Nicola Chang
I joined DHA in 2020 and I represent prize-winning 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 taking on new and emerging writers across genres and I am also open to hearing from mid-career and established 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 as it is felt. An original voice is what I respond to first and foremost. Writers who are unlike others and who are challenging the idea of what a literary novel—and sentence—is and can do really excite me. I also love propulsive character-driven novels with intricate plots, unforgettable set pieces and dazzling dialogue. Some examples include Anna Burns, Gwendolyn Riley, Rachel Cusk, Katie Kitamura, Claire Keegan, Elif Batuman, Elena Ferrante, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Franzen. Close to Home by Michael Magee is a favourite recent debut. From experiments in form that defy easy definition, vernacular-inflected realism to the tragicomic, the weird and ethereal, I am drawn to emotional complexity and compelling, transformative storytelling that contends with the darkness as well as the light.
In non-fiction I am drawn to narrative-driven, persuasive perspectives, a unique, fearless voice and the interplay between the personal and the political. I am keen to work with early career scholars and researchers who are within or adjacent to the academy. I would also be excited to hear from writers who are thinking deeply, universally and urgently about the lives of others, society and the world and such subjects as the arts, food, family, language, creativity, sport, the body, work, travel and music. If they can do this provocatively and humorously, then all the better.
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.
Precise, perspicacious novels that examine and play with selfhood and the nature of identity
Novel approaches to love stories (think A Room with a View, Giovanni’s Room and Happy All the Time) and the dynamics between siblings, parents and children (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, all of Elizabeth Strout’s work)
Fiction set in decades gone by; stories that unspool over generations; literary thrillers; fiction about friends (The Friend by Sigrid Nunez!)
Writing with a global, transnational sensibility; places and characters not often represented in literature; stories concerning community and society
Select short story collections
New generation and established critics and thinkers who want to write books
Cookbooks—beautiful, timeless texts and recipes that are returned to again and again; food writing—what we do and don’t think about when we are in the kitchen, around the dining table, on the sofa and eating out
Precise, perspicacious novels that examine and play with selfhood and the nature of identity
Novel approaches to love stories (think A Room with a View, Giovanni’s Room and Happy All the Time) and the dynamics between siblings, parents and children (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, all of Elizabeth Strout’s work)
Fiction set in decades gone by; stories that unspool over generations; literary thrillers; fiction about friends (The Friend by Sigrid Nunez!)
Writing with a global, transnational sensibility; places and characters not often represented in literature; stories concerning community and society
Select short story collections
New generation and established critics and thinkers who want to write books
Cookbooks—beautiful, timeless texts and recipes that are returned to again and again; food writing—what we do and don’t think about when we are in the kitchen, around the dining table, on the sofa and eating out
