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Margaret Halton has left United Agents to join PEW Literary and will handle all foreign rights for the agency.
Halton joined PEW on Monday (11th June) and will work alongside Patrick Walsh and John Ash as an associate agent.
She has worked in publishing houses and literary agencies on both sides of the Atlantic and has been responsible for selling international rights in non-fiction titles such as Margaret Thatcher’s Memoirs and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, as well as novels by Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith and Nick Hornby.
Halton started at United as joint head of Adult Foreign Rights in 2014, and prior to this was director in the foreign rights department at Rogers, Coleridge & White, where she worked for five years. She has also worked as an acquiring editor at Granta, in a bookshop, and in recent years has started to develop her own list of authors, “which is something she’s long wanted to do”, according to a PEW spokesperson.
In terms of her taste, she is drawn particularly to literary fiction, book-club fiction, narrative non-fiction and memoir, and has also been known to fall for a good crime novel. She is looking for novels “that pack an emotional punch with characters whom you feel you know personally”.
Halton also represents UK rights in titles on behalf of the Ayesha Pande Literary Agency in the States.
“Working in association with Patrick Walsh and John Ash at PEW is my dream job come true in that I will be selling the foreign rights in their list of wonderful authors and developing new business too,” Halton said. “Patrick and I are longstanding allies and friends and it will be great to work together as a team.”
Walsh, who founded PEW in Soho in 2016, said: “Margaret has such a range of talents, ranging from editing to acquiring to selling. I’ve always admired Margaret’s professionalism, and her ability to place a book with exactly the right publisher. We couldn’t be more delighted that she’ll be building a client list and helping to spread our clients’ international readerships”.
“We’re hugely excited to welcome Margaret to PEW – and thrilled that she’ll not only be bringing with her an extraordinary wealth of expertise in handling foreign rights, but also developing her own list,” Ash said.