AMBER OLIVER

Amber Oliver is an editor at Penguin Random House. Amber has published Lambda Literary Award winner, Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor and The Hound of Justice and has forthcoming titles such as Robin Page’s Small Silent Things, Lee Matalone’s Home Making, Shayla Lawson’s This is Major, Morgan Jerkins’s Wandering in Strange Lands, and Yaffa S. Santos’s A Taste of Sage. Amber is also a 2019 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She was born and raised in the Bronx, is a graduate of the City College of New York, and is committed to uplifting marginalized voices and acquiring literary fiction and upmarket commercial fiction that is well-written, culturally relevant, and totally engrossing.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR

I love literary and upmarket commercial novels that has beautiful language, punchy and believable dialogue, lush settings, and fully realized characters. I am particularly interested in own voices and marginalized communities, as well as books that are timely and culturally relevant. I am looking for workplace novels, literary novels with music, southern Gothics, LGBTQ narratives, family sagas, sibling stories, among others. In terms of nonfiction, I value the same voices, but am drawn to pop culture, social issues, social justice, essay collections and memoir. The themes I'd like across fiction (and non) are identity, legacy, trauma, mental health, social justice, power dynamics, feminism, among others.

SAMPLE TITLES OR AUTHORS

Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots, Morgan Jerkins
Small Silent Things, Robin Page
This is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope, Shayla Lawson

Specializes In

FICTION: Family Saga, GLBT, Literary Fiction, Multi-Cultural, Short Story Collections, Upmarket Women's Fiction

NONFICTION: Adventure/True Story, Cultural/Social Issues, GLBT, Memoir, Multi-Cultural, Music, Pop Culture, Women's Concerns

Considers

FICTION: Humor/Satire

NONFICTION: Current Affairs, Humor, Investigative Journalism