Jenny Brown Associates celebrates 20 years and plans debut prize for older writers

Scottish agency Jenny Brown Associates (JBA) is planning to launch a new prize for debut writers over the age of 50, as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.

Marking the anniversary at a party at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the agency celebrated its legacy spotlighting mainly Scotland-based writers of fiction, non-fiction and writing for children. To date, it has secured UK publication for 320 books for 90 debut and established writers, and sold rights to publishers globally. 

JBA is now a team of four, with Jenny Brown, Lucy Juckes, who represents writing and illustrating for children, rights director Andrea Joyce and new London-based associate Lisa Highton, who was previously a publisher at Hachette imprint Two Roads. The agency will also announce details later this year of a new debut prize for authors aged over 50 "to address the recent bias against older writers".

Recent Sunday Times bestsellers include Shaun Bythell’s accounts of being a bookseller in Wigtown, translated into 25 languages, and the collaboration between the late William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin, The Dark Remains (Canongate), which was awarded Crime Book of the Year at this year’s British Book Awards. 

"I started Jenny Brown Associates in 2002, excited by the brilliant writing coming out of Scotland, but aware that almost all agencies were in London," Brown said. "I believed that an agency based in Edinburgh could work closely with writers, and sell their work to publishers around the world. Twenty years later, we are enormously proud of our authors whose writing has gone around the globe, won awards, been bestsellers, delighted readers here and overseas and, for some books, changed the way we think about the world."

Clients include Sally Magnusson, Kathleen Jamie, Scotland’s Makar, and crime writer Alex Gray. The agency also handles the literary estates of George Mackay Brown and Alasdair Gray. Authors for children include Christopher Edge, Jonathan Meres, non-fiction from Kimberlie Hamilton and Mick Manning. Picture book creators on the agency’s books include Helen Kellock, Emily MacKenzie, Alison Murray and Cara Rooney.

Among recent writers to join the agency is the leading Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh, whose latest work, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, is just published by Profile. Highton’s clients include Ruth Hogan, Jenny Lecoat and Kate Lord Brown, and new writers Eirinie Lapidaki Scott, Carolyn O’Brien and Sarah Kennedy Norquoy.

Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said: "Jenny Brown Associates has been a game-changer for Scottish literature, enabling countless new and important voices from Scotland to be heard. At the heart of the agency is Jenny herself, a fearless champion who has catapulted Scottish writing onto the world stage. She generates as much energy as several power stations."

More details about the prize are set to be announced this year, but the agency hopes to address the "recent bias against older writers" with the award.

The agency will next be welcoming new submissions from writers in November. Full details can be found on the website. Free, one-to-one sessions giving advice to new writers will be held in Edinburgh on 16th November and Inverness on 17th November during Book Week Scotland.