Mona Kanin is a former librarian, bookseller, and award-winning media producer at Great Dog Literary who hunts for deeply imaginative, empathy-driven writing across literary adult fiction, adult nonfiction with intellectual weight, and selectively curated children's books.
In brief
Her wishlist is anchored in literary quality over genre: she wants writing where every sentence earns its place, whether she's reading a picture book or an adult novel.
Her adult taste gravitates toward formally adventurous literary fiction and humanities/sciences nonfiction — the comp titles she names (Groff, Vuong, Hamid, Ozawa) signal a preference for prose that operates at or near poetry.
Children's submissions are substantially gated: she is closed to picture books and middle grade except by referral, making her effectively a literary adult specialist for cold-querying writers.
Her background — Boston Public Library, Simmons MSLS, a children's literature graduate program, children's media production for PBS and Discovery — means she reads picture books and MG with the eye of a lifelong specialist, not a dabbler; her children's comp list is notably sophisticated and diverse.
Her stated love of filmmakers like Almodóvar, del Toro, Wes Anderson, and Spike Lee points toward a taste for highly stylized, visually precise, emotionally layered storytelling — writers whose prose has a distinct cinematic grammar may find a natural ally here.
Lately
Her wishlist foregrounds empathy as the animating purpose of literature — she explicitly wants books that move readers closer to characters and author alike, and that resonate with something below the surface of conscious experience.
What Mona is looking for
Mona's clearest priority among adult categories. She wants fiction that pushes against conventional form while never sacrificing sentence-level craft — the well-made line is non-negotiable. Her comp titles point toward psychologically intense, politically and culturally aware narratives, often with a lyrical or fragmented quality. Think novels that blur the boundary between prose and poetry, or that use a tight personal lens to illuminate something vast about the world.
She wants nonfiction written with the same care and intention as literary fiction — not academic writing dressed up, but genuinely crafted prose that happens to carry intellectual weight. Work that interrogates or unsettles societal norms is especially welcome, as is writing grounded in psychology. Think narrative science writing, cultural criticism, and investigative essays that read as literature.
Mona is closed to picture books and middle grade except through referral — cold queries in these categories will not be considered. For those who reach her through a trusted introduction, she is drawn to books that spark imagination, carry big ideas and big feelings, and challenge young readers rather than condescend to them. For MG specifically, she has a noted appetite for highly imaginative narrative nonfiction. Her children's comp list skews literary, diverse, and science/nature-inclusive.
Not the right fit
On Mona's list
Taste fingerprint
How to query Mona
Her form was closed as of early April 2025 — check the live form before doing anything else; submitting through the wrong channel will be ignored.
Fiction writers should include the first 25 pages of the manuscript (not a chapter selection, not a synopsis alone — the specific page count matters).
Nonfiction writers must submit a complete book proposal, not sample chapters alone.
Her background is in children's media and librarianship, but her cold-query gate is now essentially adult literary — do not query picture books or MG cold, even if your work matches her taste exactly; those routes require a referral.
The comp titles she names are a precise calibration tool: if your adult literary novel does not sit comfortably in conversation with Groff, Vuong, Hamid, or Ogawa, reconsider whether she is the right fit. Accessible commercial fiction, genre hybrids, and plot-driven thrillers are mismatches.
She responds within six weeks if interested; eight weeks of silence is a soft decline. Do not query again on the same project after that window.
Her stated core value is empathy — your query letter should demonstrate, concretely, how your book creates proximity between reader and character, not just what happens in the plot.
Her film taste (del Toro, Almodóvar, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee) suggests she responds to strong aesthetic vision and a distinctive voice. If your work has a clear stylistic identity, make that visible in the first pages.