Annabel White

I joined Susanna Lea Associates in February 2026 as a rights agent. I work on the translation rights for the varied list of authors at SLA, as well as Spiegel & Grau, the Robbins Office and New River Press. Alongside this, I am building a list of East Asian authors in translation. Prior to working in publishing, I lived in Tokyo for 18 months. I am passionate about Japanese literature and I work with a number of agencies and publishers in Japan to find homes for their titles in the UK, US, and beyond.

I think reading books in translation is hugely important for understanding different cultures and my favourite part of my job is connecting authors with new readerships all over the world. I spent the first four years of my career at Curtis Brown and during my time there I represented a range of authors such as Nao-Cola Yamazaki, Tokuro Nukui, and the (now 105 year-old!) memoirist Tetsuyo Ishii. I have a number of exciting Japanese authors on my list at SLA, including Hiroshi Fujiwara (aka the Japanese Cat Detective), novelist Basil Mori and the award-winning food writer Toko Koyanaga. I can’t wait to introduce them to readers around the world.

Some of my favourite books in translation are Dahlia de la Cerda’s Reservoir Bitches, Mariana Enriquez’s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed and Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night.