Samaraweera and Curzon establish Selby Howard Literary Agency
Darryl Samaraweera and Jon Curzon have departed Artellus to launch Selby Howard Literary Agency.
The agents’ clients have followed them to their new home, a roster which includes cookery influencer and What Mummy Makes (DK) author Rebecca Wilson, Booker-shortlisted novelist Fiona Mozley, biographer Roger Lewis, Ondaatje Prize-winning poet Pascale Petit, senior civil servant turned podcaster Helen MacNamara and cultural commentator Eli Davies, whose The Spinster Cookbook (Indigo Press) launches in June.
The duo said their focus will “remain eclectic, and span literary fiction, narrative and expert-led non-fiction, lifestyle and cookery, politics, history, memoir and biography”.
They added: “Having worked together for 10 years, we’re so excited to be starting a new agency and working with our brilliant authors.”
Samaraweera and Curzon had been at Artellus with founder Leslie Gardner for 25 and 10 years, respectively. Selby Howard’s creation comes in the wake of Artellus’ business being suspended since January after Gardner, who launched the agency in 1986, was “incapacitated”. The Bookseller has contacted Gardner’s family for comment on Artellus’ future.
Two Selby Howard deals were sewn up almost immediately after launch, both at auction: Curzon sold June Aming’s literary debut Yellow Is Not for Girls Like Me to Weidenfeld, while Samaraweera orchestrated consultant colorectal surgeon Alice Murray’s The Bum Bible going to Profile Books. Selby Howard is also handling rights for Suzannah V Evans’s poetry collection Under the Blue (Bloomsbury), which was recently shortlisted for the 2026 Dylan Thomas Prize.
The Selby and Howard names – which Curzon and Samaraweera describe as “our trusted and enigmatic sidekicks” – derive from an existing copywriting and content strategy firm Samaraweera co-founded in the mid-2000s.
The literary agency’s new website is selbyhoward.com while the two can be contacted at darryl@selbyhoward.com and jon@selbyhoward.com.
