Tommy Dean – Literary Agent

Tommy is a literary agent, specializing in mystery, suspense, thrillers, crime fiction, and upmarket fiction with danger and secrets. He gravitates towards stories with deep emotional resonance, with characters who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. He seeks stories that explore the mysteries of being human. He is always interested in clear stakes, surprise endings, and stories that make him forget the outside world.

A fellow writer, Tommy, is an award-winning storyteller, the author of two flash fiction chapbooks, Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022). This Fear We Harbor, a flash collection, is forthcoming in March 2027 (Unsolicited Press). He lives in Indiana, where he is currently the editor of Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2023, and Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022. His work has been published in Monkeybicycle, Laurel Review, Moon City Review, Pithead Chapel, Harpur Palate, and many other litmags. He has taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, The Writers Center, and The Writers Workshop, as well as at numerous conferences across the country.

He is an editorial agent who loves helping writers achieve their publication dreams.

I love stories fueled by gossip and lies that hold families together and tear them apart. I love it when past crimes bubble to the surface. I love stories set in small towns, rural locations, and the Midwest. Stories of blue-collar workers and the generations that eschew this work to go to college, to live in a city, to forget where they came from, only to be yanked back to the provincial settings of their youth.