In our series The Future of Publishing, we reintroduce alumni of UNCW’s publishing programs, including former Lookout staffers, who have gone on to careers in the industry. We continue our series with a profile of BFA and publishing certificate alumna Zoe Howard of Howland Literary and 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.
At Pine State, Zoe leads publicity campaigns for books that are often peripheral to the mainstream publishing landscape—poetry collections, hybrid and genre-bending work, chapbooks, indie press titles, and books by mid-list authors with trade publishers—but she handles each of them with the focus and ambition of a Big Five title. “There’s such a wealth of perspective that we lose when we limit ourselves to the familiar,” she explains. Her goal is always “channeling energy into being the one to make the noise about the books that may otherwise get lost among all the ruckus—of the popular, of the easy sell.”
UNCW’s publishing program helped Zoe forge connections that later aided in her job search. Cassie Mannes Murray, an MFA candidate at the time, served as Zoe’s graduate teaching assistant in Introduction to Book Publishing. Cassie was then working at Howland Literary and offered to help Zoe secure an internship with the agency, which later led to a full-time position. Then, when Cassie founded Pine State Publicity, Zoe joined her on the publicity side.
Zoe leans on her co-workers at Pine State Publicity for support balancing her own writing alongside her publishing work. Together, they’ve tried morning pages sessions, dedicated blocks for writing, accountability groups, and page-count commitments. But Zoe has found that jotting ideas in her notes app while on the go and writing for an hour or two at the end of her day has been her most effective method. For Zoe, working in publishing full-time has changed the why that drives her writing, pushing her to focus less on the published piece and more on the act of writing.
As a writer, an agent, a publicist, and an alumna of Lookout’s publishing practicum, Zoe has seen how the publishing industry operates from myriad vantage points. From this breadth and depth of experience, she shared a speed round of advice for students looking to break into publishing:
Read the acknowledgments in every book, and if you loved it, read the reviews, interviews, features—learn how that book made its way into your hands. And, cross-pollinate, rather than gatekeep.
“Review what you read—it builds your publication credits, and the network of editors and emerging writers you’re connected to. Think broadly about the skillset you’re building. My closest friend from the BFA is now the creative director at Brave Creative Agency in Wilmington. Doing social media marketing, you’re learning how to write anything. Read the acknowledgments in every book, and if you loved it, read the reviews, interviews, features—learn how that book made its way into your hands. And, cross-pollinate, rather than gatekeep.”
Thank you to Lookout graduate publishing assistant Caroline Beuley for her contributions to this profile.