Literary agent Alia Habib on publishing non-fiction trade books
You have an idea for a book or you're curious about the route to publication outside of academia, but don't know where to begin. How do you go about finding an agent and what role will they play in the process? What kind of materials do you need before you query agents and what should that query include? And what will the process of publishing a trade book—from proposal writing to editing to publication--look like for an author?
The Humanities Center invites you to hear from literary agent Alia Hanna Habib and her client Anastasia Berg , UCI Assistant Professor of Philosophy, as they share insights from both sides of the publishing relationship and process.
Alia Hanna Habib is a literary agent and Vice President at The Gernert Company, which she joined in 2017 after starting her publishing career as a publicist at HMH and working as an agent at McCormick Literary. She is the author of Take It From Me: An Agent’s Guide to Building a Nonfiction Career from Scratch, published by Pantheon in January 2026 and of the publishing-themed Substack Delivery & Acceptance. Among the New York Times-bestselling and prize-winning clients she represents are Clint Smith, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Lauren Oyler, Stephen Vladeck, Nathan Thrall, Merve Emre, Adam Serwer, and Hanif Abdurraqib. She was profiled by New York Magazine for their special issue on “The 49 Most Powerful New Yorkers (You’ve Never Heard Of).” She lives in Brooklyn.
Books may be available for purchase (cash only).