Before joining the HG Literary team in 2024, Wendi Gu was a literary agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates and Janklow & Nesbit. When she first moved to New York, she didn’t plan on going into children’s books — she wanted to work with serious adult literary fiction — but thanksto her great mentors and good luck she ended up working with authors and illustrators of books for young people. Today, Wendi’s author and illustrator clients have won the Caldecott Honor, Asian/Pacific American Library Award, the Stonewall Honor, Sydney Taylor Award, Geisel Honor, Governor General Literary Award, and Horn Book Award. They have also been nominated for the NAACP Image Award and made finalists for the Ezra Jack Keats Award. Her clients books have been New York Times, USA Today, and Indie bestsellers.
Wendi represents everything in the young reader space, from preschool to young adult, with some select adult fiction and nonfiction. She is looking for picture books that straddle humor and heart, lyrical middle grade, and daring, sharp YA. She loves a visually striking board book, as well as graphic novels that share lesser-known pieces of history and those quieter slices of life. She especially adores stories of all genres if they are from around the world, multigenerational diaspora experiences, and books that teachers, librarians, and parents might find as helpful tools for challenging subjects.
Wendi is from Chicago and studied English and Anthropology at Northwestern University. In her free time she plays piano (and still reads serious adult literary fiction — but for fun!). She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and a dog named Beanie Gu.
She is now accepting queries via QueryManager: https://querymanager.com/query/wendigu.