Gillian MacKenzie Agency is a full-service literary agency that specializes in illuminating non-fiction, select literary and commercial fiction, and children's and illustrated works.  

We pride ourselves in helping our clients shape, develop, sell, and market their ideas in the form of books, films, documentaries, series, translation rights, speaking engagements, merchandise, and more. Each project is approached with an eye towards clients' overall career goals. 

Founder & Agent

Gillian MacKenzie

Gillian MacKenzie has spent her career helping others create products and books for the marketplace. Before starting her agency in 2005, she was Vice President of Jane Startz Productions, where she spent over eight years scouting, optioning, and developing books into feature films with major Hollywood studios. She also co-founded the children's retail store concept Ridemakerz, and served on its Board of Managers. Prior to that, she was a product developer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she developed merchandise ideas from their collection. Gillian began her career at the literary agency Curtis Brown, Ltd. Additionally, she was a five-year term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a member of the Association of American Literary Agents and the Women's Media Group. 

Committed to working on books that challenge, enlighten, and entertain, Gillian represents journalists, experts, academics, and literary writers, among others who work on a broad array of nonfiction and select fiction, as well children's titles. She is particularly drawn to cross-disciplinary explorations, narrative nonfiction, and big-idea books that offer us a new lens onto the world. Also passionate about illustrated books, Gillian represents a select group of award-winning illustrators and designers.

Currently, Gillian is not accepting unsolicited submissions.

Agent & Director Of Speakers

Elizabeth Rudnick

Elizabeth Rudnick has been in the publishing industry for over twenty years. As an editor at Hyperion/Disney, she worked with best-selling authors and celebrities such as Melissa de la Cruz and Miley Cyrus, and on hit franchises such as Pirates of the Caribbean. Additionally, she has written over 50 books for children including her original novel Tweet Heart and bestselling novelizations of Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, Maleficent, Aladdin, and many other films. She is a graduate of Middlebury College and the Columbia Publishing Course.

For the children's market, Elizabeth represents authors and illustrators of a wide array of children’s books—from picture books to graphic novels to young adult. For the adult market, she represents writers of literary and upmarket fiction, especially novels featuring smart, strong, funny, and fierce women; and genre fiction, including thrillers, historical fiction, romance, mysteries, and occasionally science fiction that blends commercial sensibility with taut, inventive science (Andy Weir is a favorite).  

Across all categories, Elizabeth is especially drawn to clever voices and unreliable narrators, stories told from diverse perspectives, rich world building, strong character dynamics, and firsts—first love, first heartbreak, first loss, first divorce, etc... And, because children’s writers and illustrators are superheroes who teach valuable lessons of grit, determination, and kindness, and she is always eager to find new authors and artists who bring joy to young readers. Mythological creatures are encouraged!