SPOTLIGHT FEATURE – Sheyla Knigge from High Line Literary Collective
Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to Spotlight On!
We’re back with a brand-new series of interviews with literary agents. Stay tuned to learn more about the day-to-day work of agents, what they’re looking for in submission packs, their thoughts on the publishing industry and much, much more. All our Spotlight On interviews can be found right here on Townhouse: #JWSpotlightOnInterview.
This week, we’re speaking to Sheyla Knigge from New York-based agency High Line Literary Collective. Sheyla began her career in publishing working under agent Victoria Marini in 2021 and has since started building her own client list, which includes Kalie Cassidy (In the Veins of the Drowning, July 2025) and Maggie Rapier (Soulgazer, July 2025).
You can follow Sheyla at @sheylaknigge for updates on her work, or view her agency profile here. She is also participating in our Agent One-to-One service this month, so don’t miss out on a chance to hear from her! Read highlights from our interview with Sheyla below and view the full interview on her AgentMatch profile…
Hi Sheyla, thanks for speaking with us today!
What does the day in the life of an agent look like for you?
It’s different for everyone, but for me, it looks like a lot of emails and reading. My email inbox is specifically for any correspondence with my colleagues and editors, and my clients also use it to send me links to their documents so I can make notes. I’m a very editorial agent, so I’ll read through their work and make comments. I have clients on the West Coast, the East Coast and then I have clients with editors in the UK, so I’m working across a bunch of different time zones!
What’s your favourite thing about being an agent?
I think my favourite part of being an agent has got to be the difference in the projects. It’s like I tell my clients: we can all use similar tropes or similar themes in our stories, but there are certain stories that only they can tell. I really love finding the intricacies of their work in the differences between them.
A great example is the two romantasies I have coming out next summer: In the Veins of the Drowning by Kalie Cassidy and Maggie Rapier’s Soulgazer. Both of them are seafaring stories, and they’re very magical and mythological. They’re very different to me, but close enough in themes that I would love to have them in conversation with one another. So it’s little things like that that keep me on my toes. I like to find the tiny things I loved from previous books in my clients’ stories and help bring them to life in a new way.
As an editorially minded agent, how do you approach feedback?
Typically, when I make an offer, I ask the author which way they prefer to get feedback, because I want to be very cognisant that every author works differently. I have some clients who prefer to send me a document and have me put all of my notes in at once and then send it back with an editorial letter. Some prefer to talk about edits on a phone call or face to face. I have other clients who send me their writing bit by bit, so we work on each section separately and then clean it up and make sure it’s cohesive at the end. It depends on what helps them the most!
I like to tell my authors that no matter what edits or commentary I might have, I want the story to remain as close as possible to the story they wanted to tell. Authors get a lot of feedback from agents, editors and beta readers, but my goal is to make sure the result feels authentic to the original story and is something the author is excited to put out into the world.
In your opinion, what makes a good author-agent relationship?
I think transparency is really important. I think a lot of people go into this relationship with the idea that they work for their agent or their agent works for them, but I don’t really have that mindset. I think that this is a very collaborative working relationship and at the end of the day, we’re just two creatives who love books and want the story to be the best possible thing it can be. It can be helpful to think about how much you want to share with your agent, so that they can be helpful and be a good advocate for you if you ever need to push back a deadline or something like that. It’s true that you don’t have to be friends with your agent, but I think that in any good working relationship, you have to be at least a little bit vulnerable in what you’re willing to share so that the other person knows what you need from them.
What’s at the top of your wishlist in fiction?
As my career has continued, I’ve become more of a mood reader — so when it starts to get cosy and cold, I want to read something spooky or scary. Right now, I would really, truly love something about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, something inspired by Sleepy Hollow, or anything about murderous cheerleaders or murderous teens in small towns.
I’m also loving witchy stories right now, but I’ve got a couple of them already so I’m trying not to ask for too many. I think that sometimes, when authors see books that agents have sold, they might think: “Oh, I have something like that, they’ll love mine.” And we might! But the thing is, we don’t want to cannibalise our own list and we have to think about what’s best for the authors that we already work with.
Beyond the spooky stories, I’m always really interested in magical stories that transport me to a different place. It’s very rare that I will take on something that is that set in the modern day, so any contemporary stories would have to wow me and show me something that I haven’t seen done before or that I haven’t seen in a while.
Are there any genres you would prefer not to receive?
In non-fiction, I’m not a great fit for memoirs. I’m also not a war buff or a history book in general.
In fiction, I’m not hugely excited by dystopian stories or sci-fi. I loved them when I was in middle school, and if I can see them developing into some hugely influential part of the culture the way that The Hunger Games did, then maybe — but otherwise, I’m probably not the right agent for those genres.
When you’re reading a query letter, what are some things you like and dislike seeing?
When I read query letters, I always think about whether I would want to pick up the book in a bookstore. Does the pitch have the same feel as the back cover of a book in the sense that it makes me want to read those opening pages? I’ve had friends who have published their books and tell me that the blurb on the back cover is word for word what they wrote in their query, so I love to see query letters that capture that feeling. If the query isn’t drawing me in, I’ll usually go to the opening pages to see whether there’s a disconnect between them, which can happen because query letters are really hard to write.
In terms of things I don’t like to see in queries… Publishing is in a sort of transitional phase right now where we’re seeing fewer and fewer series being bought. There are books that I’ve sold which I would love to be a series, but it’s not up to me. So, when authors tell me in their query letter that this is the first in a trilogy or a nine-book series, I really wish they were pitching just one book with series or spin-off potential. I want to be the best advocate for my authors but I can’t guarantee I can sell one book, let alone nine, so knowing that someone has written an entire series does make me more hesitate to take their work on.
Some agents love synopses, others don’t. What do you think of them, and are there any things you look for in a synopsis?
As someone who doesn’t like writing synopses myself, I don’t typically ask for them unless there’s a really short deadline for reading a submission and I just need to see the CliffsNotes version of the story. Sometimes I do need to ask my authors to send through a synopsis because the editor wants to see one — but personally, I’ll ask for a playlist before I ask for a synopsis.
To give some advice, though, synopses should represent the structure of the story, beat for beat. Say your book contained four acts; what are the key components of each of those acts and how can you translate them onto a page to give the reader a sense of what’s happening in the story?
Is there anything an author can do in the first few pages of their manuscript that will really grab your attention? Anything you don’t enjoy as much?
I love a chunky book with a lot of words, so I want pretty prose — maybe what most people would call purple prose. I just really gravitate towards that sort of writing. I like to be drawn into the story, and I love to be surprised. I might read a query letter and have an idea of what the story will be, but then open the first few pages and realise I had no idea what was coming. One of my favourite books (and favourite series) is Stalking Jack the Ripper and those opening pages left me gasping for air and needing to read more. That’s the sort of thing that makes me fall head over heels for a book, and if I’m not head over heels for it, I’m not the best advocate for it.
Any last pieces of advice for authors?
It’s very easy to get caught up in rejections, but every no is going to lead you to that eventual yes. It’s not that your story or your writing isn’t good, it’s that it’s just not a fit for that agent, and that’s okay. Your next story might be a better fit for that agent, or there might be another agent that your current one is the perfect fit for. Think of it sort of like speed-dating — it’s there and gone in a minute. This is the last time that your story is truly yours and no one else’s, so take that time and bask in it!
Secondly, writing full time can be a very lonely business, so finding community is important. Look for other authors who have similar interests and are open to talking about writing and the publishing industry. I was listening to a podcast recently which said that a good chunk of debut authors don’t continue past that first year because it’s just so overwhelming and intense. It’s true that you can talk to your agent or your editor about the industry, but it’s the camaraderie between authors who are going through the process together that’s really going to help you find longevity in this.
Check out Sheyla’s AgentMatch profile for the full interview.
If you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a Premium Member, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review once per year of membership! Finally, we have plenty of fantastic agents offering Agent One-to-One Sessions in October and November – book your session now to hear their feedback on your submission pack.
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