Meet Our Agents
Jack Fogg and Ben Dunn have over 50 years of combined experience in publishing, working their way up from editorial assistants to publishers and managing directors of their own lists at major publishing houses. They have worked with many bestselling authors who have won and been shortlisted for literary awards across fiction and non-fiction. They formed their own agency in 2021, having worked together for nearly two decades.
Ben Dunn
I am happy to consider submissions in the following areas:
Fiction: reading group, women’s fiction, speculative fiction.
Non-fiction: memoir, narrative-led non-fiction, nature writing, media tie-in (TV, Radio, Social Media, Podcast), pop-science, and big ideas.
I am a literary agent with 30 years’ publishing experience.
Over the last few years, I have built up a select list of authors, working with them in the UK, internationally and, where relevant, for film and TV. I also work with a number of talent agencies, helping artists prepare and sell their book projects.
Prior to setting up DunnFogg, I spent 25 years as a publisher working at HarperCollins, 4th Estate, Hodder, and latterly as managing director at Bonnier Books, and publishing director at Century/Arrow, during 6 years at Penguin Random House.
I have worked with many high-profile authors, winning the British Book Awards Book of The Year, and being nominated for Imprint of the Year twice.
For fiction, I enjoy original, well-drawn characters, unusual plots and writing that extends the margins of what is traditionally expected within a genre. I am drawn to unique voices, and often novels written with subtle humour, not ‘funny’ novels per se, but writing that stands out as different and unexpected. I love The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller, In The Distance by Hernan Diaz as well as The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden alongside the incredible writing of Emily St. John Mandel, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Donna Tartt. But I’m also drawn to powerful main characters like those of Naoise Dolan, Oyinkin Braithwaite, and Ottessa Moshfegh.
I made my start in publishing in the late ’90s, just as it was embracing popular culture as a genre, and the wider audience that came with it. This led me into a career of following and anticipating trends, and I have continued that course into my time as an agent. Aside from our profile-led non-fiction, much of our work can be encapsulated within the mantra that the idea is king. We look for work that is the perfect synergy of writing by an expert voice, married to a new and exciting idea that more often than not provides some form of ‘utility’ to the reader. Two of my most recent books that echo this mantra are Jessica Davies’ incredible call-to-arms about online female health, No One Wants To See Your D*ck, and Kate Bryan and David Shrigley’s How to Art, a book that demystifies the traditionally rarified world of art.
Jack Fogg
I am happy to consider submissions in the following areas:
Fiction: historical fiction, upmarket crime and thriller, speculative fiction.
Non-fiction: memoir, narrative non-fiction, investigative journalism, business, food and cookery, sport, psychology, popular science.
I started my publishing career at Bloomsbury in 2004, and went on to work at 4th Estate, Hodder, Penguin Random House and Harper Fiction and Harper Non-Fiction over a seventeen-year career as an editor and publisher. In 2018, I was nominated as editor of the year at the British Book Awards and in 2019, I set up the multiple award-winning Mudlark imprint at HarperCollins, which concentrates on quality non-fiction of all stripes.
In fiction, I’m drawn to books which combine compelling storytelling, engaging characters and strong plotting; novels with literary ambition that don’t sacrifice narrative drive. I have a particular soft spot for books with a dark or mischievous comic register, works that are genuinely funny without being lightweight, but my tastes are broad. Some of my favourites include The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, the Shardlake series by CJ Sansom, the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron, and the Jackson Brodie novels by Kate Atkinson.
During my time at Penguin Random House I commissioned and published the Wool trilogy by Hugh Howey and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and I remain hungry for books that occupy that space; stories with a speculative edge that introduce an element of the unknown into real-world settings or throw forward into imaginable versions of our future.
In non-fiction, I read widely across memoir, current affairs, investigative journalism, biography, sport, business, history, popular science and food writing. I’m especially drawn to narrative non-fiction with a deep and specific focus that expands outwards to illuminate a whole culture or subculture – books such as Dark Money by Jane Mayer or Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I love deeply reported, novelistic investigative journalism, such as Bad Blood by John Carreyrou or Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, and new histories that bring fresh light to well-trodden ground, such as King of Kings by Scott Anderson or Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer. And I’m always open to first-person questing narratives, on any topic, where the writer fully embeds themselves in the story they’re reporting. Bill Buford’s brilliant books on Italian and French cuisine are among my favourites.
As a publisher and agent, I’ve worked on books by car designers, carpenters, chefs, heart surgeons, investigative journalists, musicians, neuroscientists, philosophers, publicans, shoemakers, street artists, submariners and war veterans. The great lesson I took from my time working with them is that any subject, person, field, niche or subculture can be made extraordinary by powerful storytelling, passion and knowledge – and that the most unlikely material, in the right hands, can become the most compelling book. That’s what I’m looking for.