Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency

Goumen&Smirnova Literary Agency was founded in November 2006 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The founders, Julia Goumen and Natalia Smirnova (as our name logically suggests), have years of experience in publishing and a solid background in handling translation sales internationally. Following our successes in this area, we decided to expand to a full-service agency, representing our authors in book publishing, film, television, and other areas.
The agency also represents international authors, agents, and publishers in Russia.

Young and dynamic, we are searching for emerging voices, hoping to nurture their talent as they develop their writing careers. We are proud, too, of having worked with some of the most prominent long-established authors writing today, including the award-winning, best-selling Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Alexei Ivanov, Max Frei, Irina Denezhkina, and many others. Our focus is fiction that ranges from high-quality literary works to commercial titles with mass-market appeal. Sometimes the agency makes an exception for special non-fiction projects: for instance, Vladimir Arkhipov’s extraordinary collection of folk artifacts in HOME-MADE. 

Our philosophy is to provide an individual approach to each author, finding the right publisher both at home and across international cultural and linguistic borders, developing original marketing and promotional strategies for each title. Translation rights are sold directly in most countries, including the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and in Scandinavia. In some territories we also work through our sub-agents: Il Caduceo in Italy, UNI and TranNet in Japan and Korea, PLIMA for the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and Litera Rights for Bulgaria.
Film rights are handled both directly and non-exclusively through a range of film producers.

We are passionate about each project we choose to represent. Our choice is always subjective, yet based on a careful and professional estimation of market demands.

Armedwith our fresh vision and combined years of experience, we look forward to embarking on this significant new project together with you!