my list and I am very much on the look out for new fiction, select non-fiction and poetry. I am also open to hearing from established and mid-career authors who are seeking a new approach to their work.

For me, the best writers are those who are trying to understand life and society and get at the truth of experience. In fiction, I am interested in writing that breaks new ground, that is original and unlike anything else but I also love character-driven novels with intricate, intimate scenes, elaborate set pieces and dazzling dialogue. I am obsessed with voice—supple, stylish prose—, psychological realism, uncanny, ethereal worlds, and bold work that challenges our idea of what a literary novel—and sentence—is and can do. Good examples of these are Anna Burns, Gwendolyn Riley, Rachel Cusk, Katie Kitamura, Claire Keegan, Elena Ferrante, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Franzen. I was recently impressed by the debuts Assembly by Natasha Brown and Close to Home by Michael Magee. From experiments in form that defy easy definition, vernacular-inflected realism to the tragicomic or the speculative, I am looking for writing of lasting literary value and persuasive, compelling storytelling that scales the emotional and intellectual contours of language and narrative.

In non-fiction, I favour narrative-driven work, a unique, fearless voice and the interplay between the personal and the political. I am keen to work with early career academics or thinkers who are academy-adjacent whose priority is for their ideas and research to transcend a purely academic context and reach a wider, intelligent readership. I would be excited to hear from writers who are thinking deeply, universally and urgently about the lives of others, society and the world—inherent to this is the climate and the land—, and such subjects as art, food, family, film, language, creativity, sport, the body, travel and music. If they can do this provocatively and humorously, then all the better. I am very late to the party but Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Woman blew me away, I am fascinated by Annie Ernaux’s project and although deeply unfashionable, I enjoyed Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage and Experience by Martin Amis. I am particularly interested to hear from critics and journalists writing in this vein who would like to develop book writing as part of their publishing practice, whatever the genre.

If you would like me to consider your work, please submit to nicolasubmissions@davidhigham.co.uk. Please note I don’t consider poetry collections unless the poet has already been substantially published.