Delia Sherman – Jill Grinberg Literary Management

Delia Sherman

Delia Sherman is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning author of fiction for adults and young readers. Her novel The Porcelain Dove was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and her young adult novel, The Freedom Maze, won the Andre Norton Award for YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her other works include Changeling, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, The Evil Wizard Smallbone, and the collection Young Woman in a Garden and Other Stories. She is a frequent lecturer and teacher, and has taught writing at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop, among many others. Born in Japan, she lives in New York City with her wife, author Ellen Kushner.

Agent

Jill Grinberg

The Evil Wizard Smallbone

When twelve-year-old Nick runs away from his uncle’s in the middle of a blizzard, he stumbles onto a very opinionated bookstore. He also meets its guardian, the self-proclaimed Evil Wizard Smallbone, who calls Nick his apprentice and won’t let him leave, but won’t teach him magic, either. It’s a good thing the bookstore takes Nick’s magical education in hand, because Smallbone’s nemesis—the Evil Wizard Fidelou—and his pack of shape-shifting bikers are howling at the borders. Smallbone might call himself evil, but compared to Fidelou, he’s practically a puppy. And he can’t handle Fidelou alone.

Wildly funny and cozily heartfelt, Delia Sherman’s latest is an eccentric fantasy adventure featuring dueling wizards, enchanted animals, and one stray boy.

Praise for The Evil Wizard Smallbone

“Sherman captures perfectly the slow transition of a kid steeped in grief and misery to a boy who is slowly starting to trust, love, and hope again, and it’s endearing to see Smallbone evolve as well.” –BCCB, starred review

“Fans of fantasy will be captivated—and hoping for a sequel.” –Kirkus

“Avid readers will enjoy Sherman’s nods to other literary works, and reluctant readers will find themselves immersed in the tale. Recommended for fans of Harry Potter, this story will captivate older readers while remaining accessible to younger ones. Recommended as a first purchase.” –School Library Journal

Publisher

Candlewick

Publication Date

September 13, 2016

Age Category

Middle Grade

Genre

Fantasy

Rights

JGLM

The Porcelain Dove

Eighteenth-century France is the setting—a time and place where age-old superstitions shadow an age of enlightenment, where the minuet of aristocratic life is deaf to the approaching drumbeats of revolution, where elegance masks depravity and licentiousness makes a mockery of love. Against this background, Berthe Duvet, maid to Adele du Fourchet, later mme la duchesse de Malvoeux, tells her tale of a doomed society and of a family seeking to break a terrible curse. Vivid in its re-creation of a vanished age and delightfully iconoclastic in its view of women and history, The Porcelain Dove is a triumph of the imagination.

Praise for The Porcelain Dove

“Fantastic in every sense of the word, Sherman’s (Through a Brazen Mirror) second novel is a skillfully crafted fairy tale that owes as much to E.T.A. Hoffman as to Charles Perrault. . . . The Porcelain Dove is no dainty vertu but a seductive, sinister bird with razored feathers.” –Publishers Weekly

Publisher

KDP

Publication Date

January 21, 2015

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Historical Fiction

Rights

JGLM

Young Woman in a Garden

In her vivid and sly, gentle and wise, long-anticipated first collection, Delia Sherman takes seemingly insignificant moments in the lives of artists or sailors—the light out a window, the two strokes it takes to turn a small boat—and finds the ghosts haunting them, the magic surrounding them. Here are the lives that make up larger histories, here are tricksters and gardeners, faeries and musicians, all glittering and sparkling, finding beauty and hope and always unexpected, a touch of wild magic.

Praise for Young Woman in a Garden

“Readers who enjoy sophisticated modern fantasy fiction, both light and dark, will greatly admire Sherman’s skill with a variety of narrative forms and the gentle touch of her magic wand.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In this first collection from Sherman (The Porcelain Dove; The Freedom Maze), what seems ordinary consistently veers into the extraordinary and often downright surprising. . . . Ranging in length and style, these tales are captivating and odd, with characters and settings fully and memorably fleshed out.” –Library Journal, starred review

Publisher

Small Beer Press

Publication Date

November 11, 2014

Age Category

Adult

Genre

Short Fiction/Fantasy

Rights

Small Beer Press

The Freedom Maze

Winner of the Andre Norton Award

Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother’s old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can’t resist exploring the house’s maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar plantation. Here, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is almost four years away. And here, Sophie is mistaken, by her own ancestors, for a slave.

Praise for The Freedom Maze

“Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America’s Civil War.” –Kirkus, starred review

“This multilayered story combines fantasy, clever literary allusions, and societal observations into a unique coming-of-age story.” –Booklist

Publisher

Candlewick

Publication Date

November 22, 2011

Age Category

Young Adult

Genre

Historical Fiction/Fantasy

Rights

Candlewick