Ethan Schlatter is a UTA literary agent building a list that prizes the deeply human in the bizarre and the bizarre in the deeply human — with a marked soft spot for LGBTQ+ voices, cultural criticism, and fiction that is simultaneously emotionally devastating and wildly unhinged.
In brief
Ethan joined UTA in 2022 and operates on both the domestic acquisitions side and the translation team — an unusual dual role that signals comfort with international and cross-cultural work.
His personal reading list (Hanya Yanagihara, Ling Ma, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sally Rooney) reveals a consistent appetite for emotionally intense, culturally specific literary fiction — he's not merely genre-agnostic, he actively wants books that feel like an experience.
His wishlist spans an unusually wide genre range for a newer agent, but the throughline is clear: conceptually strange premises handled with emotional intimacy, or emotionally grounded stories told through a formally inventive or offbeat lens.
He has a stated and repeated emphasis on LGBTQ+ work across both fiction and non-fiction — this is not a polite checkbox but a declared priority worth foregrounding in any query.
Submissions are currently paused — confirm his live status before querying; when open, he accepts email queries directly.
Lately
His active wishlist describes his submission inbox as currently paused, with a thank-you note to writers for their patience — suggesting a temporary closure rather than a permanent one.
What Ethan is looking for
His personal favorites — Yanagihara, Rooney, Ling Ma, Adichie — define the emotional register he's chasing: fiction that is formally ambitious or conceptually unusual but never loses its human core. He gravitates toward messy, complicated characters, gasp-worthy structural turns, and premises that sound absurd on paper but land with real emotional weight. Accessible literary fiction, literary crossover, and upmarket speculative all sit comfortably here.
Ethan frames his speculative appetite as 'something out-of-this-world approached in a very human way.' He's drawn to magical realism, queer horror, occult, paranormal, eco-fiction, and science fiction — but only when the speculative scaffolding serves genuine emotional or character work. He namechecks Susanna Clarke and Madeline Miller as writers he'd want to discover, which points toward literary-leaning, myth-inflected, or quietly surreal work rather than hard-SF world-building for its own sake.
He names this explicitly as a soft spot, and it cuts across all categories. Queer narratives, queer horror, and intersectional stories are all flagged as priorities. This applies equally to fiction and non-fiction — a queer cultural critic or memoirist should feel encouraged to query him just as warmly as a queer novelist.
He describes a love for 'smart beach reads,' dark female friendships, psychological thrillers, and dramedy — suggesting he's open to commercial work as long as it has a distinct voice or a genuinely surprising premise. The Fredrik Backman comp signals warmth and wit alongside emotional gut-punches. Romcoms with real stakes and domestic thrillers with psychological depth are both on the table.
On the non-fiction side he's drawn to cultural criticism (both rigorous and playful), ancient history, pop history, humorous essay collections, and deep-dive explorations of niche subjects — the kind of book that is genuinely fascinating in isolation but also speaks to a larger cultural moment. His personal favorites include Jamie Loftus's essay-driven work and the writing of Joan Didion, which maps a range from irreverent pop-culture dissection to precise, incisive criticism.
He flags modernized mythologies and modern retellings of fairy tales as recurring interests. Given his love for Madeline Miller and Susanna Clarke, he likely favors retellings with literary texture and genuine emotional stakes over straightforward genre repackaging.
BIPOC fiction and East Asian literature are specifically named in his categories, and the breadth of his personal reading (Adichie, Ling Ma, Elif Batuman) confirms this is genuine taste, not merely a checkbox. He's particularly drawn to culturally specific stories told with formal confidence.
Not the right fit
Taste fingerprint
How to query Ethan
His inbox is currently paused — check his live submission page before sending anything; querying while closed wastes your one shot.
When open, email him directly at his UTA address with the subject line formatted as: 'Query (MS Wishlist) — [TITLE] by [YOUR NAME]' — deviating from this exact format likely gets you filtered out.
Include a brief synopsis, your author bio, and the first 15 pages of your manuscript or book proposal — no more, no less than what he specifies.
He only responds if interested, so silence is a no — build that expectation into your timeline and move on after a reasonable wait.
Lead with the emotional or conceptual hook, not the plot mechanics — his stated taste prioritizes voice and human stakes over genre scaffolding.
If your book has an LGBTQ+ perspective or protagonist, say so clearly and early — it's a genuine priority for him, not a tiebreaker.
If your premise sounds absurd, own it: he has specifically said he has a soft spot for projects that can be described as conceptually wild. A confident, playful query voice will not hurt you here.
For non-fiction, make clear how your specific subject connects to a broader cultural conversation — he wants books that work on both levels simultaneously.
Avoid over-comping to blockbuster franchises; his touchstones skew literary (Rooney, Yanagihara, Ling Ma) — comp to those registers when possible.