Meet Najla

Najla brings an excitement to read everything that comes in to Savvy Literary Services. She is actively building a portfolio of underrepresented writers in non-fiction and fiction.

An editor at heart, she hopes to partner with authors open to collaboration and brainstorming together. She gravitates towards women's fiction, narrative nonfiction, historical fiction, crime/mystery/thriller, bookclub, young adult, speculative, magical realism, and alternative history. She hopes to represent more immigrant stories, older protagonists, and/or BIPOC characters.

Najla is an avid reader and loves great first chapters, immersive world building, deep character profiles, and well-rounded dialogue. She volunteers for the Association of American Literary Agents and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She teaches workshops at several writing conferences, including Common Mistakes In First Chapters, Writing Rules That Can Be Broken, Self-Editing Before the Query, Getting The History And Voice Right, and many other topics.

Prior to joining Savvy Literary, she worked as a project manager for fifteen years. In that role, she took high-level ideas and transformed them into strategic and operational deliverables, on time and within budget. She’ll be applying that skillset to lead and shepherd fiction and non-fiction novels to bookshelves and ereaders across the world.

Her most recent deal is THE FASTEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD: THE STORY OF DAREDEVIL JOAN LACOSTA, which narrates the epic life behind the wheel of one of the most famous risk-taking female racers of all time in the 1920s, to be published by Lyons Press, in the spring 2025.