Nicole Cunningham

Literary Agent

Nicole Cunningham joined Trellis Literary Management in 2025, after nine years with The Book Group. She represents an exciting list of authors across a wide range of adult fiction, as well as select nonfiction.

Nicole is seeking literary, upmarket, and book club fiction. Across genres, she falls in love at the level of the line first, and wants to be dazzled by the quality, control, and creativity of the language itself. She’s drawn to fiction that’s immersive, smart, and voice-driven, and better yet if it combines a propulsive plot with deep dive character work. She loves upmarket novels with a magical or speculative bent (including some very grounded fantasy), thrillers with a strong sense of place, book club with a beating heart and a razor-sharp bite, and literary or upmarket fiction with a romance at its center. She’d love to find more fiction at the sweet spot of literary sensibility with a high concept hook.

In nonfiction, Nicole wants to read fresh and finely tuned essay collections, cultural criticism, and well-researched, entertaining narrative nonfiction that has the bingeable quality of her favorite podcasts.

Born and raised in upstate NY, Nicole moved to New York City to study English and American Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU. After ten years, she returned to the Finger Lakes to renovate an old house with her husband, dog, and son. When she’s not reading, Nicole can be found social dancing around the northeast or messing about in her garden. 

Her favorite non-client authors are Brit Bennett, Anna North, Liz Moore, Marie-Helene Bertino, Kiley Reid, Caroline O’Donoghue, V.E. Schwab, Amanda Montell, Helen Oyeyemi, Charlotte McConaghy, Lucy Foley, Rebecca Makkai, Morgan Jerkins, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.