Content Tagged ‘Pine State Publicity’

Working as both an agent and a publicist affords Zoe the opportunity to contribute to opposite ends of a book’s life cycle. As an agent, she’s usually the author’s first reader and advocate in the publishing process, and in publicity, she helps build media attention leading up to a book’s publication day. To manage her two roles, Zoe keeps both of her inboxes open and toggles attention to the author or book with most momentum at any given time.

As a publicist, Zoe’s daily schedule is never the same. Every day brings its own project, but on the best days, she collaborates with women on both her agency and publicity teams, peppering the chat with questions, aggravations, and solutions to keep their outreach fresh and media contacts relevant. Zoe works closely with fellow UNCW alumna and Pine State Publicity founder, Cassie Mannes Murray. This spring, she’s working on Amie Souza Reilly’s Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays, as well as Keetje Kuipers’s Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (Watch for it in April 2025, if you’re a Brandi Carlile fan.) and Catherine Weiss’ Big Money P*rn* Mommy (forthcoming in March, for fans of “spicy” fiction who might be curious about how it impacts your dopamine receptors).

Zoe set out to build a list of books that center underrepresented regions in literature, often bringing into the conversation authors with Southern, midwestern, and southwestern perspectives.

At Howland Literary, a boutique agency run by five women, Zoe works alongside her team to curate a diverse list defined as much by genre and audience as by identity and geographic setting. She set out to build a list of books that center underrepresented regions in literature, often bringing into the conversation authors with Southern, midwestern, and southwestern perspectives. Recently, Zoe and Howland Literary President Carrie Howland co-represented Sara Maurer’s debut novel, A Good Animal, forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press in winter 2026, and Zoe’s first novel sale, Fireweed by Lauren Haddad, forthcoming in April from Astra House.

“As much as publishing can be about who you know, there is also magic,” Zoe says, “in the fact that every book person is just a person with their own unique network. When we can become the joint that connects two webs, we double who we know—collaboration further connects us. That’s how we move books.”

. . . every book person is just a person with their own unique network. When we can become the joint that connects two webs, we double who we know—collaboration further connects us. That’s how we move books.

This focus on collaboration is a hallmark of Lookout’s approach to publishing too. During Zoe’s senior year at UNCW, she enrolled in the Publishing Practicum with Emily Smith and took Sayantani Dasgupta’s Diversity in Publishing course, both of which helped her build a panoply of skills as well as her mission-driven approach to publishing. Zoe has adopted Lookout’s objective to offer a haven for books that matter in her ongoing work with both Pine State Publicity and Howland Literary.