Allison Malecha

Allison Malecha joined Trellis Literary Management as Director of Foreign Rights at the agency’s launch in fall 2021, and she became a partner at the agency in 2026. As Director of Foreign Rights, Allison has brokered deals for Trellis authors in over forty territories, and loves being the champion for Trellis authors around the world.

Allison also represents a small, selective list of domestic clients split between fiction and nonfiction. Her clients have won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, among other accolades. She loves writing that is fearless, whether that looks like a big imagination or a spiky sense of humor in fiction, or nonfiction that isn’t afraid to ask big questions and search for surprising answers. No matter the category, she’s also drawn to books with a strong sense of place. And she frequently represents authors on behalf of trusted U.K. partners for North American rights. 

In fiction, her taste skews towards the upmarket/literary. At the moment, she’s particularly looking for family or friendship stories that offer something fresh, and would love a literary novel that has a taut thread of suspense. 

In nonfiction, she's looking for writing that is generous yet galvanizing in: narrative nonfiction, particularly with a historical or international dimension; social science; pop science; or pop psychology. 

Some of her favorite authors include Louise Erdrich, Katie Kitamura, Miriam Toews, Charlotte McConaghy, S. A. Cosby, Annie Hartnett, Richard Powers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, Natasha Trethewey, Rachel Louise Snyder, Masha Gessen, Ibram X. Kendi, Michael Pollan, and James Nestor.

Prior to Trellis, she spent several years at Bettina Schrewe Literary Scouting, where she worked with major publishing clients in over twenty markets across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, as well as with an independent film client. Before her time as a scout, she worked for five years in editorial at independent publishing house Grove Atlantic, where she was building her own list under the publisher and was the in-house manager for Freeman's and The Mysterious Press.

Allison grew up in the middle of Canada and the middle of the U.S, but has always found home between the covers of a book. She has a BA in Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University, where she studied French and Czech.