MARIA ISABELLE CARLOS

A Filipina femme with long dark hair and a black jacket standing outside, leaning against a brick wall, and smiling at the camera.

Maria Isabelle Carlos (she/her) is an editor at Haymarket Books in Chicago. Originally from Missouri, she received her BA in English at UNC-Chapel Hill and her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Vanderbilt University. She worked as a bartender in New Orleans for several years, an adjunct educator, a writing coach, a cafeteria server in Yellowstone (yes, the park), and an editor at Bull City Press, Nashville Review, and Zone 3 before diving into the publishing world. She is interested in acquiring works of poetry and nonfiction that balance political incisiveness with lyricism and musicality.

WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR

With any manuscript, my first thoughts are usually about the writing itself. I’m drawn to confident and precise diction, musical syntax, illuminating detail, and a bold, indelible narrative voice. I’m also interested in inventive, experimental forms or structures that blur the borders between genres. Equally important to me is the manuscript’s political intervention. I look for work that is well-researched yet approachable, and that contributes to or expands contemporary discourse around cultural/political issues in exciting, revelatory ways.

For poetry: full-length collections (especially debuts!), translations, and the occasional anthology. For nonfiction: essay collections, hybrid memoirs, narrative journalism, biographies about revolutionaries. I hope to lift up the voices of marginalized writers and work by or about grassroots activists.

SAMPLE AUTHORS OR TITLES

UNBUILD WALLS, by Silky Shah
I KNOW WHAT THE RED CLAY LOOKS LIKE, forthcoming expanded and revised edition, by Rebecca Carroll
forthcoming book by Edna Bonhomme

Specializes In

FICTION: 

NONFICTION:  Politics, Current Affairs, LGBTQIA+, Memoir, Narrative

Considers

FICTION: 

NONFICTION:  Cultural/Social Issues, Investigative Journalism, LGBTQIA+, Current Affairs, History, Memoir, Multicultural/Global Perspectives, Politics, Women's concerns, Music