Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Jessica Gitre majored in Mathematics and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. A lifelong reader, when internships and jobs as a data scientist weren’t filling her cup, she took the leap into publishing and landed at ICM Partners (now owned by CAA) on their Contracts and Royalty Administration team. In 2023, Jessica joined Janklow and Nesbit Associates where she assists Melissa Flashman and Emma Parry.
Jessica is interested in non-fiction with an authoritative voice – the kind that brings clarity to a complex web of topics. She seeks niche cultural histories, and dissections of complex technical phenomena for a trade audience in any field. She is also interested in exploring generational differences in how we mediate our relationship with technology. Literary criticism and doorstopper histories are also welcome, but a strong sense of urgency is important for those categories. She loves to find books that crack your brain open and make you think about the world in a different way – whether that’s through math, the sciences, language, or society (or better yet, through some unique combination of fields!).
With fiction, she is looking for stories that walk the line between a strong emotional core and a wry tone, or that turn the mundane into the sacred. She loves stories set in Texas, or with a generally strong sense of place. This craving for a strong sense of place often has her picking up commercial science fiction and fantasy. She loves big, sweeping stories - space operas and fantasy epics – that also have a sharp sense of the small-scale interpersonal relationships that make up our lives. She’s looking for complex political machinations, realistic science/complex magic systems, strong critique of empire and military, three dimensional characters with strong personalities in conflict, evocative atmosphere, and a sense of adventure. Settings she’s particularly fond of are ships/seafaring, deep deep space, the arctic, and forests. She loves to be swept off her feet but prefers SFF-with-romance over romantasy. Her holy-grail authors are Robin Hobb and James S. A. Corey, but she also loves Andy Weir, Ursula K Le Guin, Samuel R Delany, Katherine Arden and Joe Abercrombie. She is also interested in speculative literary projects that remind her of Black Mirror and genre-bending thrillers a la Gillian McAllister and Blake Crouch.