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Cecily McMillan, a former Occupy Wall Street activist, has landed a memoir deal for her book, The Emancipation of Cecily McMillan.

Alessandra Bastagli, an editor at Nation Books, negotiated the deal with Roz Foster of the Sandra Dijkstra literary agency.

The book will chronicle McMillan’s journey from becoming emancipated from her parents at age 16, getting involved with the Occupy movement, and her experience at Rikers Island.

A student at the time, McMillan was arrested during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York in 2012. During the protest, McMillan was involved in a fight with police and this year was convicted of assaulting an NYPD officer. She defended herself, claiming that she elbowed the cop as a reaction to his grabbing her breast. She served 3 months on Rikers Island.

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About Roz: Roz Foster is an associate agent, rights assistant, and talent scout for the Dijkstra Agency. She has a B.A. in English Literature from UC San Diego, studied philosophy for a year at the University of Sheffield, U.K., and earned her M.A. in English, with an emphasis in composition & rhetoric and creative writing, from Portland State University. At PSU, she taught writing in exchange for tuition. She’s been learning French since 2009. Roz spent over five years as a qualitative researcher in high-tech consumer products marketing. In 2008, she co-founded a web design company for which she provided non-profit organizations with audience-focused market research, project planning, and digital design. She joined SDLA in 2013.

She is seeking: Roz is interested in literary and commercial fiction, women’s fiction, literary sci-fi, and literary YA. She loves novels that make her feel like the author is tuned into a rising revolution — cultural, political, literary, or whatnot — that’s about to burst on the scene. She looks for a resonant, lively voice; rich, irresistible language; complex characters with compelling development arcs; and a mastery of dramatic structure. Roz is also interested in non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, design, business, cultural anthropology/social science, politics, psychology and memoir. Here, she looks for driven, narrative storytelling and sharp concepts that have the potential to transcend their primary audience.

Please note that Roz is specifically not interested in: sports, cookbooks, screenplays, poetry, romance, and children’s middle-grade/picture books.

How to contact: E-query roz [at] dijkstraagency.com. “We read all query letters. However, because of the high volume of unsolicited submissions we receive, we are only able to respond to those queries in which we are interested. If you have not heard back from us six weeks after sending your letter, you may assume that we have passed.” Please send a query letter, a 1-page synopsis, a brief bio (including a description of your publishing history), and the first 10-15 pages of your manuscript. Please send all items in the body of the email, not as an attachment.

Talk Tomorrow,

Kathy