Hana El Niwairi, Rights Manager & Literary Agent
Hana is actively seeking
Science Fiction & Fantasy (adult and YA):
Some recent favourites include: Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots, Simon Jimenez’s The Spear Cuts Through Water, Shiloh Briar’s Hopeless Necromantic, Vajra Chandrasekara’s The Saint of Bright Doors
Romance:
Some favourites include: Alicia Thompson’s Love in the Time of Serial Killers, Mia Sosa’s The Wedding Crasher, Cat Sebastian’s The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes, Talia Hibbert’s Act Your Age, Eve Brown
Book Club fiction
Well-researched and accessible non-fiction in various topics including but not limited to: politics, social justice issues, pop culture and media, sciences, and history.
Some favourites include: Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, Jessica J. Lee’s Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging, Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now, Johnny Pitts’s Afropean, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Disordered Cosmos
Hana is currently not seeking
Literary fiction
Middle Grade, Picture Books and Children’s literature (unless specified above)
Lifestyle
Cookery
Poetry
Hana El Niwairi is a Literary Agent and the Rights Manager at CookeMcDermid. She leads the rights team in representing the works of agency authors outside of North America: in Asia, Europe, the UK, and more. Since 2017, Hana and her team have placed agency books into over 50 territories around the globe. These include: USA Today and internationally bestselling author Shailee Thompson’s How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates; #1 New York Times bestselling poet Rupi Kaur's the sun and her flowers and home body; internationally bestselling author Thomas Olde Heuvelt's HEX and Echo; Karen Lord’s Women’s Prize longlisted The Blue, Beautiful World; Canada Reads contender Natalie Zina Walschot's Hench; Dr. Britt Wray's Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis; and Alicia Elliott's And Then She Fell, among others.
Prior to joining the publishing industry, Hana worked in the non-profit, arts, and culture sectors. She is a graduate of Humber College's Arts Administration and Cultural Management program and holds an Honours BA (Specialization in Creative Writing and English Literature with a Major in Psychology) from Western University. Outside of her role at the agency, Hana is also one of the co-founders of BIPOC of Publishing in Canada.
Hana's tastes are eclectic and she reads widely across genres. She has a soft spot for science fiction and fantasy and is actively seeking genre-blending works in romance and book club spaces. Across genres, she’s drawn to character-driven stories, featuring morally complex protagonists, and commercial fiction written by and about marginalized communities.
Additionally, in her (somewhat futile) pursuit to learn everything, ever, Hana is an avid reader of non-fiction, particularly politics, social science, media criticism, science, and history. She is keenly interested in non-fiction exploring systemic issues and how they play out in the day-to-day lives of the average person.
Unless otherwise indicated on her Query Manager page, Hana is open to queries on the last week of every month (except during December holidays).
Hana’s Represented Books and Authors Include:
Hana’s Recent Deals
