Janklow & Nesbit are seeking a proactive and market-savvy Associate Literary Agent to join the company, supporting Director and Literary Agent Hayley Steed. We are looking for someone with at least 2 years’ experience, preferably within an agency, or within publishing, to support a busy client list as well as admin and general agency support. The successful applicant would be able to build their own list of authors over time, and we are also happy to hear from current assistants and associates who already have some clients. The role will involve a lot of in-depth and close work with Hayley’s clients so it’s vital that the appropriate candidate has a close understanding and enjoyment of commercial and bookclub fiction.Hayley is a Director and Literary Agent representing writers of commercial and bookclub fiction across all genres. She previously worked for seven years at Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency, joining Janklow & Nesbit in September 2023. Her clients include Sunday Times bestsellers Yomi Adegoke, Leah Hazard, Harry Baker, Sarah Clegg, and half of writing duo Ellis Hunter (also a New York Times bestseller), alongside New York Times bestseller Clare Pooley, Canadian bestseller, Heather Marshall, USA Today bestseller Freya Sampson, and upcoming talent Abigail Avis. This is a full-time position, working 5 days per week, with at least two days in-person in our Holborn office and a salary of £33-40k dependent on experience.Key Responsibilities and tasks will include:- Supporting with client care; answering queries, proof requests, reviewing marketing & publicity plans and attending meetings- Evaluating the commercial potential of manuscripts, and carrying out editorial work on manuscripts by current and new clients- Keeping abreast of current market trends and industry news, such as editor moves, new publisher launches, commercial avenues and reader trends, and attending meetings with editors and wider teams- Providing general administrative support (website updates, database, author gifts), relaying information internally to the rights team, collating sales info- Reviewing contracts, deal memos, and handling negotiations for some clients, as well as invoicing and financial management- Representing a select handful of books for the UK market on behalf of US colleagues- Market research and ideas generation – what readers are looking for, what the trends are and what’s working in the market – and seeking out talent- Some assisting with tasks related to the running of the company Please send a CV and covering letter (including five books you’ve enjoyed/worked on recently and why) to jobs@janklow.co.uk Closing date: 30th November 2026Janklow & Nesbit has been in business since 1973 and is one of the largest and most powerful literary agencies in the world, with offices in New York and London. Since its inception, the company has prided itself on the diversity of its clients, who are defined by their quality rather than any over-riding editorial ethos, and who range from the literary to the commercial.The London office opened in 2000, providing co-ordinated representation across all formats and territories and working extremely closely with our colleagues in New York. Over the last two decades, the agency has grown to represent a broad range of acclaimed writers who are regularly nominated for and awarded major literary prizes, and feature in best-seller lists around the world.Our small, highly-focused office provides a unique service to its clients – a boutique agency with a global perspective.

M John Harrison's THE END OF EVERYTHING (Serpent's Tail) is the winner of the 2026 Booker Prize!Huge congratulations to M John Harrison, the oldest winner in the Booker's history and the first science fiction writer to win the Prize, and to his agent, Will Francis. What the judges said  ‘The Booker judges spent a whole day debating the six remarkable novels on this year’s shortlist, before agreeing unanimously to award the 2026 prize to The End of Everything by M John Harrison.' 'It's a book that turns you upside down, raises a wry smile – and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism.''The End of Everything can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism; whatever the reader is looking for can be found here, albeit told at a slant and with a twist. The book offers something for everyone!''The landscape may be bleak, the catastrophe may be immersive, yet there still were moments we found ourselves laughing aloud.'In his acceptance speech, M John Harrison said 'Prizes like this one, not that there are any prizes quite like the Booker, are so important in a landscape of industrialised fiction.'Read more on The Booker Prize Website.

M John Harrison's THE END OF EVERYTHING is one of six books selected for the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. What the critics said Catherine Taylor, Financial Times ‘This is a formidable book: dusky, casually horrifying, unexpectedly compassionate. Its ending takes a deceptively conventional form, but the blank pages that follow invite the reader either to accept the end of everything as the title conveys, or imagine a continuous, ambiguous present — one that extends beyond the unexpected survivor of this particular story.’ Olivia Ho, Literary Review ‘Harrison has explained that he initially conceived the novel around 2010. But The End of Everything acutely refracts the anxieties of the present, in which a sense of imminent collapse has become ingrained in everyday existence. The novel doesn’t make clear sense of this; instead, it grasps at where language falls short of meaning, treating its subject like a lost continent just out of reach. The result is a work of uncanny beauty, tender and terrifying in equal parts.’ Helen Macdonald, The Observer ‘It’s fitting that this book has arrived in this post-pandemic, post-neoliberal, post-Brexit, post-everything summer, a time of pernicious prediction markets, AI gumming up the works, TikTokers memorialising sodium streetlights, looksmaxxers, floods, failing infrastructure, Ukrainian fields glittering with drifts of fibre-optic cable and a cage-fighting arena being built on the White House lawn. I don’t think I’ll read a better book this year, perhaps decade. The world is falling apart and The End of Everything properly fucks one up.’ Simon Ings, The Telegraph ‘Harrison isn’t weirder than most other writers, just better. Reading The End of Everything, you feel you’re not so much reading as dreaming. Or, to put it another way, this novel is like a painting by Paul Nash, chalky, degreased and illumined. As Harrison himself says: by “a pure 1930s light, from an imagination stocked when people could use words like ‘spiritual’ and still mean something”.’ Niall Harrison, Locus Mag ‘Many of M. John Harrison’s previous novels warn about the fantastic as a consolation, and the risks of exceeding the appropriate prescription, and I think The End of Everything may also be read as a depiction of a world subject to overdose, where lives have been saturated by the unreal. There is a grain of ambiguous hope in one character’s declara­tion that it doesn’t matter that the world has ended, “because another one will be along soon enough,” but what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s bril­liance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists.’ What M. John Harrison said about The End of Everything‘The art towns of the UK’s East Coast provided the setting. I love that coast, all the way round from Hastings to the Thames – even up into Suffolk. Current affairs provided the themes and the satire: what happens when all of our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, but we still have to make a life?’ M. John Harrison in an interview with the Booker Prizes.What the judges said ‘Two beachcombers meet and exchange words at the intertidal; we are in Kent, and it is the near-future, but one that recognises itself to be in the middle of a catastrophe. The sky is glitching, and something strange, formless and growing is soon to come out of the sea, to imitate our speech, forms, and customs. Our left-behind inhabitants scavenge where and what they can, provisional alliances are made and broken, shocking violence occurs, and no one can agree on exactly what has happened. A book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering and oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.’ The Booker Prize 2026 judges.    

Congrats are owed to Alex Bellos who has been awarded The Christopher Zeeman Medal for the Promotion of Mathematics by The Institute of Mathematics and its Communications 🏅The IMA say: 'The Christopher Zeeman Medal was created to recognise and acknowledge the contributions of mathematicians involved in promoting mathematics to the public and engaging with the public in mathematics in the UK, and demonstrate that such activities are valued by the societies and the mathematical community at large and are a part of a mathematician’s roles and responsibilities.' Of Alex's award of the medal, they said: 'Alex Bellos is a highly deserving recipient whose work has transformed the way many people encounter and appreciate mathematics. [...] He has helped to shape the contemporary landscape of public mathematical culture in the UK, demonstrating that engagement with the public is not peripheral to mathematics, but integral to it.'Alex joins illustrious J&N company in Dr Hannah Fry and Dr Matt Parker, both of whom have been previous recipients of the medal. Congratulations, Alex! 

Congratulations to Janklow author and evolutionary biologist Dr Matilda Brindle whose team at Oxford University have won a prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for their research into the evolution of kissing 💋The Ig Nobel Prize, founded in 1990, honours achievements so surprising that they make people laugh, then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.Matilda's book on non-reproductive sexual behaviours is forthcoming with Headline in spring 2028.