Isobel Dixon

Email: isobel@blakefriedmann.co.uk
Twitter: @isobeldixon

Assistants
Sian Ellis-Martin: sian@blakefriedmann.co.uk
Finlay Charlesworth: finlay@blakefriedmann.co.uk

Please note that in order to focus on the development of her authors’ projects, Isobel is currently on sabbatical from considering new work, so not receiving submissions at the moment. There will be notice on this page when her submissions are open again. Our other agents’ lists remain wide open now — please do consider sending your work to Juliet Pickering, Kate Burke and Sian Ellis-Martin, as appropriate. You can find more information about submitting your work in our guidelines here.

Isobel Dixon is MD and Head of Books at the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, where she represents writers from around the world, among them Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers and international prize winners. Her interests are wide-ranging and her clients' work includes contemporary, historical and literary fiction, crime and thrillers, memoir, biography and narrative history. Her authors have won all the major South African literary awards, and authors on her list have, among others, won the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Caine Prize, Commonwealth and PEN Awards, the Barry Award, the OCM Bocas Prize and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Man Asian Literary Prize, the Ondaatje Prize, the Author's Club First Book Award, the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Isobel was born and educated in South Africa, and in Edinburgh where she completed Master's degrees in English Literature and Applied Linguistics.  Her debut poetry collection Weather Eye (Carapace, 2001) won the Sanlam and the Olive Schreiner Prizes in South Africa. Her further collections, A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator, originally published by Salt, were both republished by Nine Arches in 2018. Her latest collection Bearings is published by Modjaji in South Africa and Nine Arches in the UK (April 2016) and Mariscat published a pamphlet The Leonids (August 2016). Nine Arches will publish her next collection A Whistling of Birds in 2023, followed by The Landing in 2025.

She is a Trustee of the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, President of BTBS The Book Trade Charity and was President of the Association of Authors' Agents in 2020 and 2021. She is a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow and often gives workshops on creative writing, agenting and negotiation, and speaks on panels at literary events, to students and to writers' groups.

Some links of possible interest:
The Future Bookshelf — 'On the Question of Voice' — and what it means for writers BFLA Open Week — A Writing Life: The Long Road & The Long View Historical Novel Society interview with Isobel Dixon
The Guardian — How Do We Stop Publishing From Being So Posh and White?

Clients with recent work include: Estate of Tatamkhulu Afrika, Estate of Gilbert Adair, Sally Andrew, Romalyn Ante, Abdul Rahman AzzamSandy Balfour, Tom Benn, Karin Brynard, Graeme Macrae Burnet, James Cahill,  Edward Carey, Elizabeth ChadwickAnne de CourcyAchmat Dangor, Finuala Dowling, Barbara ErskineFelice Fallon, Tracey Farren, David Gilman, Lyndall Gordon, Ann Granger, Cormac James, Peter James, Tomasz Jedrowski, Charles Lambert, Estate of Hugh Lewin, Estate of Edward Beauclerk MauriceZakes Mda, Deon Meyer, Christopher Nicholson, Marlene van Niekerk, Lawrence NorfolkGregory Norminton, Joseph O'Connor, Sheila O'FlanaganKaite O'ReillyAlan Parks, Monique Roffey, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Julian StockwinIvan Vladislavic, Bridget Walsh, Anne Watts, Harry WhiteheadEdward Wilson-Lee.