Who We Are: John Cusick and Mary Kole

John Cusick is a VP and literary agent with Folio Literary Management, representing a diverse list of award winners and New York Times bestsellers. His focus is middle grade, young adult, and crossover fiction. He is also the author of the YA novels Girl Parts and Cherry Money Baby (Candlewick Press), and the middle-grade series Dimension Why: How to Save the Universe Without Really Trying (HarperCollins).

He tweets at @johnmcusick and discusses the craft and business of writing on YouTube @AgentBrainWriterBrain.

John is the creative development and sales lead for Upswell Media, as well as co-founder.

Mary Kole founded Mary Kole Editorial in 2013 and provides consulting and developmental editing services to writers, after years in the traditional publishing industry. She founded Good Story Company in 2019 to activate her brilliant team and provide valuable resources and content—like the Good Story Podcast and Good Story Learning—to writers of all categories and ability levels. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has worked at Chronicle Books, the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, and Movable Type Management. She is the author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit (Writer’s Digest Books/Penguin Random House).

Mary can be found on Twitter @goodstoryco, Instagram @goodstorycompany, and YouTube @goodstory, as well as at marykole.com, kidlit.com, and goodstorycompany.com. She runs small group intensive writing workshops called Story Mastermind and is a ghostwriter at Manuscript Studio. Everything she does is in the service of writing and storytelling.

Mary is the editorial and business lead for Upswell Media, as well as co-founder.