LISA LESHNE is a literary agent, publishing consultant, and founder of The Leshne Agency. Her clients include #1 New York Times bestselling authors, Pulitzer and Polk Award-winning journalists, Olympic gold medalists, business and political leaders, experts, advocates, and debut authors.

Lisa’s list is primarily nonfiction, spanning memoir, narrative nonfiction, current affairs, politics, business, culture, sports, humor, biography, health, self-help, and prescriptive nonfiction. She also represents select adult fiction, young adult fiction, middle grade fiction, and children’s books. She is especially passionate about working with journalists, experts, and authors with extraordinary stories, strong voices, and fresh perspectives.

In addition to her work as an agent, Lisa offers private consulting for writers seeking guidance on book proposals, manuscript materials, pitch letters, positioning, platform, publishing strategy, and the broader publishing process.

Lisa has worked in media, publishing, and entertainment for over three decades. Just after Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1990, she co-founded and served as Publisher of The Prague Post, the largest English-language newspaper in Central Europe, along with its book division and website. She later held positions in New York at Accenture’s Entertainment & Media Group, Dow Jones, and The Wall Street Journal, where she oversaw advertising, marketing, and circulation for WSJ.com in Europe and Asia. After September 11, 2001, Lisa spent a year at the Partnership for New York City’s Financial Recovery Fund, evaluating grant applications and providing strategic advice to small businesses destroyed in the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

Lisa has been profiled for her entrepreneurial work by 60 Minutes, the BBC, Fortune, Money, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, Advertising Age, Smithsonian, and other outlets. She is also the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and has been an invited speaker and panelist at Harvard and Columbia Business Schools. She is a member of the Association of Author Representatives (AAR) and has served on the faculty of the Kauai Writer’s Conference and The Faulkner for All! Writer’s Conference in New Orleans.

Originally from Champaign, Illinois, Lisa has a BA in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives in New York City.

SANDY HODGMAN is the Director of Foreign Rights for the Leshne Agency. She has worked in publishing for over two decades and is dedicated to the long-term success of the agency’s authors. In the course of her career, she has licensed UK and translation rights for both major US publishers and independent literary agencies. Some of the authors she has had the pleasure of representing in the foreign market are Akemi Dawn Bowman, Peggy Dean, Ree Drummond, Jesse Itzler, Emmy Laybourne, Gregory Maguire, Rafael Nadal, Jeremy Rifkin, Gene Simmons, Cynthia Swanson, Maria Toorpakai Wazir, among many others.

Sandy is a fixture at the London Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair and travels overseas to maintain relationships and promote our titles throughout the year. She is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) and is a member of the AAR International Committee.

CHRISTINE J. LEE is an Associate Literary Agent at The Leshne Agency with interest in a broad range of genres, including full-length literary fiction, sci-fi, thrillers, horror, true crime, and romance, YA, cookbooks, interior design and gardening, parenting, books on self-empowerment, and memoirs/biographies touching on race, sex, class, and identity. She has worked in the publishing industry for more than 13 years, beginning at Bedford/St. Martin’s, then moved on to Simon & Schuster. She earned a BA from Princeton University in English Literature and a MFA from the University of Houston in Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and cat.