Marrissa Childs is a mission-driven debut agent at Ladderbird Literary Agency who specializes in adult and new adult fiction that centers BIPOC voices across their full emotional range — particularly layered, character-rich romance — alongside craft and homemaking nonfiction.
In brief
Childs is a newer agent building her list from the ground up, which means writers with the right fit have a genuine opportunity to get in early with a passionate advocate.
Her editorial sensibility is strongly character-first: she wants three-dimensional people living full, textured lives — not archetypes serving a plot — and her distaste for surface-level or 'tell me' narration means query letters should lead with voice and interiority, not just hook.
Her romance appetite is unusually specific: she gravitates toward the aesthetics of East Asian and Middle Eastern serialized fiction (Chinese historical, Turkish modern, Korean modern), so writers whose work echoes that cultural texture have a clear competitive advantage.
She explicitly rejects several popular romance subgenres — dark romance, romantasy, second-chance, erotica, and cozy — so writers should double-check their manuscript's genre before querying.
As a founding member of Inkluded Inc. and a literacy-crisis advocate, she is not simply seeking BIPOC stories as a box to check — her stated mission is to expand the BIPOC literary canon beyond trauma narratives, which signals she will be particularly energized by joyful, ambitious, or culturally specific stories that don't center suffering.
Lately
Childs's agency profile frames her mission explicitly: she grew up in a publishing culture that equated BIPOC storytelling with pain and poverty, and she intends to build a list that holds permanent space in the literary canon for BIPOC voices in their full human range — from the ordinary to the extraordinary, the bittersweet to the celebratory.
What Marrissa is looking for
Romance is the heart of Childs's list. She wants emotionally and situationally layered stories where love unfolds alongside full, independent lives — career ambitions, family obligations, cultural practice, and community-building. She is drawn to: slice-of-life settings, protagonists in niche or corporate careers, characters living with physical disabilities, medical-world backdrops, historical settings, and light academia. She is a self-described fanatic for fiction rooted in specific cultural worlds, particularly Chinese historical, Turkish modern, and Korean modern settings. She wants female leads who are builders — of businesses, households, and communities — and male leads who are both formidable and emotionally intelligent. Age-gap and mischievous-male-lead dynamics are welcome. Stories should feel as though the characters are narrating their own lives from inside their own culture, not explaining it to an outsider. Tropes used in unexpected or funny ways can work, but pure trope-reliance does not.
Beyond romance, Childs is open to adult and new adult fiction more broadly, provided it centers BIPOC perspectives across the full spectrum of experience — not only hardship but also joy, mundanity, ambition, and spectacle. She prizes ensemble casts, interwoven subplots, and immersive show-don't-tell prose. Stories with a sci-fi or speculative thread are acceptable if grounded in the emotional and domestic textures she values in romance.
Childs explicitly includes craft and homemaking as a current interest alongside fiction. Writers with practical, culturally grounded, or aesthetically rich nonfiction in this space should consider querying her.
Not the right fit
Taste fingerprint
How to query Marrissa
Lead with voice and character interiority — Childs is openly skeptical of surface-level writing, so a query letter that demonstrates emotional texture and specificity will outperform a pure plot summary.
Name the cultural world of your story explicitly and with confidence. If your manuscript is rooted in a specific community, cuisine, language, or regional identity, say so — she wants writers who speak from inside their culture, not around it.
Clarify your romance subgenre early. She has a long list of subgenres she will not consider; ruling yourself out immediately saves everyone time and signals professionalism.
If your protagonist has a niche or corporate career, a physical disability, or operates in a medical or historical world, call that out — these are among the specific textures she named as high-interest.
Avoid framing your BIPOC characters primarily through hardship or trauma. Her mission statement is explicit: she is building a canon beyond pain and poverty narratives. Lead with what your characters are building or becoming, not only what they've endured.
She is a newer agent actively building her list, which means she may have more bandwidth and enthusiasm for debut authors than an established agent would — lean into your manuscript's originality rather than chasing what's currently trending.
Do not query with picture books, middle grade, or young adult under any circumstances — these are hard exclusions on her current page.