Rachel Ekstrom Courage
Founder + Literary Agent
Rachel Ekstrom Courage started her publishing career in New York City as a book publicist, first working on mysteries and thrillers for Minotaur in the historic Flatiron building, then assuming a directorial role for Penguin’s Dutton and Gotham imprints, and finally working on blockbuster fiction and nonfiction for St. Martin’s Press.
She developed relationships with local and national media, arranged bookstore and “outside the box” author events, and secured coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, C-SPAN, Fox Business, People, Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Economist, The New Republic, Salon, Playboy, Time, and Wired, the highlight of which was attending a taping of Oprah. A few of the bestselling and award-winning authors Rachel promoted as a publicist include Louise Penny, Hari Kunzru, Timothy Keller, Tyler Cowen, T. Jefferson Parker, and P.C. and Kristin Cast.
As a literary agent, Rachel has represented New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Best Sellers, GoodReads Choice Award Winners, IndieNext Picks, USA Today “Most Anticipated” titles and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections as well as finalists for the Lambda Award, National Jewish Book Award, and the ITW Thriller Award. She’s run multi-house auctions and brokered six and seven-figure deals, advocating on behalf of books and authors that make the world a better, smarter, and more interesting place.
Rachel has presented, led workshops, and met one-on-one with authors at Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop, The Loft’s Wordsmith Conference, Grub Street, University of Pittsburgh, Chatham University, SCBWI Winter Conference, Writer’s Digest, Seton Hill University, LWC}NYC, Jambalaya Writers Conference, South Carolina Writers’ Workshop, New England Crime Bake, PNWA, RWA, New York Writers Workshop, Unicorn Writers Conference, Digital Hollywood, Thrillerfest, PennWriters and more. She’s also the co-founder of Littsburgh, a literary community, and appears monthly on CBS Pittsburgh/KDKA to talk about books and literary events.
Nick Courage
Creative Director + Partner
Nick Courage is a children’s book author and a publishing professional who—before co-founding the Courage Literary Agency with Rachel Ekstrom Courage in 2023—worked with award-winning poetry, fiction, and non-fiction (for adults) at Big Five publishing houses like Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Picador as well as consulting with small presses, PR companies, and literary nonprofits.
While working in-house, Nick worked on campaigns for bestselling and award-winning authors such as Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Marilynne Robinson, George Packer, Paul Auster, Ishmael Beah, and more. He also enjoyed working on movie tie-ins (for books like for Silver Linings Playbook and Limitless) and learning about UK publishing at Pan Macmillan’s old offices near King’s Cross station in London.
He was the digital consultant for events like Lorca in New York, the largest-ever festival in North America celebrating the work of acclaimed Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and designed websites and secured national media for non-profits like Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a sanctuary for exiled writers.
As a publishing and marketing consultant, Nick has worked with Workman Publishing, Algonquin Young Readers, Hub City Writers Project, The Telling Room, Alice James Books, Shared Worlds, literary agents and freelance book publicists, New York Times bestselling as well as small-press authors, and a number of book PR companies.
Nick regularly speaks at writers’ conferences, elementary and middle schools, colleges and graduate programs, during which he’ll talk about his own books or offer marketing and publishing advice to aspiring and published authors.
He’s recently spoken at the Brooklyn Book Festival, The Texas Book Festival, The Louisiana Book Festival, The Authors Guild, Creative Nonfiction’s Writers’ Conference, Erma Bombeck’s Writers’ Workshop, Chatham University’s Summer Community of Writers, Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, and other larger scale events; he’s guest lectured at NYU’s publishing course and Seton Hill’s MFA program; he’s spoken about zines in The New School’s graduate program, key-noted—with Rachel—an SCBWI conference, and taught writing at the collegiate level (most recently at the University of Pittsburgh, where he designed and taught a “Writing Youth Literature” seminar).
In his capacity as Creative Director, Nick also developmentally edits select projects.
Baror International, Inc.
Foreign Rights
Courage Literary is excited to partner with Baror International, Inc. for Foreign Literary Representation.
“Founded more than 20 years ago, Baror International, Inc. is a premier literary agency and one of the first of its kind specializing in the international and domestic representation of literary works in both fiction and non-fiction ranging in genre including commercial fiction, literary, science fiction, fantasy, young adult and more.
Their 300+ clients are published in over 50 countries and include New York Times bestsellers, Wall Street Journal bestsellers, Hugo Award winners, Edgar Award winners, Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers and more. In addition to receiving numerous awards and honors, many of our titles have been adapted to major motion pictures (including The Bourne Identity, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Jumper,), miniseries and TV series (i.e. The Expanse, Outlander, Shadowhunters, The Terror, Love, Creekwood).”
PUBLISHERS WE WORK WITH
