Successful Queries: Allison Hunter and “Maya & Natasha,” by Elyse Durham

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to literary agent Allison Hunter (Trellis Literary Management) for Elyse Durham’s debut novel, Maya & Natasha (Mariner).

Elyse Durham is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Wigleaf, Image, and elsewhere, and she has received support from The Elizabeth George Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Glen Arbor Arts Center. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband, who is a Greek Orthodox priest.

Here’s Elyse’s query:

Dear Dear Agent,

To be born at the Siege of Leningrad is unlucky. To be abandoned at birth unluckier still. When the Soviet state rescues twin sisters Maya and Natasha from starvation, their luck appears to improve. It will be years before they learn the state expects repayment.

Now seniors at the prestigious Vaganova Academy of Ballet, Maya and Natasha dream of joining the Kirov Ballet on its upcoming tour to America. Both sisters have sacrificed everything–their childhoods, their bodies, and more than a little sanity–for this opportunity. Natasha longs for the material comforts of Western life. Maya just wants to dance by her sister’s side–after all, Natasha is the only family she has.

Then a new law from the Kremlin upends their lives: family members may no longer travel abroad together. The Kirov can only accept one of them.

As graduation looms, Maya learns that Natasha plans to defect if accepted by the Kirov. Maya must decide where her loyalty lies: with her sister, or with her dreams, and the state that saved her life. As both girls are swept up in the cultural Cold War, they’ll realize the state has loyalties of its own.

Set in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, MOTHERLAND, a historical novel, is complete at 118,000 words. Told with the omniscient sweep and wit of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, MOTHERLAND is a story about sisterhood, female ambition, and betrayal in the vein of Yiyun Li’s The Book of Goose.

I am a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and an Elizabeth George grantee. My fiction has appeared or is upcoming in the Cimarron Review, Image Journal, and the Cincinnati Review, who in 2019 nominated me for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. I am married to a Greek Orthodox priest who is not Greek, which is as delightfully bizarre as it sounds.

Thank you for your consideration.

Elyse Durham

Check out Elyse Durham’s Maya & Natasha here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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Agent Allison Hunter’s commentary:

I first read Elyse’s query as part of AWP’s 2023 Writer to Agent program, which meant it was one of hundreds of queries I read, one after another, in a short span of time. I hate to say it, but when you read so many queries in a row, they can really start to blur together, but Elyse’s jumped right out to me as something special.

I have always been fascinated by stories about siblings, probably because I grew up as an only child. I find the dynamic between sisters especially compelling. My former boss, the late, great Mort Janklow, once told me that the secrets to good fiction were “mothers and daughters, and sisters.” I’ve never forgotten that. I’m also an incredibly competitive person – I’m an agent after all! – so I was immediately hooked by this premise: that these two twin sisters are pitted against each other, and only one can succeed. I loved that Elyse wrote that the book was “a story about sisterhood, female ambition and betrayal” – those are all buzzwords for me.

I was also very interested in the setting of the novel, in Soviet Russia during the Cold War, which provided clear and serious stakes for the story. I was immediately intrigued by one of the first lines of the query, about how the Soviet state “rescued” Maya and Natasha. Right away that tipped me off that this wouldn’t be the typical black and white, good-versus-evil book about Soviet Russia, that this would present a more nuanced take on that period, which turned out to be true, and is one of the things I love most about the book.

Finally, I loved Elyse’s bio, which mentioned that she attended an MFA Program whose fellow graduates I’ve long admired, and that her husband is a “Greek Orthodox priest who is not Greek,” which I thought might offer her a unique perspective.

Out of the hundreds and hundreds of queries I read for the Writer to Agent program, Elyse’s ended up being one of only two that I pursued. I feel so lucky to have connected with her, and to get to help share this fantastic book with the world.

Elyse’s thoughts on querying:

Querying was the step in the writing process that mystified me the most—even more so than writing the novel itself! At first, it felt so outside of my experience that I didn’t know how to begin, and my questions overwhelmed me. How did you decide who to query? How much of the plot should you reveal in your letter? How in the world do you choose comps?

Thankfully, friends pointed me to Jane Friedman’s website and QueryShark, and both of these resources were a lifeline. As I read more example letters, and heard writers detail their process, I realized that querying wasn’t so different from pitching, a skill I’d honed over years of working as a freelance journalist. Both had similar requirements: being courteous and professional, demonstrating competence and expertise, and—most importantly—hooking your reader with just enough information to leave them wanting more.

I set out to write a letter that would both highlight my novel’s hooks and demonstrate the voice of its narrator, which I felt was one of my book’s primary features. In the fall of 2022, I didn’t feel ready to query in full—I wanted to keep working on my manuscript for a while—but submitted my letter and a five-page excerpt to AWP’s Writer to Agent, just for practice. I planned to start querying in full in the fall of 2023.

Well, lo and behold, in February 2023, I had multiple emails from agents, asking to meet with me at AWP. One of these was Allison Hunter of Trellis Literary, and we instantly connected: I was so struck by her confidence in and enthusiasm for my book. Allison asked me to send her my full manuscript when it was ready. I was stunned—I’d thought I was months away from beginning to query. I sent her the manuscript that spring, and though I also queried widely, no one came close to matching Allison’s enthusiasm. She had brilliant ideas for edits that perfectly matched my vision for the book. I knew we’d collaborate well, and I was right. I still can’t believe I get to work with her.

(Oh, and by the way—Allison later told me, ever so gently, that my query letter’s comps were terrible! I made the mistake of focusing on voice instead of finding books with similar plots/themes. You’ll notice we later changed the title, too—it’s all a work in progress.)

*****

Allison Hunter was an agent at InkWell Management, the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, and Janklow & Nesbit before co-founding Trellis Literary Management in the fall of 2021. She is actively acquiring literary and commercial adult fiction, especially focusing on upmarket book club and women’s fiction, romance, and domestic suspense. She is always looking for female friendship stories, campus novels, great love stories, family epics, and books about class and cultural identity. In the nonfiction space, Allison is acquiring select memoir, narrative nonfiction, and the occasional prescriptive project. She is always looking for pop culture and women’s issues. After over a decade in New York City, Allison now lives in Austin, Texas.

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