ELYSE CHENEY

"I can help you put forward your best self when it comes to the publishing arena. We can discuss the set of skills you will need to advance in a variety of positions in the industry from agent, editor, and publicist to writer. I can help identify the spots where you might need work and we can talk about how you might build your strength in that area or reroute so that you are playing to your strengths. I can give you a birds eye view of the industry, how it works behind the scenes, what sells, what doesn’t and why. We can shape your path forward together."

Born in Brooklyn, Elyse Cheney attended the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English with an additional focus on art history. She has been a literary agent since 1996 when she began at Sanford J. Greenburger Literary Associates. While there, she represented groundbreaking titles like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers and The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah. In early 2006, she opened The Cheney Agency, known for serious nonfiction including such notable titles as The World as It Is and After the Fall by Ben Rhodes, She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, Doing Justice by Preet Bharara, Zero Fail by Carol Leonnig, National Book Award winner The Future Is History by Masha Gessen, New York Times bestseller Zealot by Reza Aslan, Pulitzer Prize winning biography Malcolm X by Manning Marable, and more. In 2013, she was named one of the most powerful women in New York by the New York Daily News.