Lydia is the Head of Children’s and YA Department, joining The Soho Agency in 2025 after over a decade in the industry across both editorial and agenting.

 

Lydia’s clients have been #1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers, been chosen as Waterstones, Blackwells and Indies Books of the Month, and won prizes including the Carnegie Medal Shadowers’ Choice and the Diverse Book Award among others. In 2022, Lydia was chosen as a Bookseller Rising Star.

 

With experience on both sides of the commissioning desk, Lydia loves working editorially with her clients and developing ideas from an initial spark into a full manuscript. Lydia represents everything from picture books to the top end of crossover YA, and she particularly enjoyed working with author/illustrator talent, including graphic novelists.

 

No matter the story, Lydia is drawn to voice above anything else and will always be sucked in by a strong hook. Lydia is actively looking for submissions from all under-represented writers, and if you’re comfortable doing so, you can use the hashtag #diversevoice when you submit to indicate that you identify as under-represented. Lydia is not currently taking on new picture book clients.

 

Lydia’s list lean towards the bold, the loud and the zeitgeisty – big, commercial storytelling that also says something about the world we live in. Her tastes are wide-ranging across genre and form, but she is particularly looking for the following:

 

In YA and Crossover:

• Fantasy and romantasy that understands the tropes of the genre and plays with or subverts them
• Dark academia in all its forms, or anything that you would read while sitting in a wood-panelled library in a wing-back armchair
• Similarly, fiction that leans gothic (and this applies to MG as much as YA)
• Complex, big-world fantasy teeming with political intrigue, hidden magic and dark secrets
• Cosy fantasy that still manages to pack a plot in
• Speculative fiction, sci-fi and dystopia that feels both grounded and plausible
• Rules, games and challenges
• Genre blends – horror romance, speculative thriller, comic fantasy etc

 

In MG and younger fiction:

• Epic adventure – whether that’s fantastical or real-world, I would love something with enormous stakes, scale and ambition
• Clever, wild and strange storytelling with a huge amount of heart
• Classic-feeling mysteries or historical adventures told from new viewpoints – whether that’s new characters, or a new take on an existing tale
• Genuinely funny writing, particularly with a dark or offbeat sense of humour

 

Illustrated and Graphic Novels:

• All the above genres and areas apply. Lydia is particularly interested in books that use illustration to push the boundaries of genre or form, and is open to seeing illustrated work in any space on her list

 

Across her whole list, Lydia is prioritising authors from backgrounds that have historically been under-represented in publishing.