Write Now

Write Now with Eric Smith

How an author and literary agent champions inclusive stories

Photo: Kim Scholl

Write Now provides a glimpse into how different people write for a living. Today's edition features Eric Smith, literary agent and author of The Girl and the Grove and Don’t Read the Comments. Follow Eric on Twitter.

Who are you?

Hey there! I’m Eric Smith. I’m a literary agent with P.S. Literary and an author of Young Adult books. I’m based out of Philadelphia but grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In my agent life, I work on a bit of everything, but as an author, I’m mostly in the YA space.

What do you write?

I write Young Adult books that are contemporary and blend a little bit of magic or sci-fi into them. The Girl and the Grove is a YA contemporary novel about an adoptee who discovers she maybe has a magical origin story in a city park, while Don’t Read the Comments is about two teens who meet in a sci-fi video game that maybe is a little too high tech to exist just yet.

I feel like I started writing the way most writers do, when I was a little kid. I fussed over awful short stories on an electric typewriter my parents bought me and ended up really taking it seriously in graduate school. My first book, The Geek’s Guide to Dating, published in 2013, and I’d go on to write novels after that.

As for things I like to avoid… that’s tough. I like to avoid stories that don’t have a sense of hope in them, I suppose. In my books and stories, no matter how rough things might be, there’s always a feeling like the characters are going to be okay. That there’s a silver lining. The world is a scary place. I want to feel like we’re going to make it, together.

Where do you write?

Sigh. I feel like this has changed so much for me and so many other people in the last few months, right? I’m absolutely one of the cliche “I’m gonna sit in my favorite coffee shop, eat breakfast and lunch here, and write a few thousand words” kind of person. I like a lot of voices, lots of music, just lots of buzzing energy in the air. It’s why usually, I work in a coworking space here in Philadelphia, Indy Hall.