This event is virtual-only (via Zoom) and is open to Helen Zell Writers' Program MFA students, Zell Fellows, and alumni, as well as U-M graduate and undergraduate students. It is not open to the general public. Please email Ashley Bates (asbates@umich.edu) for login instructions.


Alexa Stark joined Writers House in 2022, after ten years at Trident Media Group. She represents a range of literary and upmarket fiction and select nonfiction. On the fiction side, she is particularly drawn to literary debuts with a unique voice and perspective, stories about dysfunctional friendships and families, novels that engage with social issues, underrepresented voices, and fiction that delves into the surreal or plays with genre in fresh or subversive ways. She also enjoys edgy coming-of-age tales and character-driven suspense and thrillers. She gravitates towards the humorous, the bold, the psychologically probing and the tender. On the nonfiction side, she is seeking narrative nonfiction, cultural criticism, voice-driven essay collections, popular science, psychology, and women’s issues.

Alexa also has experience helping authors place stories, essays and book excerpts in a range of publications including the New Yorker, Harper’s, Paris Review, the Atlantic, Tin House, N+1, Playboy, McSweeney’s, and the New York Times, among others. Her authors have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list and have won or been listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35, the Rona Jaffe Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, The Young Lions Fiction Award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Raised in New York City, Alexa earned her BA in comparative literature and society at Columbia University. Prior to joining Writers House, she worked at Curtis Brown and Trident Media Group, spending the first few years working with Ellen Levine before building her own list. She lives in Brooklyn.