Sharmaine Lovegrove

Sharmaine Lovegrove is a literary agent and cultural activist based in Berlin, with two decades of experience across publishing, bookselling, strategic cultural consultancy, and media. She was formerly the Managing Director of Dialogue, a division of Hachette UK, where she championed underrepresented voices and published acclaimed and bestselling authors including Brit Bennett, Liv Little, Lisa Ko, Tina Knowles, Clint Smith, Irenosen Okojie, Zaina Arafat, Theresia Enzensberger, Okechukwu Nzelu, and Jeffrey Boakye.

At ICA, Sharmaine is actively building a list of fiction and non-fiction with international ambition, seeking distinctive voices, emotional resonance, and stories that broaden how we see the world. She is looking for literary and upmarket commercial fiction — novels and short story collections that are character-driven, emotionally rich, and often international in perspective. She is drawn to novels of love and relationships, whether familial, platonic, or romantic, that balance commercial reach with literary ambition. She is also seeking fiction that reimagines or disrupts dominant narratives, recasting history, myth, and perspective through fresh voices. In non-fiction, Sharmaine is interested in expert-led works on culture, politics, and society with narrative drive, as well as bold memoirs that move beyond the personal to spark wider cultural conversations.

A committed activist, Sharmaine is a founding member of the Black Writers’ Guild and former Chair of the Black Cultural Archives, where she has long advocated for equity, representation, and structural change across literature and culture. She is also the founder of Chapters, a new English-language bookshop and cultural space in Berlin.