Donald Maass is one of the most influential literary agents working in fiction today and the author of a shelf of craft books that have become standard reading for working novelists. He founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York City in 1980. The agency represents more than 150 novelists and sells more than 150 novels every year to publishers in the United States and overseas, working across science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, romance, thriller, and literary fiction. He is a past president of the Association of Authors' Representatives.
Before becoming an agent he wrote more than sixteen novels of his own, which is part of what makes his craft books distinctive: he writes from inside both the page and the deal. The Career Novelist (1996) covers the business reality of building a long-term fiction career rather than chasing one-book luck. Writing the Breakout Novel (2001) and its companion Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004) examine what separates midlist novels from books that climb the bestseller lists, and break the difference down into specific craft moves any writer can practice.
The Fire in Fiction (2009) drills further into voice, tension, scene construction, and the moment-to-moment writing techniques that hold a reader. The Breakout Novelist (2011) consolidates earlier books with new material and over seventy exercises into a single working desk reference. Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) addresses the way genre and literary categories are blurring in the current market. The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2016) goes underneath the surface story to the emotional response a writer is actually trying to produce in a reader.
Maass teaches workshops at writers' conferences around the world and his Writing the Breakout Novel intensive is one of the most respected workshop brands in American fiction. His books are recommended in MFA programs, used by writing groups, and quoted by editors and agents when they describe what they look for in submissions. Many novelists treat Writing the Breakout Novel and The Emotional Craft of Fiction as permanent reference shelves rather than read-once books.
He lives in New York City and continues to run the Donald Maass Literary Agency, while writing, teaching, and speaking at major writing conferences across the United States and internationally.
