Valentina (she/they) is an associate agent at JABberwocky assisting Eddie Schneider. She also handles all merchandise and third-party licensing proposals.
She graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a B.A. in English and has lived in New York City ever since. Outside of their literary interests, Valentina is a dancer of many different styles, a video game lover, and a ~very~ amateur digital artist.
Before joining JABberwocky, Valentina worked as an Events Manager with Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side, where they hosted a huge variety of author events, book clubs, children’s activities, and more. She has also interned at Foundry Literary + Media, Folio Literary Management, and the Feminist Press at CUNY.
How to Query Me
Please visit my submissions page over on Query Manager: http://QueryManager.com/ValentinaSainato. I do not take queries over email or on the phone, so this is the best (and only) way to submit to me.
What I’m Looking For
**Please note I am only looking for horror at this time! I may open to other genres in the future.**
Horror: Horror is my favorite genre to read, and I’m looking for lots of different flavors here. If it’s spooky, eerie, disorienting, thrilling, existential, or horror-lite, I want to read it. Blends with sci-fi/fantasy are also welcome, but it should still feel at home on the horror shelf!
I particularly love stories featuring monsters, witches, and demons, but I really want to see fresh takes on them with unexpected twists. A good ghost story or haunted house will always catch my attention; Carmen Maria Machado’s work is among my all-time favorites. Other horror elements I enjoy: body horror, cults or secret societies, natural phenomena like fungi and flora, and settings that make me feel claustrophobic.
While I tend to gravitate more to supernatural or suspenseful horror over serial killers, I do like self-aware homages to slasher & cult films (like Stephen Graham Jones’ brilliant My Heart is a Chainsaw). Survival horror or horror with thriller elements are also categories that I like but don’t read as often.
Horror media I love:
- Books: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate, The Honeys by Ryan La Sala
- Film/tv: Get Out, Scream, Hereditary, Ringu / The Ring, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House
- Other media: video games like Oxenfree and Slay the Princess, the podcast Welcome to Night Vale
