MONA KANIN, Agent
As a literary agent, Mona Kanin has come full circle. Her professional life began in libraries and throughout the years, has focused on the relationship between ideas, imagination, and audience. She earned an MSLS from Simmons University and attended its Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. She began her career at the Boston Public Library, working primarily as as both a children’s librarian and a generalist, advising readers on literary fiction. She later managed a small independent bookshop in Washington, D.C.
Mona went on to spend twenty-five years designing, writing, and producing nonfiction media for broadcast, print, and the web. She was part of the team that adapted David Macaulay’s books for PBS and subsequently helped define audiences and shape stories for the Human Genome Project, Weston Woods, Discovery, PBS, and a range of nonprofit organizations. Her work received leading national honors. She also studied design at The New School/Parsons.
Across these varied careers, Mona has remained interested in the imaginative challenges of making meaning: how language, structure, image, and emotion come together; how complex ideas can be made accessible without being diminished; and how a creator’s singular vision reaches an audience.
After working as a developmental editor and literary agent, Mona founded mkaniniterary to work closely with original thinkers and creators. She represents work for children and adults. She is most interested in work that is boldly conceived, original in voice, authentic in lived experience and assured in craft.
As an editorial agent she is committed to protecting each creator’s voice, intentions, and point of view while helping to shine the brightest light on the work.
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Picture Books
Fireworks — Matthew Burgess, illustrated by Cátia Chien
Girl on a Motorcycle — Amy Novesky, illustrated by Julie Morstad
Hot Dog — written and illustrated by Doug Salati
I Talk Like a River — Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith
In a Jar — written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero
Island Storm — Brian Floca, illustrated by Sydney Smith
Little Doctor and the Fearless Beast — written and illustrated by Sophie Gilmore
Little Witch Hazel — written and illustrated by Phoebe Wahl
Milo Imagines the World — Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson
Nina: A Story of Nina Simone — Traci N. Todd, illustrated by Christian Robinson
The Tide Pool Waits — Candace Fleming, illustrated by Amy Hevron
We All Play — written and illustrated by Julie Flett...and Beyond
All the Blues in the Sky — Renée Watson
Brown Girl Dreaming — Jacqueline Woodson
Everything Sad Is Untrue — Daniel Nayeri
Pax — Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Jon Klassen
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale, written and illus. by Jon Klassen
The Wild Robot — written and illustrated by Peter Brown
When You Reach Me — Rebecca Stead -
Fiction
All Fours—Miranda July
Audition — Katie Kitamura
Creation Lake — Rachel Kushner
Exit West — Mohsin Hamid
James — Percival Everett
Hamnet — Maggie O’Farrell
Matrix — Lauren Groff
The Memory Police — Yoko Ogawa
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong
Vladimir — Julia May Jonas
The Wrong End of the Telescope — Rabih Alameddine
Bread of Angels — Patti Smith
An Immense World — Ed Yong
Lab Girl — Hope Jahren
Wildwood — Roger Deakin -
Too many to count, but some selects:
Anna Karenina & other Russian novels
Bear—Marian Engel
Beloved — Toni Morrison
The Bookmaker’s Daughter — Shirley Abbott
The Collected Poems of Mary Oliver
Consolations — David Whyte
Easy Beauty—Chloé Cooper Jones
The Fire Next Time & Giovanni’s Room—James Baldwin
In Search of Love and Beauty—Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Klara And the Sun—Kazuo Ishiguro
A Poetry Handbook — Mary Oliver
‘Rain’a poem—William Carlos Williams
Speak, Memory — Vladimir Nabokov
The Wolf Hall trilogy — Hilary Mantel -
A documentary for our times: The Librarians.
Current television favorite: Sugar.
A perennial favorite: Slow Horses.
Filmmakers whose work I seek out include Almodóvar, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola,
Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, and Spike Lee.
I’m particularly drawn to films that capture the strangeness, intensity, and imaginative reality of childhood, including The Go-Between, Hope and Glory, Jojo Rabbit, The Last Emperor, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Roma.