Brettne Bloom is a literary agent with The Book Group, a New York-based agency that she co-founded with Julie Barer, Faye Bender and Elisabeth Weed in 2015. An agent for eighteen years, her first love is fiction but she also represents a range of narrative nonfiction, including memoir, history, current events, lifestyle/wellness, and biography. On the fiction side she loves coming-of-age stories, precise writing, and characters who spring to life on the page. On the nonfiction side she is currently looking for narratives that challenge the status quo, invigorate the mind, or expand the heart. She was born in Texas and lives in Manhattan with her husband and two daughters.

Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, formerly an agent with the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency, joined DeFiore and Company in early 2012. She represents adult literary and upmarket fiction, literary creative nonfiction, illustrators with distinct narrative points of view and literary books for children. She is drawn to writing steeped in ferocity of language, intellect and heart. Meredith is also the agency’s UK rights director. Prior to joining the publishing world, she earned her B.A. in Renaissance Studies at Yale, where she focused primarily on Italian Renaissance art history, architecture and literature.

Eric Simonoff is a literary agent and global co-head of the WME Literary Department.  Among the clients he represents are Jhumpa Lahiri, Phil Klay, Edward P. Jones, Jonathan Lethem, ZZ Packer, Daniel Alarcon, Philipp Meyer, Stacy Schiff, Nam Le, Sam Lipsyte, Yaa Gyasi, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Walter Kirn, Mary-Louise Parker, James Frey, Trenton Lee Stewart, Calvin Trillin, Buzz Bissinger, Karen Thompson Walker, Stephen Chbosky, Jessica Shattuck, Ariel Levy, The New Yorker Magazine and many others. In 2016 he received the Maxwell E. Perkins Award from the Center for Fiction.

Ayesha Pande has worked in publishing for over 20 years. Before launching APL, Ayesha was a senior editor at FSG and has held editorial positions at HarperCollins and Crown. She is a member of AAR, PEN, the Asian American Writer’s Workshop and the Women’s Media Group. Among her clients are NBA Winner Ibram X. Kendi, PEN/Bingham Prize winner Danielle Evans, PEN/Bellwether Prize winner Lisa Ko and New York Times best-seller Shilpi Gowda. Her interests are wide-ranging and include literary as well as popular fiction, young adult, women’s, African-American and international fiction. She is also seeking authors of nonfiction, including biography, history, cultural commentary and memoir. She is particularly drawn to distinctive, original voices.

In April 2013, Dawn Davis joined Simon & Schuster as the VP and publisher of 37 INK, an imprint within the Atria Publishing Group. Since launching 37 INK, she has published the National Book Award finalist “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, “ several New York Times best-sellers, including “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae, whose show, “Insecure,” received award recognition in its first season, “The Butler: A Witness to History” by Wil Haygood, “Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea” by Jang Jin- Sung, and “I Can’t Make This Up” by Kevin Hart. For twelve years, she had been at HarperCollins, directing the Amistad imprint. During her time at Amistad, she published numerous well-known, highly acclaimed best-selling authors, including Edward P. Jones, author of “The Known World,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle, and the IMPAC Awards for Fiction; Steve Harvey, author of the No. 1 best-sellers “Straight Talk, No Chaser” and “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” which launched as a No. 1 box office film and talk show; Chris Gardner, whose life story was published as the memoir “The Pursuit of Happyness” and the inspiration for the popular motion picture starring Will Smith; Attica Locke, author of the novel “Black Water Rising,”a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Edgar Award, and Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of The New York Times best-selling novel “Wench.”

Barbara Jones is an executive editor at Henry Holt and Company, where she edits fiction, memoir and an idiosyncratic list of nonfiction. She has worked on books by Adelle Waldman, Rick Moody, Lauren Groff, Rachel Khong, Paul Auster, Christa Parravani, Julie Lythcott-Haims and many others. She was previously editorial director of Hyperion Books, and before becoming a book editor in 2008, she spent nearly 20 years as a magazine editor, working with writers such as Jennifer Egan, Lorrie Moore, Ann Patchett, Louise Erdrich, Francine Prose, Liz Gilbert, Ann Hood, Matthew Klam, Amy Wilentz and Christopher Hitchens.

Ben Loehnen, executive editor at Simon & Schuster, edits books across a range of subjects, and has worked with a long list of writers, including Bruce Bartlett, Howard G. Buffett, James Lee Burke, Steve Case, Robert Cialdini, Ross Douthat, Jesse Eisinger, Charles Fishman, Justin Fox, James K. Galbraith, Jacob Hacker, Chip and Dan Heath, Virginia Heffernan, A.J. Jacobs, Sarah Lewis, Alec MacGillis, Paul Pierson, Kenneth M. Pollack, Gerald Posner, Richard Rhodes, Michael Riedel, Christopher Ryan, Dan Slater, Gillian Tett, Stephen Tobolowsky and Matthew Yglesias. A graduate of Harvard, he lives in New York City.