Abigail Walters

Abby Walters is a Literary Agent at leading publishing and entertainment agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Walters is based in the New York office and creates publishing opportunities across all agency departments. Some of her clients include Thao Thai, Honor Levy, Zoë Eisenberg, Samantha Leach, Nadine Jolie Courtney, Christina McDowell, and more. Walters began her career at Random House in publicity and special events before joining CAA in 2017. She graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a degree in English Literature. She is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Publishing Course and originally from Cleveland, Ohio.

Walters is most interested in literary fiction but is also actively looking to acquire upmarket commercial fiction. She is especially drawn to stories that explore the intersection of culture and technology (including speculative fiction), coming of age, intense, complicated friendships, the nuances of motherhood and how it informs identity, and the quest for self-optimization. She gravitates toward stories that hinge on an outsized relationship with another person like On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong or an obsession with remedying oneself like The Answers by Catherine Lacey and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh. She’s also fond of works that rely on group dynamics and dependencies to create conflict and drive plot like A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. She tends to want an element of romantic love or exploration of intimacy especially if it creates a challenge to cultural heritage, racial and/or self-identity like that seen in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. In the more commercial books she considers, she appreciates a level of humor and voice that offers commentary on unfolding antics and behavior like Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble.

 Walters also loves a good memoir and gravitates toward late coming-of-age stories centered around identity exploration that employ a quiet, lyrical style like Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply, Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives, and Bill Hayes’s Insomniac City. She’s also fascinated with personal stories that explore our relationship with work and work culture like Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener and Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, as well as narratives that explore parenthood’s influence on identity like Sheila Heti’s Motherhood.