Julia Silk

It’s my birthday today, and also officially my tenth anniversary of being an agent. My timing was great - June 23 2016 was the day of the Brexit referendum, and I had a seven-year-old and a very small toddler who liked to wake up at 4.30 every day. I launched myself into agenting with a completely blank slate and no one to please but myself, after nearly 20 years on the ‘other side’, and I was completely unprepared for the levels of stress, rejection and, frankly, poverty that would follow.

But also nothing could have prepared me for the thrill of working with the most incredible writers, whose creativity, resilience and sheer brilliance still have the power to astonish me. They have turned out between them, among other things, a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, a Waterstones and Times thriller of the Month and Year, shortlistings for the Wainwright Prize, the McKitterick Prize and the V. S Pritchett Short Story Prize, a BBC Between the Covers Pick, Sunday Times bestsellers, Amazon top ten bestsellers and an Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year, not to mention being adapted for TV, and the stage.

I am so grateful to all my clients for trusting me with your work and being true partners in an industry that doesn’t always make it easy to keep believing in ourselves, let alone each other. THANK YOU. And please keep celebrating yourselves like I’m doing today. We deserve to make a noise!