Russell Galen is an active literary agent at Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, currently open to submissions. He specializes in a wide range of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, mystery, horror, and various forms of fiction and non-fiction.
Represents: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Commercial Fiction, Technology, Journalism, Finance, Narrative, Pop Culture, Multi-Cultural
About Russell Galen
Russell Galen has written that he is the only agent he knows who grew up wanting to be one. As a teenager he became obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald and, in the writer’s letters, with Fitzgerald’s agent Harold Ober rather than with editor Max Perkins. What struck him was that Fitzgerald turned to his agent for support, advice, encouragement, and a career built over many years. He decided that if he wanted to help writers live the good life, rather than write himself, the way to do it was as an agent. Science is the other through-line. He has said that at twelve he wanted to be a scientist, found he lacked the math, and turned instead to Isaac Asimov, and that he still wants books, even the ones that look like pure fantasy, to use story to show how the world works.
Russell graduated from Brandeis University in May 1976 and started within days as an apprentice to Scott Meredith. He has written that he made his first sale within a month and spent fifteen years there, forming the nucleus of the list he still represented when he wrote his agency bio. The agency says it was founded in 1992, under the name Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency, and was renamed when Anna Ghosh became a partner. Galen has written that when Meredith died in 1993, he joined Ted Chichak and Jack Scovil to found the firm. The Association of American Literary Agents lists him as a member since 1992, with 45 years of industry experience, and as president of the agency.
Submission Guidelines for Russell Galen
Submitting Your Work to Russell Galen
Before querying Russell Galen
The Market List recommends you verify this agent is still active and open to submissions before sending a query. Check the agency website, recent deal announcements, and any posted guidelines. The agency site was not resolving on October 2, 2026, so do not treat a dead link as permission to ignore the old letter-only rule.
To be sure your project is a fit, we recommend you familiarize yourself with Russell Galen’s list by reviewing titles he has represented and the last archived submission guidelines before querying.
If you have recently queried Russell Galen or have experience with this agent, please submit a comment below. Recent response times are always welcome and helpful to other writers.
From the Russell Galen Submission Guidelines:
Galen’s own page says he is taking on a very few new authors, and only in areas that have a special meaning for him. In fiction, that means novels that stretch the bounds of reality. He wants a book that takes him somewhere he cannot get to in a car: the past, the future, a fantasy world, an alternate historical track, a world in which ours touches another that is hidden or rarely seen, or a world changed by some new technology, event, or idea.
In nonfiction he wants strong, serious books on almost any subject, provided they teach him something. He names science, history, journalism, biography, business, memoir, nature, politics, sports, contemporary culture, and literary nonfiction. He will not take a nonfiction book that does not teach him something. He does not want books that are merely entertaining, and he does not want diet or pop-psychology books that do not really help people. He has written that he will take on a book by a good writer willing to work hard and spend a year plumbing the depths of some fascinating aspect of man or nature.
The first approach to him is the agency’s letter-only query, sent to his email, with no sample and no attachment. If he is interested, he writes back with an invitation and instructions for what to send next.
Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency, Inc. Submission Guidelines
- Email queries are strongly preferred and must not include attachments of any kind.
- The first step is an unadorned letter only, whether you send it by email or on paper. Do not include sample pages until you are invited.
- A paper letter is allowed. Include your email address so the agency can reply by email. Do not include a SASE or anything else.
- If the agency is interested, it will email an invitation to submit additional materials and instructions for how to do that.
- Address the letter to a specific agent. The archived submissions page gave Russell Galen’s address as russellgalen@sgglit.com, and info@sgglit.com if you are not sure who should read the query.
- These rules are from the agency submissions page last archived on January 12, 2025. The live site was offline on October 2, 2026, and that page had not been visibly revised for many years.
Russell Galen's Current Wishlist:
He wants fiction that could only have been written by that writer. Labels matter less to him than whether the book takes the reader out of ordinary life. A conventional plot is fine if the protagonist is a real individual who badly wants something that grows out of who they are. He has said he does not think in subjects, and that he does not tire of familiar tropes if the person at the center is a true individual.
What satisfies him, even in a flawed manuscript, is a character on a personal journey that leaves them changed. His favorite form is the long story that has to be told across many volumes, read in order, in which people age and deepen. He has said he would rather a writer pitch the series outright. A salable standalone is also welcome, and he has said he will sometimes ask the writer to build a series bible after the fact.
On the nonfiction side he is not looking for a topic. He is looking for an idea that can be told as a story, with people engaged in a project that comes to a resolution. A survey of a subject, or a proposal that promises to learn the subject after the contract, is the kind of book he has said he turns away. Science and natural history are lifelong passions, and he has said he is particularly receptive to new clients there: working scientists, science journalists, and people who describe or picture the natural world. In biography he is drawn to the person who changed the world and whom readers have not heard of.
Query and Submission Hints
- He has said that a writer planning a certain kind of book should already have read a great many of the best books in that field, and should read the ones they love a second time to see how they work.
- He has also said he has never taken on a book just for the money. A query that sounds like a market category, with no sense of the individual book, is arguing with the way he says he reads.