While ‘most agencies work with sub-agencies in different countries,’ Anna Soler-Pont’s literary agency has been doing it all for a quarter of a century. Barcelona-based Pontas Agency, which has expanded into films as well as books, celebrated its 25th anniversary last weekend .....

The timing coincided with the festival atmosphere of the city’s La Diada de Sant Jordi, also known as the “Day of the Book”—when everyone is on the street buying books and roses.

For the agency’s founder, Anna Soler-Pont, the anniversary marks the culmination of a passion that began with a journey to Cairo in 1991 to meet a literary hero, the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. He introduced her to writers who pressed manuscripts into her hands.  That in turn led to an extraordinary road trip across Asia to find more authors.

Soler-Pont operated alone then, but there are nine people in the company today, including her co-partners Ricard Domingo, former publisher at Planeta Group, and Marc de Gouvenain, former editor at Actes Sud.

Pontas has been shortlisted for the Literary Agent Award at the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award three years running. And the agency she founded has a specific approach to what it does, as she tells Publishing Perspectives in an anniversary interview.

Read interview with Anna Soler-Pont here