SCBWI Exclusive with... Tricia Lawrence
Tricia Lawrence represents award-winning authors and illustrators of picture books and chapter books that look at the world in a unique and unusual way, with characters that are alive both on and off the page. Her clients have won awards such as the American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Award, Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor, Charlotte Zolotow Award, and Ezra Keats Honor. She also represents middle grade and young adult fiction as well as adult fiction.
In middle grade and young adult nonfiction as well as adult nonfiction, Tricia seeks out book ideas and platforms that offer untold stories by creators with a specific axiom or lens that speaks to the current issues, pains, fears, and hopes of both our current world and tomorrow’s. Her client list includes Paula Yoo’s Boston Globe-Horn Book award winner and National Book Award long listed YA nonfiction book about Vincent Chin. Paula’s second YA nonfiction book about the LA Uprising won the 2025 YALSA Nonfiction Medal.
Tricia has worked in the publishing industry as a development and production-based editor for 30 years (from kid’s books to college textbooks, but mostly college textbooks) and previously worked at Erin Murphy Literary as senior agent. She is based in Seattle.
Tricia loves hiking, camping out in the woods, and collecting rocks. She loves BBC America and anything British. She has way too many books and not enough bookshelves.
What was your path to becoming an agent?
I helped a lot of people with their questions about publishing as I had already been in the business for about 15 years and worked as a production copyeditor and proofreader, so I was already a publishing professional. I was advising on manuscripts and book proposals and had even ghostwritten proposals but I had not considered agenting because at that time, it still felt necessary for agents to live in NYC and I was happily ensconced in the Pacific Northwest with ZERO plans to leave. I approached an agency and quickly landed at the right one!
What elements does a manuscript need for you to want to offer representation?
A sense of something special. That sounds nefarious, but it’s not. As an agent, I’m a professional reader and I read with a purpose. Most of the time, it’s not a trend or a trope that gets me activated, but something that takes me fully into a world I didn’t anticipate discovering. In other words, write what lights you up and let that manuscript shine bright.
How do you work with your clients?
I’m a mama bear. Once a client entrusts me with their work, I’m their person. I seek to sign folks who write manuscripts and who have a vision that aligns with how I read and how I think I can assist and that works so well. Sometimes it doesn’t and then we wish each other well and move along, but every time I try to take someone on without that alignment, it never works.
What's on your manuscript wish list?
Mysteries. I am a sucker for a story in which someone is in the woods and something looks back at them from the darkness. I like stories that make me think about things differently than I have before, like how in horror, something may be bent or speculative fiction set in our world where something has changed. I rep children’s book to adult, so I’m not afraid of authors who want to write across multiple genres. From romantasy to sweet picture books, I’m definitely hard to pin down.