After a degree in French from Newcastle University, I ran a business for several years, providing a range of copy writing and editing services. During this time, my love of books and an interest in writing led me to freelance for a number of literary agents, including Darley Anderson and Eddison Pearson. Submissions are the life blood of publishing but many need further work and development. Because of the sheer volume of submissions there simply wasn’t enough time in the working day to provide feedback and it was my experience and enjoyment of reading hundreds of manuscripts that instigated setting up The Word Association, a literary consultancy. I am endlessly fascinated by writing and in my job as an agent I enjoy nothing more than working editorially with authors. I met Caroline while working as a reader and in-house editor for Christopher Little. When the opportunity arose to set up Hardman & Swainson it was too good to miss. Growing up I read an unhealthy number of Agatha Christies and hard-boiled detective novels and I love crime fiction from both sides of the Atlantic. After school, while travelling through France and Spain and living in a tent, I read all the novels of Charles Dickens. So I guess I’ve always been a bookworm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"class_list":["post-928848","agent","type-agent","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n