Larissa Melo Pienkowski
Editor, Sensitivity Reader
Larissa Melo Pienkowski grew up outside of Boston and attended Simmons University, where she earned her degree in Social Work and Sociology, wrote and performed poetry, and edited a number of literary magazines. After earning her MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College, she began her career in publishing by working with Beacon Press and Barefoot Books before becoming the assistant publisher of Dottir Press. In 2020, she started her own freelance editing company and joined Jill Grinberg Literary Management as a literary agent. She is the daughter of Brazilian and Polish immigrants and speaks Portuguese and Spanish. She is a Massachusetts transplant living in Philadelphia with her fiancée and very fluffy husky, Olaf.
As an agent and editor, she has worked on highly acclaimed books across all genres, though she does have a love for literary and upmarket fiction; light fantasy; queer feminist horror; romance and rom-coms; book club and coming-of-age fiction; middle-grade and YA fiction; and cultural criticism with a narrative bent.
As a queer, mixed-race Latine editor, she is especially committed to uplifting and preserving BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, and other historically excluded voices and experiences in publishing.