Conville & Walsh relaunches as 'C+W'

Literary agency Conville & Walsh is relaunching under the name C+W, and taking on a new agent, Richard Pike from sister company Curtis Brown.

Pike will bring over his client list of “emerging social media talent, experts and brands in the areas of lifestyle, sport and smart thinking, and new fiction,” taking C+W in a new direction, the agency said.

C+W also appointed Lucy Luck last autumn, and together the two agents “add an exciting new dynamic to C+W”, the agency added.

Conville & Walsh was founded by Clare Conville and Patrick Walsh in 2000, and joined forces with Curtis Brown in 2013, while Walsh left in June last year to found new agency PEW.

Conville said: “The agency inherits and defines its core principles from the last 17 years of business: to be bold in what we represent and how we work together, to encourage a restless desire to find the new, to uncover original and even startling voices and talent and combine this with an absolute commitment to working with our authors in the long term.”

M.d. Jake Smith-Bosanquet added that the alliance with Curtis Brown meant the agency “can offer a new level of professionalism and bring a renewed verve, dynamism and enjoyment to the publishing process, and offer our authors greater opportunities than ever before."

Recent bestsellers from the C&W stable include Second Life (Doubleday) by S J Watson, Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (Canongate), The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (Borough Press) by Joanna Cannon and Ragdoll (Trapeze) by Daniel Cole. Recent deals done have included signing popular history Metropolis by Ben Wilson to Jonathan Cape and journalist Rhik Samadder’s memoir exploring mental health I Never Said I Loved You to Headline.

The new company website is cwagency.co.uk.