Emma Loy-Santelli was born and raised in upstate New York where her artistic family encouraged her love of reading and making up stories. She earned a BA in English and Ancient Studies from Mount Holyoke College and an MA in Children’s Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from the graduate program at Simmons College. She spent a year as an editorial intern at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, which granted her hands-on experience editing everything from picture books up to YA and cemented her passion for publishing. She worked as a freelance editor for the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency and has been a bookseller at several independent bookstores, including the Strand in Manhattan.

Emma enjoys arm-wrestling, singing, and devising ways to fit her huge book collection into her small bedroom.

What She’s Looking For:

Emma specializes in children’s literature, from picture books up through YA, but will also consider crossover projects and nonfiction or speculative fiction for adults. She is eager to get her hands on middle grade fantasy, science fiction, humor, horror, or any combination thereof. She is dying for a manuscript that either makes her laugh or gives her nightmares (or both…?). She likes young adult novels in which the protagonist’s journey does not involve romance, and is passionate about championing projects with ace-spectrum characters. She likes stories that are escapist and unabashedly strange. In nonfiction, she is seeking projects about science (especially regarding the natural world) and societal change, and across genres she loves works that break the gender binary and disrupt long-held assumptions. She is also seeking graphic novels of any genre, fiction or nonfiction.