I sat down with agents Michelle Zeitlin and Jane Cowen Hamilton of More Zap Productions and Management to talk about their new literary division, discuss why an author must know their brand, and how children’s literature fits into their multi-media, and currently acquiring, agency. I was curious how an agency that represents dancers, directors, and other specialty talent got into the literary world and what their unique platform had to offer. Turns out, a lot.

Michelle grew up in a house of writers – most notably her father, award winning writer and UCLA Professor of Sociology, Maurice Zeitlin, co-author of Talking Union. Her mother, Marilyn Zeitlin, was a journalist and taught creative writing. So it’s no surprise Michelle was an award-winning teen journalist for Seventeen Magazine and the Los Angeles Times before she left to pursue a dance career. In 1987 she gathered all her creative interests…