LUCY CLELAND joined Kneerim & Williams in 2013, where she has worked with new and established authors on projects ranging from groundbreaking “big idea” nonfiction to literary fiction and memoir. A Southern transplant to Boston, Lucy graduated from Wellesley College where she studied English and studio art. She’s always seeking compelling nonfiction, particularly unconventional social and cultural history, biographies of women, true crime, and narrative nonfiction or memoir with a contemporary angle. In fiction, she’s looking for novels with powerful emotional engines that suck the reader in, persuasive voices, and plots with a dark edge. Lucy also represents YA and loves bold, immersive reads with protagonists who push boundaries and grapple with tough questions, whether they do it in our world or another. Across genres, Lucy is drawn to the lives of creatives and rebels, and questions about identity and inheritance. She’s dying to find a crime series with a black female lead, a sci-fi YA that deals with real environmental issues, a contemporary YA about male friends navigating racial divides in the rural south, and a group biography that pulls you into an amazing cultural moment. Here are some books she might talk your ear off about: In the Woods by Tana French; The Return by Hisham Matar; Personal History by Katherine Graham; Bone Gap by Laura Ruby; and The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis.