Sharmaine Lovegrove
Co-Director & Agent
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.
Clients
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Imogen grew up on a farm in Devon and moved to London to train at RADA in the 90s.
As an actor and director, she has toured France, New Zealand, India, Brazil and the UK and has written and directed plays exploring drug abuse, capoeira and sexual harm in English, Portuguese, Bengali and Hindi. Foreign Body, her award-winning solo play about repair after sexual harm, toured the UK and internationally, selling out runs at Soho Theatre, the VAULT Festival and WOW Festival at the Southbank Centre.
Imogen has consulted with journalists at BBC 1Xtra, The Independent, The Mail on Sunday and Medium to destigmatise the conversation around sexual harm.
As a facilitator of embodied leadership for women, Imogen has designed and delivered transformational change programmes for top global brands such as Chanel, Stella McCartney, Tiktok and Warner Music. She has also worked as a producer for Shakespeare’s Globe, a casting director for the BBC and a lecturer in drama and creative writing departments at the Universities of Oxford, Westminster, Loughborough, Calcutta, Mumbai and Dhaka.
Imogen co-hosted the Loving Colour podcast, a series of personal conversations about race and racism. The series explores what it means when justice starts at home.
Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan and the Vagina Museum’s zine Lip Service.
@imogenibc
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Seren Jones is a multi award-winning journalist specialising in documentaries and podcasts.
In the podcast space, Seren has hosted, produced and written mini series for some of the audio industry's biggest platforms including Wondery, iHeart, Apple, BBC Sounds and Audible. Her original podcast series, Black and Blue: Behind the Badge, was recognised at the British Podcast Awards in the 'Best Factual' category. She has also been named one of the Radio Academy's 30 Under 30 finalists, as well as one of PodPod's Faces to Watch.
In television, Seren has also gained recognition for her documentary work. Seren holds a BAFTA nomination in the ‘Breakthrough’ category, and was recently named Presenter of the Year at RTS Wales, 2026.
Prior to her time in narrative audio, Seren spent five years working as a multi-media reporter and producer at BBC News covering national and international affairs for the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, BBC Wales, BBC Cymru and BBC 1Xtra. Seren was one of the founding producers of the BBC’s first flagship daily news podcast, Beyond Today, before going on to produce the award-winning podcasts Newscast and Americast, as well as a range of ‘always on’ programmes and original feature documentaries.
Beyond journalism, Seren is co-founder of the Black Swimming Association (BSA), an award-winning charity set up to raise awareness of water safety and drowning prevention. She speaks on numerous panels on issues involving media, Welsh affairs and race, gender and equality in sport.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Thora Dahlke is a writer based in Berlin.
Her work has appeared in Volume 0, Wigleaf, Barrelhouse, Best Microfiction 2026, and elsewhere.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Michelle Meagher is a leading anti-monopoly lawyer and author of COMPETITION IS KILLING US: HOW BIG BUSINESS IS HARMING OUR SOCIETY AND PLANET – AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (Penguin Business, 2020; a Financial Times Book of the Year).
In 2020, she co-founded Europe’s first nonprofit anti-monopoly think-tank, the Balanced Economy Project, to catalyse an international anti-monopoly movement. She holds economics and law degrees from Oxford and Georgetown, and practised antitrust/competition law at top law firms in London and Brussels, at regulators in the UK and US, and at the World Bank. Frequently sought after as keynote speaker, panellist, and podcast guest, she has delivered presentations for the Financial Times, the OECD, University of Chicago, Harvard, Yale, and Oxford. Major media outlets feature her insights, including national television, radio, and leading publications such as the Guardian and Financial Times.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Raymond E. Slacker is a writer and editor based in London.
He works across fiction, theory, and drama. Slacker works in editorial at an independent Black press and holds a postgraduate degree in Art Theory & Philosophy from Central Saint Martins.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Stef Macbeth grew up in a railway family in the UK, studied philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and was part of the inner circle at the Sub Club during the years that made Glasgow's underground scene one of the most influential in Europe.
In London he worked in advertising and co-created Global Soundtracks, a music podcast made with Tom Ravenscroft before his BBC 6 Music years. He moved to Berlin in 2013, where he has worked as a communications consultant and raised three children.
His writing returns repeatedly to what he calls the geographies of belonging: the places, scenes and shared rituals that hold people together, and what happens to them when the conditions that made them possible disappear. His debut novel FOLK was published by Velocity Press in 2025 and longlisted for the McKitterick Prize. Hannah McGill called it "a warm, perceptive, funny and wise book about finding your tribe — how it can save you, how it can lead you into danger, and ultimately how it all goes into the person you become." Emma Warren, with whom he appeared at Faversham Literary Festival, praised its "new insights into the freedoms offered by illegal raves and radical youth clubs."
For Borealis Festival he created Argument of the Broken Window, a site-specific walking piece reimagining Emmeline Pankhurst's 1912 suffrage speech as a route through central London. His second novel The Municipal draws on his founding of The Night Trains, a cultural rail project featured in the Evening Standard and SUITCASE. He lives in Berlin with his partner and their three children.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Paola Thomas is a novelist, photographer and food writer who looks for the stories behind everything she creates.
She grew up in London, addicted to Parmesan and prosciutto, thanks to her Italian mother. After years in the corporate trenches, she moved to Seattle where she swapped spreadsheets for saltimbocca and reinvented herself as a food and travel photographer and writer, documenting the stories behind our food and those who produce it.
Her work has appeared in The Kitchn, Eater, Edible Seattle, and Zagat’s. She won the Evening Standard’s Gourmet of the Year award, had several photographs shortlisted for World Food Photography Awards, and published a children’s short story in Richard & Judy’s Winning Stories. She studied French and Italian at Oxford University, has lived in both France and Italy and speaks both languages fluently.
Influenced by Jilly Cooper, Judith Krantz, and Helen Fielding, Paola has always loved a love story andLOVE FOCACCIALLYis her debut contemporary romance: a witty, escapist, emotionally intelligent romcom blending food, travel, and the chaotic glamour of social media and celebrity culture, viewed through a photographic lens.
Paola now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with her husband, daughter, two feisty cats and hundreds of cookbooks.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Precious Adesina is a London-based writer, journalist and radio host whose work often explores the intersections of art, culture and politics.
She regularly writes for major publications, including The New York Times, BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, and cultural magazines such as Kinfolk and i-D, among many others.
She has been invited to speak at several leading institutions, including Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, The Royal Academy, Nottingham Contemporary, Baillie Gifford and University College London, her alma mater.
After studying History of Art, she received a prestigious scholarship from the National Union of Journalism to study an MA in Newspaper Journalism, where she specialised in politics and wrote her thesis on art forgery.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Kirsteen McNish is a writer, events curator and broadcaster.
She has a regular column for the celebrated online arts and culture journal Caught By The River.
She was writer in residence for UNESCO’s Exeter Quay Words in 2025. She has had essays published online and in print by various outlets including publishers Little Toller, and Elliot & Thompson. She reviews music for The Quietus and has worked in sound with Resonance FM and the BBC.
Kirsteen is also an events curator who works filmmakers, musicians and artists on special one-off events remote places ranging from Epping Forest, The RIBA, The Minack Theatre, and within the hills and tors of Dartmoor.
She has co-curated and contributed to a number of panel events, most recently with The Wellcome Collection, and Dartmoor Preservation Association. Kirsteen also developed the story around an album called “Mirry” which was about the secret life and lost music of a female composer. Kirsteen lives in Devon.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Lucy Golding is a writer and historian based in Oxfordshire.
Born in London, she has degrees from the University of Bristol and Royal Holloway, University of London, and a History DPhil from Wadham College, University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis Educated expectations: graduate mothers and their work in the long 1950s explored women’s lives and work in post-war Britain.
Her fiction is sometimes inspired by the letters and diaries from across the centuries found in archival collections, and by the cities and rural landscapes where she’s lived and worked. She writes to try to make sense of the world, to explore ideas, make connections between them, and to imagine characters and their motivations as they navigate the complexities of life.
When not reading, researching, and writing, she can be found wandering around art galleries and museums, walking in the countryside with her dog, or pottering amongst the roses in her garden.
Author photo credit: Hannah Veale
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Ralph Martin is a novelist and screenwriter based in Berlin. His work aims to stir empathy and bring heart to high-tension narratives in fiction and film.
His work uses thriller structures to tell stories of families under pressure, featuring recognizable, initially low-stakes scenarios that morph into gripping tales where everything is on the line.
He co-created the HBO Europe miniseries Hackerville and worked in the writers’ room on Deutschland 83. As a journalist he has written for the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, GQ, and numerous travel magazines. He also works as a news reporter at Deutsche Welle in Berlin.
His debut novel Foreign Bodies (working title) explores just how wrong an American family vacation can go in Paris. (Very, very wrong.)
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter, and journalist from East Germany.
She studied History and Journalism in Berlin and Istanbul and holds an MA from Freie Universität Berlin. Her work explores how women’s lives can reframe cultural memory and has sparked major debates — from bringing the #MeToo conversation into the German art world to reshaping discussions around East German identity. Her narrative non-fiction Three Women Who Dreamed of Socialism became a SPIEGEL bestseller, and she recently published her first novel with Hanser Berlin. She writes regularly for DIE ZEIT and The Guardian, and works across print, film, and television. She lives between Berlin and Istanbul.
Photo credit: Erdem Varol
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Zeynep Demirelli MSc. is a therapist, influencer and eating disorder survivor.
After battling with eating disorders half her life, she now has her own practice helping others, not only through individual therapy sessions, but also through her Instagram @realistic.body.therapist. She shares her experiences and reflections on the struggles of body image, diet culture and eating disorders.
In a culture where body positivity rules the discourse on how we ‘should be’ treating our bodies, Zeynep strives for a more “realistic” outlook on eating disorder recovery. She challenges conventional portrayals of recovery as a fun, empowering and liberating process by addressing what is all too often left out: the slip-ups, tears, and frustrations. Recovery is tough and it certainly isn’t linear. Zeynep is brutally honest about these realities, which crop up before, during and after eating disorder recovery. Her approach is not to fully reject societal standards, but to co-exist with them.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Stina Sanders, is an Integrative therapist and the author of NOT THE ONE: A Woman’s Guide To Identifying Red Flags.
Standing as a leading voice on the intricacies of love and modern relationships, Stina boasts over a million views on TikTok and Instagram, where she uses her platform to share valuable insights and advice, helping to guide people to forge healthier connections with both themselves and others.
Alongside her online presence, Stina collaborates with brands and charities to help raise awareness of mental health and address important issues. Her content often reflects a blend of humour, experience and genuine moments, all of which contribute to her popularity on social media.
Follow her journey and daily dose of wisdom on Instagram and TikTok: @stinasanders
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Tiffany Newton is a writer producer, whose career has spanned more than three decades. At the heart of all her work is the love of creating incredible stories that resonate.
Independent production has been the backdrop to her life, however, she has many strings to her bow. In 2013, she launched ‘Uplus’, a business helping young people make informed career decisions in the creative industries. She now runs a film location business and studio,‘On Kew’, from the home she and her husband built in 2022.
Writing has been her passion for as long as she can remember. She launched a blog ‘Motherhoodthetruth.org’ in 2011 which is still read and shared every day. She has written TV and film scripts throughout her production career. She wrote a book in 2019 about her father, accumulating all the stories of his life from family and childhood friends. As Stephen King says, don’t write unless you love it. She not only loves it, it feeds her soul.
Tiffany lives near Richmond in London with her husband photographer and director Chris Newton, their two teenage boys, and three dogs.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Sharmadean Reid is an entrepreneur, writer and cultural strategist committed to building platforms that empower women and reshape industries.
She is the founder and CEO of The Stack World, a network for female founders and creative entrepreneurs, and the founder of 39BC, a luxury bathing and fragrance brand inspired by ancient rituals and modern self-care.
Over the past 15 years, Sharmadean has launched multiple ventures at the intersection of beauty, technology, and culture — from Wah Nails, which redefined nail art as a fashion movement, to Futuregirl Corp, a business education platform for young female leaders.
A graduate of the University of the Arts London, she was awarded an MBE for Services to Beauty Industry in 2015. Her career has taken her from fashion styling and publishing into technology, investment, and consumer goods, always with a focus on giving women the tools to thrive.
Today, she speaks globally on entrepreneurship, leadership, and innovation, and is the author of New Methods for Women (2024).
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Anton Spiceis a writer and creative practitioner exploring how sound shapes our understanding of the environment.
His work examines the cultural and political potential of listening, revealing new perspectives on climate change and ecological crisis.
A leading UK music and arts journalist, he has written for The Guardian, Frieze, The Wire, Tate Etc, and Wax Poetics, while his audio projects have aired on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and Resonance FM.
An associate lecturer in design at Goldsmiths University, he has presented research at major exhibitions and conferences and runs a widely read newsletter on sound and climate change.
Formerly editor of The Vinyl Factory, Spice brings deep expertise in music, culture, and storytelling to his debut, THE SONIC LANDSCAPE.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Kevin Quinn was born in Detroit, MI and received his BA in English from Yale University, where he wrote his thesis on James Baldwin's Another Country and was heavily involved in college a cappella.
Thereafter, he spent the better part of twenty years teaching high school English, first at a boarding school in Connecticut and then in independent schools in Hong Kong (where he lived for eight years), New York, and San Francisco.
His first piece of published writing, the personal essay “Seeing Your Self,” appeared on thefeministwire.com in 2014 and details his life growing up in the Black church. He is senior editor of Citizen Magazine, an annual print publication covering Black art and culture, and has reviewed books for the South China Morning Post Magazine in Hong Kong and Politico Magazine.
An avid traveler and foodie, he can’t really call any one place home, but he currently spends a lot of his time in Mexico City.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Peter Frederick Matthews is a writer and journalist based in Berlin.
His podcast Dig Where You Stand—an investigation into Germany’s colonial-era human remains—was adapted into the BBC World Service documentary Returning Germany’s Stolen Skulls.
His essays and criticism have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, European Review of Books, Manchester Review, and Berlin Quarterly. He holds an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia and has served as Digital Editor at The Berliner magazine since 2021.
Represented By: Sharmaine Lovegrove
Cyrielle Tamby is a French diasporic writer, researcher and cultural curator based in Berlin.
Born and raised in Paris to a family whose roots span India, Vietnam and the Republic of the Congo, she is interested in how history lives on in families, relationships and communities, and in the ways people negotiate belonging and home across generations.
She studied Social Sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin before completing a degree in Sociocultural Studies at Europa-Universität Viadrina. She later became a Visiting Scholar in African Diaspora Studies and Black Geographies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores Black popular culture, dancehall, postcolonial identity and transnational cultural exchange, and has resulted in two academic books, Welches Geschlecht hat Dancehall? and Resistdance.
Alongside her literary practice, Cyrielle works in creative project management, leading international creative productions and campaigns for global fashion brands. She has spent more than a decade developing cultural programmes that bring together literature, dance, music and critical dialogue. As former Chair of MINCE e.V., she helped shape the CDC Festival in Berlin, one of Europe's leading Afro-Caribbean dance festivals, where she curated the conference programme and community sessions, creating spaces for exchange between artists, scholars and communities.
Cyrielle is an alumna of the Black Women Writers in Europe residency. She has participated in the Kweli International Literary Festival and developed her fiction through the Stuyvesant Writing Workshop under the mentorship of novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn.
At the heart of her writing is a fascination with how people inherit, resist and reinvent the worlds they come from.